We Broke Mom
This summer I was given a bicycle. Second hand, but still a thing of beauty. When I was a kid, I had a boy-style mountain bike — crossbar, no fenders, and hence, very cool. Now, however, I appreciate such things as a ladies’ style open frame, fenders, and a wide, triangular, padded seat. All of these features my new bicycle possessed. Best of all, my new used bike had back-pedal brakes and limited gears for me to bungle while shifting.
We live in the country, and I enjoy hiking, but I hadn’t been biking in over 20 years. Truth be told, I was never a great biker. I’m a much better walker. My excitement over the bicycle, however, precluded any serious thought about this fact. Additionally, I was buoyed by the enthusiasm of my two teenaged sons, who love biking and were eager to include me. Now at last they could show me the pond at the end of a nearby road allowance. They’d told me how beautiful it was, how in spring it was surrounded by trilliums, in summer there were swans, and in autumn Lothlorien leaves reflected on its surface. But, they’d insisted, it was too far to walk; we had to go by bike. Well, now I had a bike.
On the day of the magical pond excursion, my youngest son, who is an amateur mechanic, washed, greased, and tuned up my bike so it looked brand new. I, an amateur health and safety officer, cleaned my helmet, sunscreened and bug-sprayed my entire person, and donned rubber boots (up-to-the-knee wellies) since it had been a rainy summer thus far. I also packed water, bear spray, and a wet wipe (in case of mud).
My initial impressions were that 1) biking is much faster than walking, 2) road allowances are bumpier to bike than to walk, and 3) the rain had made A LOT of mud puddles. Weaving between trenches of rainwater and dodging football-size rocks, we completed the hardwood forest quarter and turned onto the rutted road that divided old farm fields. The forest had been lovely, but this new landscape of pastoral hayfields, stone hedges, and blue sky was perfect. We did not stop to enjoy the view, as the mosquitoes and deer-flies were plague worthy. Instead, my focus remained on pedalling hard while evading puddles, fallen tree branches, and rock ramps (suddenly finding yourself airborne is not the time-saver action movies would have us believe).
The thing to keep in mind, while on such excursions, is that the distance you travel forward, is the same distance you will have to travel back. Hence, after 40 minutes, I suggested to my travel mates that perhaps this was far enough for my first bike ride in 20 years and that we could go farther next time. We had stopped to lift our bikes over a fallen tree on the trail. Their response was a boot camp tirade: “No way! Mom, you can do this! You are not quitting! We’re almost there!” I gulped some water and got back on my bike.
Did I mention this was not an easy bike ride? There was swerving, aggressive steering, sudden braking, and regular dismounting. At the one-hour mark, I called out (gasped), “Guys! I’ve got an hour bike ride back! This is as far as I can go today!”
From ahead of me on the trail, two voices yelled back, “Mom, get back on your bike! It’s not much farther! You’re doing this!”
Then we entered the jungle. I say “jungle” because the mosquitoes where prehistoric in size and ferocity. The trees had gargantuan roots that formed trip lines across our path and low-hanging branches that reached for us like boa constrictors. Prickly ash clawed my arms when I rode too close. The air was damp. The light was murky. And the puddles? Much larger — small lakes with oily black slopes that slid beneath my bike tires as I navigated their shores.
I was exhausted. The boys were having to stop regularly to allow me to catch up. The magical pond that had been promised me was nowhere in sight. We’d been biking for two hours (okay, an hour and 15 minutes), and I was ready to head back. You know that moment of your family trip to the zoo when your three-year-old tells you they can’t walk anymore and you need to carry them, they hate zoo animals, and they just want to play on the tube slides? I was that three-year-old. When we came to a fork in the road that was completely flooded by a tar pit turned lagoon, I dismounted and put my foot down in the mud. “I’m done!” I said. “We’ve got to go back.”
“Mom, you’re not quitting now! We’re really close!” Then, both boys crossed the shallowest point of the lagoon, walking their bikes on an angle over the steep banks before turning to wave me over. Swallowing my toddler tantrum, I stepped forward. The mud sucked at my boots as I walked my bike through the oily shallows. I steered my front tire onto the shore and felt my right leg unexpectedly slide backwards with a loud slurp.
There are several things that are hilarious in a movie, but not very funny in real life. Among these are bonking heads when you kiss someone; having a baby pee in your face while you change his diaper; and my personal favourite, puking on an entire middle school population while students change classes because your flu-delirious seventh grade self was standing at the top of the stairwell (and it was the 80s — think big hair and people screaming because there’s puke in their big 80s hair). On this late summer day, in a forest jungle, en route to a magical pond, it suddenly became clear that my wonderful new bicycle was about to add another experience to my list of things that are funnier in a movie.
As my leg slid backwards into the mud, my opposite knee bent forward in a figure skating lunge, my arms outstretched in a dramatic grasp of my skating partner, the bicycle. Then, my partner fell on me. There was a loud splash, and I was engulfed by a mushroom-shaped surge of swamp water. Gasping and wrestling with the bike, I clambered to shore, dropped the bike, and let out a gargled scream. I was covered in muddy sludge, and each step I took slopped chocolate milk from my boots. I pulled at my clothes, which clung to me like greasy Saran Wrap. Water and sludge rained onto the ground.
I looked at my boys, who were frozen in place, eyes wide and mouths open. “Are you okay?” my youngest asked carefully.
(Remember, my mental state was that of a three-year-old after six hours at the zoo.) “There’s mud in my underwear! Mud in my underwear!” I cried and then began to sob hysterically. Observing the horror-induced pallor of two teenage boys whose mother had just referenced her underwear, I paused in my hysterics and drew a long, deep breath. “It’s just so far,” I sobbed more quietly.
My eldest lifted a hand. “Okay. It’s going to be okay. Mom? Mom, look at me. Mom! We’re going home now.” He pointed past the fork in the road to a trail that exited the jungle forest and led into a savannah of waist-high grass. “We’ll take the short-cut home.”
Shortcut? There’s a shortcut? I stared at him, incredulous.
Despite the ten pounds of water I lugged in my boots, my attempts to avoid sitting down on my bike seat, and the hill we initially had to ascend, the bike ride home was much shorter. The journey uphill included intermittent stops to unwind long grass stalks, also known as hay, from our bicycle chains, but once we crested the hill, it was a quick coast down the other side at a ridiculously unsafe speed. Arriving at the hardwood forest that had marked the beginning of our misadventure, we saw two hikers waiting trailside for us to pass. Their curious, somewhat uneasy stares rested on me as I sloshed by. “It’s very wet on the trail,” I said to them, casually gesturing toward the road allowance and nearly slipping off my bike.
Minutes later, at home, my boys turned on the garden hose and attempted to de-mud me and my new bicycle. As I headed indoors, desperate for a proper shower, I heard one say to the other, “She’s never going to come with us on a bike ride again.” But that wasn’t true, because I had yet to learn another secret, guarded only slightly less carefully than the hayfield shortcut.
If you bike to the end of our road — the township maintained, car-frequented road — and head north for awhile, you will come to a road allowance which just so happens to be the opposite end of the magical pond road allowance. A short bike ride in, 15 minutes give or take, brings you, the lucky cyclist, to a beautiful, tree-ensconced pond. And, if you wait quietly, you might even see swans.
