“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” – Bertrand Russell.

I walked my bike around the house this morning, I wasn’t planning to ride it today, I just wanted to get a feel for it. I pushed all the buttons and squezed the tires. I turned the batter on and off.

My bike has shaken me up like the fruit in a blender.

When is a bike more than a bike? When it opens up old wounds and fears. When I was consumed by fear, I tried to follow Eleanor Roosevelt’s good advice – when something scares you, do it every day.

This is my plan for riding my new e-bike. Slow and steady.

I learned several important things about fear.

It makes almost every dream impossible to achieve, and I often reminded myself that it was just an emotion, a vapor, a space to cross. It wasn’t usually real.

I was never afraid of the things I ought to fear and afraid of many things I had no reason to fear. Fear is confusing, it is a mish-mash of traumas, lies, worries, truths, and happenings, we rarely know how to sort one out after another.

Fear is a mind-killer, a series of small deaths, I learned to greet fear when it showed up – “hey, brother, how can I help you today? ” I learned to let fear pass right through me like a glass of warm milk and find its own way out the door.

I am seeing my old therapist this Thursday to talk about fear.

I should be afraid of seeing my cardiologist after all of those tests, but I am not, of course. One thing about heart disease: if anyone is worried,  you go straight to the hospital.

That’s how absurd fear is sometimes. I have never been afraid of the big things, the things I ought to be afraid of.

Somehow this e-bike is a big thing to me, for reasons mostly buried deep inside. I never once thought of talking to my therapist when I had open-heart surgery. Just when I buy a bicycle? We don’t get to choose our fears, I guess, they choose us.

“Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?” a young son asked his father.

“That is the only time a man can be brave,” his father told him. (from George R.R. Martin,  A Game Of Thrones.)

I’m afraid of riding on a bike, it is a trigger of a kind, it is the key that unlocks the secret door to bad dreams and hurts and memories.

My father often talked to me about being brave but he never gave good advice. I was weak, he said, sissy’ish with all my books and fish. I need to be brave, go play baseball and basketball, and get hit and hurt and learn to bounce back. Then,  he said, you will never wet your bed again.

I should not have called him dumb, it was disrespectful and disobedient, and he didn’t care for it much. But I kept wondering why getting elbowed during a basketball game would make me brave and cure my bedwetting.

But I sure loved yelling at him. I thought the things he told me were the dumbest things I had ever heard, and I swore to never listen to him again, and I didn’t.

I hear his voice when I look at my bike, urging me to be touch and not a quitter. I didn’t ride it today, my legs were pretty sore from the first two days, and I know I have to forego my usual impulsiveness and take it slowly.

I’ll get on the bike again tomorrow early in the morning and I want to see how far to town I can get. I live five or six miles from the post office, it’s mostly flat. I had a dream last night that I rode my bike right into a truck and went flying off the road.

I don’t know if I lived or died. I was sweating though.

I’ll go until my legs are a scream and my heart is thumping and there is a dull pain somewhere below my heart. But I was fine.

I have pills in my pocket and a cellphone if I need it. This bike thing is a great adventure, and I welcome it. I love learning new things and handling new challenges.

Friday was frightening for me, especially when I was wobbling all over the road. Saturday was better. One day at a time. I’m going to figure this out.

Maybe my father was trying in his own way to warn me that I could not outrun fear, it is tireless when you run, it gets angry, just like a stray dog or Grizzly Bear. After all, fear doesn’t shut me down, it usually just wakes me up.