Tonight I rode my bike down a flight of thirteen stairs. On purpose. If you want to go look, the stairs are here:
To say that this was a difficult thing for me to do would be like saying that some water goes off a cliff at Niagara Falls. For maybe the last year and a half, I've been intending to ride down this flight of stairs. They have a short rise, so the grade is inviting. They're in what is a low-traffic area at night, so the risk of witnesses to a spectacular failure is low. There is still some traffic, so the chance of the body being discovered is high should a failure surpass the merely spectacular.
So I would ride, at a moderate to slow pace, towards the top of the stairs. Then I would stop. Well, my body would stop. My hands, that is to say, would grip the brakes, despite my brain's full intention that I should continue down the stairs. Then I'd maybe repeat this a few times before finally giving up in disgust and walking the bike down the stairs. A year and a half of this.
No more. Tonight's first attempt went pretty much by the book, but then something snapped. I circled back and rode straight down those bad puppies. 38 years old, and I finally managed, in some small way, to turn down the volume on my self-preservation instinct.
Today I am a man...
Posted by Ken Allen at June 24, 2004 12:26 AM