Personal Narrative #1 Bike Riding

When I was young, my family and I would always bike from our house to the park and then get ice cream afterwards. Every time taking the same path: through the neighborhood, turn right onto Williamston Road, down the hill, to the park, and then to the ice cream store. I had taken this path before I even learned to ride a bike, riding in the carrier attachment of my mom’s bike, eventually progressing to riding the tandem bicycle with my mom, and finally graduating to my own. From my perspective the path was relatively easy , as I had traversed it plenty of times. As I progressed to my own bike though it became an entirely different struggle.

Riding through the neighborhood was easy, it was a familiar path that I had used to train while beginning  to ride my bike. There were usually no cars and the roads were wide making it very peaceful to bike through.The issues arose when we turned onto the main road. It was scary as cars flew by as I rode down the street, balancing my bike between the one foot wide spacing between the bike lane and the road.My hands shaking the handle bars continuously making me think I was going to fall and get flattened by a car. I continued, fighting through the shakiness trying to minimize the deep fear inside of me until the next issue arose. We needed to ride down a hill in order to continue on our path. As I began to ride down it, my speed picked up, my feet  moved rapidly as the pedals began to rotate on there own, and I focused intensely to try not ram into my mom’s bike in front of me. Eventually I made it to the bottom, gliding on my bike as the power of the hill was pushing me forward causing the wind to hit me, cooling my body. It was smooth riding from then on as we just biked straight towards the park and ice cream store, focusing on the beautiful scenery of the forest to my right and listening to the calming chirps of birds, as the fear left my body.

 After we passed through the park and made it to the ice cream store, I pondered what I would get. I ordered my usual snickers flurry and began to inhale it. The cold feeling of the ice cream hit my tongue, rejuvenating me from my long ride to the store. As I sat on the bench with my family we talked about the journey and how we would take the same path back to our house except on the opposite side of the road. After finishing up the ice cream and feeling re-energized, we hopped on our bikes and rode down the sidewalk through town and back onto the main road. From here it was almost a straight shot toward our neighborhood except for one last obstacle. Riding back up the hill. It was a long struggle using all my power, switching the gears of my bike, and standing up as a rode to get the most of each rotation. After every pedal complacent thoughts filled me head telling me to stop. Why don't you just walk up? Why don't you take a break?. I ignored the doubting thoughts, continually pushing through each pedal as my bike inched toward the top of the hill. My head down the entire time focusing on the next few feet of road in front of me until I made it. I was able to make it to the top where I briefly celebrated my accomplishment and then continued the rest of our ride.

We rode through the rest of our neighborhood, briskly moving back to our house where we put our bikes away.  My legs burning with exhaustion, I walked into my house knowing I had completed my first ride of this great adventure and I was elated that I had done it. I was even more excited though to practice and eventually know we would do it again