First thing this morning, I drove to Saratoga Springs with my e-bike, which I’ve ridden three times in ten months, fastened tightly on the rack at the back of the car.

I took the battery, my helmet, the new mirror, the bell, the new pedals and seat, and the rack itself with me back to the bicycle shop.

This decision was long in the making, with many twists and turns.

Last August, I recall how excited I was when I bought the e-bike; suddenly triggering a bicycle boom in America . I got excited. A bike that rode me?

My e-bike cost $3,000, including all of the add ons I later purchased.

I’m never big on halfway measures. When I take the plunge, I plunge, even when I should tiptoe.

This was the perfect thing for me, I thought, a battery-powered bike that would give me a boost whenever I needed it on those idyllic rides on the country I planned to take.

My heart would be forever grateful. I didn’t stop to think that nothing is that easy, even a powerful battery-powered bike has its complications.

E-biked sales soared 85 percent last year.

I had medical reasons to go to Saratoga regularly last year, and I kept passing this very nice, very hip, and super-friendly Trek Bicycle Shop in Saratoga Springs, a town that is booming in itself.

I stopped in a few times to see what the fuss was all about.

I saw a long and beautiful line of e-bikes at the  Trek Store. I remember noticing that the customers didn’t really look like me – they were tanned, lean, and fit.

Younger too, mostly.

No, the handsome and fit sales staff assured me I wasn’t too old, and yes, they said it would be good for me.

My doctors were less enthusiastic but supportive. Just exercise regularly, they said; they didn’t really care how. My cardiologist didn’t like the idea of falling off of bikes.

The staff was right, I think.

I loved the bike I bought and couldn’t wait to get it home. It was heavier than I expected, and I need some help from Maria getting it in and out of the car and on and off the $400 bike rake that I bought for it.

I found myself frantically pushing the acceleration buttons that drove the battery. I kept getting it wrong. I didn’t feel exhilaration. I felt panic.

Maria, as always, was supportive. She thought it was great. So did I. It was too big to keep in our farmhouse; we had to move it out into the barn. It would just take some practice.

What surprised me was how much the bike frightened me. I’ve struggled with exercise my whole life, starting when I was so terrified of gym class that I would often run off and hide on gym days.

My father and I had battled ferociously and incessantly over my refusal to sign up for sports, which he considered essential to any male’s health and life.

I never wanted to go to a gym after school. I tried it once or twice and hated it.

I struggled with the bike right away. Suddenly, it symbolized was everything that frightened me about exercising. It was an expensive trigger.

For one thing, it never occurred to me that a 73-year-old man wasn’t the same as a 32-year-old man, which was how old I was the last time I rode on a bike. Turns out it’s quite different.

The bike seemed too heavy for me to move quickly, and the computerized controls – three different battery speeds plus gear changes – frightened me all the more.

The controls were really quite simple, but I am not mechanically skilled.

I couldn’t get the bike moving, and I couldn’t tell if it was a physical problem or a mental one.

I started to feel foolish and unfit; bad old memories came back.

The third time I got on the bike, I fell off in the driveway and was pinned under the tires.

Sleek bikers in their spandex pants saw me floundering and came running over to help extricate me. My knee was bleeding.

Yes, I was mortified and humiliated once more.

Soon after the fall, I went out again. The road in front of my house is a busy one, and I was nearly hit by a truck when it wobbled into the center lane. The truck missed me by inches.

It got complicated. To get to the flat and beautiful roads around here, I’d need to put the bike on the rack (with Maria’s help) and drive a few miles to a safe road. Maria would have to come to both ways.

That would disrupt her workdays and make every trip a big deal. And suddenly, I found I couldn’t get the bike going. My leg seemed too weak.

Biking requires some accessories – a helmet, special sneakers, bands for my pants, a mirror; I needed new pedals and a bigger seat, a light, a bell. It took a while to get ready.

By now,  I was too frightened to even sit on the bike for long, and I decided something was wrong with my mind and body. This was a deepening problem.

I needed help.

I went back into therapy to confront a problem that was growing and not making me healthier or happier.

My therapist was the same woman who got me through my breakdown more than a decade ago. She knew me well, let me get away with nothing, and I trusted her completely.

She was available, a lucky break.

We dispensed with the father’s problems quickly. It was about me, not him.

I had a scheduled heart procedure soon after that. I went into cardiac rehab, a highly recommended post-operative program for heart patients that involves exercise several times a week.

To my surprise, I took to the program and was soon doing 30 to 40 minutes on the recumbent bikes and also on the treadmill.

I liked the feel of the gym, the sense of accomplishment, the progress I was making.  The nurses were great, not like my nasty old gym teacher.

In therapy, I was urged to do my exercise, whatever it was, about me and not about my father. This was good for me; I wasn’t doing it for him or anyone else except maybe Maria, who I would love to spend more time with on this earth.

I did so well in re-hab they kicked me out of the program early. I had never been praised for my exercising skills; I liked it.

To the shock of everyone around me, I joined a gym near my town. I love the gym right away. It’s near the house; I didn’t need to dress up.

I wasn’t riding in traffic, and I did well with the equipment, which was easy to use. The muscled kids in the back of the gym looked right through me, I was invisible there.

Because of the pandemic, the gym was quiet and quite naturally socially distanced, disinfectant sprayed, and cleaned several times a day. Everyone was masked, and nobody came near me.

Since last October, I’ve been going to the gym four or five, someetimes six times a week. There is a trainer who urges me on but does it skillfully and gently.

My therapist and I agreed that I should put the e-bike aside until the Spring.

Winter made it nearly impossible anyway. We talked about the fear of exercise and moved onto other things I realized I needed to work on and talk about.

So here it was, decision time.

When Spring came a few weeks ago, I found I was not afraid of exercising anymore. Not only did I like it, it feels good, something I never knew.

The irony was that I bought the bike to avoid ever going to a gym, and now, I decided to give up the bike because I like going to a gym.

It works for me, at least for now. I went to the gym all winter, in all kinds of weather.  I listen to music and audiobooks; I have privacy and peace of mind.

I set my own pace and push myself when I am ready. Nobody has to shout at me.

I can stay as long as I want or as little as I feel like – it varies. And I don’t have to worry about speeding trucks.

A month ago, I called up Caleb at the bike store and told him I wanted to sell the bike back to the store; I know e-bike sales are red hot.

Caleb is both decent and honest, and he urged me to go on eBay or Facebook Marketplace; e-bikes like mine were selling for $1,000 over the price of mine because Covid-10 had messed up the supply lines.

I told him I trusted him and would rather deal with him.  I didn’t want to put the bike online.

He tried several times to get me to sell it elsewhere and get more money, but when I insisted, he said he would gladly buy back the bike and the rack and some of the add-ons and get back to me. I liked him and felt instantly comfortable with him.

Today, Maria and I – we needed a third person – wrestled the bike back onto the bike rack, and I drove to Saratoga Springs to see Caleb. He paid me $2,795 for the bike and the extra things I bought, which was both honest and very decent.

I told him I thought the bike was just too much for me; perhaps I’m just too old to ride it well, and he said nicely he didn’t believe that. He wondered if I just froze when I was on it.

I said I was reluctant to give up on the idea of biking once in a while. It is a lovely feeling, and it would also be good for me.

He had an idea, he said.

He said if I wished, I could think about a regular bike, a non-electric bike to ride on those nice country roads in good weather. He showed me one for $400, which was light enough – new kinds of aluminum – for me to pick up with one hand.

I got on it and had no trouble getting started.

I had a good feeling about it. It was familiar to me; it required nothing but my legs, which had been biking now for months at the gym.

Caleb said he wasn’t trying to sell me something; he just believed in biking. He wanted me to know that e-bikes are not for everyone, but there is a bike for everyone, especially one who is exercising as much as I am.

Caleb is skinny as a beanpole, like Maria; I wonder if biking isn’t just good for him. But we’ll see. I’m hopeful but a little wary.

A simpler bike, I thought. Maybe I was going in the wrong direction. I wondered if this simpler, lighter, and more familiar bike would work for me, the same way the gym had.

There are nice days like today when I would love to get on a bike and ride down one of those beautiful and traffic-free country roads near the farmhouse.

I thought how nice it to exercise outside once in a while; I could ride it right up the road to visit my friend Mosie and his family and ride by these beautiful hills.

Was I impulsive and delusional again? I don’t really know.

I was more confident just looking at the smaller, simpler bike.

I thought of Maria, who bought a $2,000 computerized sewing machine some years ago and didn’t like it. It was confusing; there were too many parts to go wrong.

Last week Maria bought a $300 sewing machine with no computerized frills and loved it. It worked beautifully from the moment she turned it on.

I thought of my fancy Hewlett-Packard computer that hooked up to wi-fi and didn’t work as often as it did work and then didn’t work at all.

Unlike Apple, it is almost impossible to get tech support from HP, and the printer made me crazy. It did everything but print a page.

I gave it to a friend and bought a Brothers Printer for $175, which plugs right into the computer, requires no software or other kind of download, and was working perfectly 15 seconds after I unpacked it.

There are a lot of lessons from my e-bike experience.

Just because something is hot doesn’t mean it works for me. The most expensive is not always the best.

More and more, I think it can be the worst choice for me. When corporations want to make more money, they put a lot of garbage onto things that nobody needs to justify the cost.

They can make more money when it breaks down.

I often fall for it.

The e-bike drama reminded me that fear is best confronted, not submitted to. You can shed it at any age.

Much of my life is about shedding fear. The thing about getting help is that it helps.

My father was a professional athlete for much of his life, and I was a major disappointment to him, but his shadow no longer hangs over the taking care of my body.

This is my choice, not his.

I’m learning that simpler is often better, and next week I’m going back to see Caleb, and with his help and guidance will decide if this simpler, cheaper bike is the right approach for me or just another fantasy. We have an appointment mid-week.

I’m also learning to do some homework, do some research, just like I do when I write. Things are rarely just what they seem to be.

I  learned once more not to quit on things because they are difficult. If it doesn’t work, it won’t be because I didn’t try. More later.