How To Teach Your Girl To Ride
HOW TO TEACH YOUR GIRL TO RIDE
the transition of sweet, warm innocence into... CYCLEWOMAN!
DAVID C. HON
SOMETIMES I think they have all disappeared, all the modest women with pleasant smiles who bore babies and loaded muskets for their menfolk. And where are they now? In disguises, perhaps even lovelier as they smoke Tiparillos, and vote vehemently, and wear the tightest pants in the family.
And ride motorcycles.
I grimace slightly at this last because I just taught my girlfriend to ride. Things will never be the same. As I write I pause and peer out the window. She is scaring my cocker spaniel with her wheelies in the backyard.
She had long been fascinated by those ads for Bermuda which show models put-putting around on automatic mopeds. This I could go along with (had I thought, I might have sent her to Bermuda). I did not know, however, that the attraction was not those sunny isles, but the image of CYCLEWOMAN.
So it was that one day we were riding and I felt her eyelashes fluttering on my back, relaxing me before the quick injection.
“Will you teach me to ride?” And her hands tightened their clasp on my tummy.
Which is not so soft as my heart.
“I suppose.”
“Soon?”
Too soon. Far too soon I was watching her mount the bike and I felt left out already. So I’ve become an amateur expert in that harrowing field of bike teaching (and there she goes again, over the brick and board jump she set up in the alley).
The saga is not pretty, but because you, too, may come into contact with women, and may even have a girl of your own, I will set forth a few guidelines to prepare your mind for the penalties of a soft heart.
She will spring it on you as innocently as a cloud drifts by, but if you consent you will see skies darken. If you don’t consent, they will darken anyway. Women seem to think in thunderclaps, so beware of that innocent question. Perhaps you can ward it off by arranging a slight spill while you are riding. Or by letting her try to squeeze the clutch you’ve purposely tightened. But try, try to avoid that first question. Please try.
Now that you have not avoided that first question, you are thinking of how to proceed. A small bike obviously would be best. Someone else’s. Preferably an enemy who owes you a favor.
And you will need a place. A desert will do (if it is someone else’s desert). Or an abandoned dirt airfield. Or a garbage dump. Or the steppes of Asia. At any rate, find a vast place, for vast places are more forgiving.
For classification purposes, I would divide a CycleWoman’s learning process into five stages. Though they vary in duration and intensity, all of the stages are terrifying. They are:
1. The Getting-Acquainted Stage
2. The Solo-with-Voice Stage
3. The Solo-without-Voice Stage
4. The Supreme Overconfidence Stage
5. The Hop-On-I’ll-Give-You-a-Ride Stage
The first stage in her learning can be the most pleasant; during this stage she learns the pedals and levers and twists and hand devices. In the beginning, she sits in the driver’s seat with you behind, operating the controls.
“See?” I say. “Just like a car. Ease out on the clutch and get the friction point and give it gas. Just like a car.”
“It’s not like a car,” she says. “What’s this?” She toots the horn. “And this?” Jams on the handbrake. “And this?” Rams it into first with no clutch. The bike burps and dies.
After she has become acquainted with the machine, you may slide off the back seat. Do not run, however. Later you can run, as will be explained. Now that she is astride and in neutral, you begin the Solo-with-Voice Stage. As you instruct, be sure not to let your voice rise or crack as the certainty of doom increases.
“Now easy...eeeasy out on the clutch. See? You’re still in neutral. Once more now, clutch in and step it down to first. A little gas and catch the friction point. Not enough gas, so you’ve killed it.”
“You’re not mad?”
“I’m not mad,” I say in a tone of voice that would qualify me for Captain Kangaroo.
But she cannot start it.
“Viciously,” I say.
“G-r-r-r-r,” she snarls, stomping down with her right foot onto the footpeg.
“The starter peg is back a little and higher up.”
“Oh. That one.”
After exactly one half hour of stomping and whining and me starting the 100-cc bike with my hand, she learns.
“Okay now, start in first and go a little ways and when I give the word, clutch in and shift to second.”
“Where will you be?”
“I’ll be trotting right alongside.” I unwisely ignore her slight giggle and continue. ‘Now clutch in and step it into first. Gas—give it gas.”
And we are off and running, her holding the wobbly handlebars and me alongside, jogging and calming her. “Speed it up a little,” I say, “and match my pace with the bike. All right now, clutch and put it into second.”
She must have been waiting all day for this. I am clipping along right well, trying to match the bike, and her handlebars no longer wobble. In fact she is remarkably steady and picking up speed. In fact she is digging out and I am sprinting in my chukka boots.
“Can I shift into third?” says the sweet innocent.
“Yeah...okay,” I gasp, my gazelle legs giving way to the lioness. CycleWoman moves away, serene and supreme. I stop and huff and wonder if she’ll be back this way, for now she has discovered speed...
When you have coached her through the many circles and figure “8”s, standing like a dizzy ringmaster and coaxing her to use power to stay up, she will at last be ready for the Solo-without-Voice Stage. Merely give her simple instructions and let her carry them out.
“Cut the gas when you shift,” I bellow as she departs rapidly. It was an accomplishment, I reflect, as her figure grows smaller. Not everyone can shift from first to second through 8000 rpm.
She follows my directions: To go about two hundred yards, shift up to third, downshift and do a figure “8,” stop the bike, cut the ignition, start it, and come back.
And she comes back grinning that grin of a woman possessed, Mona Lisa on a motorcycle.
The next to last learning stage is that of Supreme Overconfidence, in which she will vent her new prowess by riding wherever her whims command.
“A hill,” she says, frothing, revving unmercifully.
“A hill? Not just yet. Why don’t you take...”
“See ya.” CycleWoman revs and grits and again forgets to let off the gas when she shifts. I wish I could figure out how she does that Miracle Shift.
Halfway up the little knoll the back end skitters out and it dumps her. She just lies there looking at the sky until I come running up.
“It fell.” She is crying
“ You fell.”
Tears turn to icicles. "It fell.”
“It doesn’t care,” I say philosophically as I help her up.
“It cares. It cares."
She brushes herself off and stands glaring at it. I know she is thinking that if she kicks it I will snicker and the bike will bite her. But she wants to kick it. I intervene in the silent, spiteful moment.
“Think you can start it?”
No answer, except to kick me and then to pick up the bike with no small show of effort. Three more slow dumps, after each of which she glaces sheepishly back, and she makes the hill. For several minutes she sits up there, gazing with condescension over the prairie.
The Hop-On-I’ll-Take-You-for-a-Ride Stage is at once the most rewarding and the most dangerous of all. It marks a certain maturity in the learner and its successful completion is the woman’s certificate of competence on a motorcycle.
“Hop on,” cheerfully she beckons.
“It’s getting late,” I say. “Why don’t I just take it back?”
“Hop on,” says the persuasive saleswoman.
“There’s a lot of difference when you...”
“Hop on,” says the drill sergeant.
Ah well. So I hop on. And hang on. I will note that behind nearly every sane cyclist there has been a woman. Never, in the name of sanity, has there been one in front.
“Quit moaning,” she says, as we weave through rockpiles and bounce through arroyos. “There is nothing wrong with my...”
Whereupon we hit a soft spot and the front wheel twists and digs in and we land together in the sand. And lie there as the back wheel spins.
