My life is a series of bold and unpredictable moves, some – marrying Maria, buying my farm – turned out to be masterstrokes, most turned out to be disasters.

The impulsive decision is complex; it can change a life or even end one. I am the King of impulsive decisions.

Last year, late in the Summer, I got the itch to buy one of those fabulous E-bikes everybody was talking about. I had just had another heart catheterization (actually two), and the importance and urgency of cardio exercise were on my mind.

Money versus my life. It seemed a simple decision. It was past time for me to take care of my body.

My decision to buy an e-bike turned out to be one of those expensive and unfortunate decisions.  I’ve made so many mistakes in my life that I can’t bear to count them and wouldn’t dare to try.

The e-bike was one of those bold decisions that weren’t really about what it seemed to be about, but much more. Compulsive decisions are like that; there’s usually something deeper behind them, something deeper than exercise or the moment.

I was determined to break through some severe anxiety surrounding exercise, part of a bitter and long struggle with my star basketball father and some vicious gym teachers.

My heart issues gave me the reason to move at last.

For most of my life, I’ve avoided exercise. That changed after a heart procedure last Fall. I started going to a gym almost every other day and still do.

Unable to leave well enough alone, I decided I need to do more, to become the well-rounded athlete my father so badly wanted me to be.

Since my cardiac rehab, I have been surprised to find I actually like going to the gym and working out. Exercise in the right head actually feels good.

I thought I was ready for an e- bike and its powerful batteries. People seemed to love them. Bike stores were selling out; the media was full of stories raving about them.

They were perfect for the pandemic.  People stuck at home could get on them and punch a prompt and go almost anywhere, the batteries were said to be so powerful some people just flew over the top when the bike braked too quickly.

People who had never ridden bikes sailed up hilly roads and hills without a sweat.

I’d ridden bikes before and assumed I could ride this one. It turns out I was wrong; hubris always catches up with us, whether you’re a President or a writer living on a farm.

I forgot, of course, that getting on a bike when you’re 73 with sore knees, diabetes, and a wounded heart wasn’t the same as hopping on a bike 30 or 40 years ago, which was the last time I had done it.

My balance was off, my knees were sore, my right leg was weaker than my left, and my calves rebelled.

The first time I got on the bike, my foot slipped right off the pedal a half dozen times. The bike was so heavy I struggled to launch it strongly enough to move forward on foot power.

My right foot was confused about where to put itself. On the third trip, the bike flipped over and fell on me. My blood thinners made me look as if I had been in a fight with Hannibal Lecter.

My knee was covered in blood, I was hobbling for weeks.

I understood from the beginning that some of this was psychological, some physical. I really couldn’t tell which was which. So I got scared instead.

I’d often been ridiculed by peers, teachers, and family members for my lack of physical prowess and bookishness.  My struggles with the bike brought those memories flooding back. Shouldn’t riding a bike be simple?

Why was it so hard for me?

After I fell, I lay pinned under the bike until some fancy and skinny bikers in spandex pants and Martian helmets, customer-made and sneakers,  and $500 wrap-around sunglasses,  rushed over to help the older man in the driveway get up.

They looked at me in a piteous way. Of course, they did, I was pathetic, lying there trapped under my new superbike.

I was mortified and discouraged. I was back in Middle School all over again. I wanted to punch them all and drag them down the road.

I tried once more, but I couldn’t work all these computer speeds, and my foot kept slipping off the pedal; the bike lurched all over the road as I pushed button after button in a failed effort to control the bike while it was moving.

No one else seemed to have much trouble with those buttons, but even the thought of the bike had me in a near panic by now.

On my final ride attempt, the bike swerved directly into heavy traffic on the state highway that goes in front of the farmhouse.

The car must have seen me in its rearview mirror because it swerved a second or two before it would surely have struck me. The car was moving quickly; a big truck was right behind it. I don’t think I would have survived that collision.

Maria and the shrink said enough was enough. Stop.

Okay, that was enough. I just wasn’t able to get comfortable with the bike, it was as simple as that.

To me, it wasn’t a bike; it was a tank with a computer dashboard, an armored bike. Too big for me, too much for me.  I didn’t want to quit.

I decided to make one last attempt.

I went back to the bike store and took a lesson. It didn’t help. All the skinny bikers in the shop hopped onto the bike and showed me how to do it.

They looked great on my bike. When I got on, I almost fell off again, and I put the bike in the car and drove home, I was done.

I shared these problems on the blog, of course, always a double-edged sword.

I knew I was in trouble when people started e-mailing suggesting I try three-wheelers, recommend for children and old people who can’t ride by themselves.

The old stuff came bubbling up in me.

(Caleb) My New Bike

The panic mushroomed and f frightened me; I had been there before after my marriage collapsed, and I had broken down almost completely.

I do not doubt that Maria saved my life. I didn’t want to go back there, not over a bike.

It took me years to recover from that crack-up, and in some ways, you can be better, but in some ways, you can’t.

Once you’re crazy, you will always be crazy, just in varying degrees.  I know I will never fully heal from it, and in a way, that is the key.

I know I will never fully recover. That realization is a turning point.

In some ways, that is the key to healing.

You accept what you can’t change and fix what you can. The e-bike was teaching me things. One was to let go of the past and build my own present. It was my bike, not my father’s.

With mental illness, you get the chance to recover some every single day. But most of the time, you are just fighting it to a draw. The shrinks all say you can live with it and control it, but it never completely goes away.

So my bold idea was degenerating into a full-blown mental health crisis. Fear, after all, is a space to cross, it is not always something real.

The big e-bike sat in the barn, then the living room like a ghost wagging its finger at me, almost always in my father’s voice. Don’t be a sissy. Just do it. Don’t be weak, be strong.  A two-year-old could do it. So could you. So do it.

I am a prideful man and a stubborn man. I hate to quit. This bike was clobbering me.

The winter saved me a place to hide; it got cold and icy early. I had a good excuse to stay off the bike.

I covered it with a sheet, blocked it off in an old cow stall in the barn, and just forgot about it. I had foot surgery soon after that, another reason to stay off my e-bike.

I called the shrink who guided me through my breakdown and told her what was going on. Forget the bike, for now, she said, forget it. So I did.

We went over it all in therapy, but we both ended up deciding that biking wasn’t for me, not now, not in that way. We had a lot of work to do first, and maybe I had better things to do.

We went to work on the underlying issues; we both knew the drill. I started thinking about returning the bike.

A couple of months ago, I brought the e-bike back to the bicycle store, and they gave me back almost the full amount. The person who helped me in the store was named Caleb, and he was an unusual salesperson, empathetic and intuitive.

He really cared about the struggles this aging customer, a stranger, was having biking at age 73. It wasn’t the bike for you, he said, but that doesn’t mean you can’t bike. He said there was no reason I couldn’t ride on a bike when I was doing 40 minutes on a treadmill without a sweat.

The problem with Caleb is that he is young, skinny, and handsome. We don’t look anything like one another.

Caleb shocked me by saying he had the feeling I wanted to ride a bike and hadn’t given up on that. I never gave a clue that I wanted to try again. It was like he was reading my mind. He was right; he knew what I thought before I did.

I did want to ride a bike if there was any way I could.

I live in the country, there are long, wide, flat, and sparsely trafficked roads and lanes, perfect for my kind of biking. I could go miles on a flat surface and had eight gears when I needed them. The scenery was beautiful. I always wanted to bike on these roads, just a mile or two from the farmhouse.

On cold or rainy days I could go to the gym.

On some level, I knew Caleb was right; I could ride a bike.

Somehow the idea had gotten all clogged up between my dad, my heart, my anxiety, my dyslexia,  my odd right leg, and the battering I had taken from bullies in gym class.

So I bought another one from Caleb. Just a plain old bike.

No bells or whistles. Eight gears, a bell, and a flashing light on the back. This bike cost a fourth of the e-bike, was low to the ground, lean, and simple. No fancy bells and whistles, but still pricy enough.

I bought it a month ago. I finally got on it today.  Rainy weather kept me off it, I told myself. I knew better.

I woke up this morning and said, okay, you’ve made much too much of a big deal out of this. The bike was cheaper than the e-bike, but still cost hundreds of dollars. I’d wasted enough money.

Time to grow up or shut up.

I know I can ride this bike; I just need to take the bull by the horns and do it. I’m sick of this drama, heading for the first anniversary.

How about being the person you want to be and not the person you used to be? I asked myself. I was giving myself a pep talk. My shrink said I could do it, Caleb said I could do it, Maria said I could do it. And honestly, there was no one else to ask. Zinnia didn’t care.

Just after lunch, we took the front wheel off, put the bike in the back of my Rav 4 Hybrid, and drove it to a horse riding club that is not used until summer.

The club sat just off one of those beautiful country roads, which ran about a sweet, flat mile to the east. There was no one to watch me other than Maria, who sat down by a maple tree and said nothing. She sketched.

We pulled in, took the bike out of the car, but the wheel back on, tested the brakes.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and visualized me getting on that bike and moving forward. This wasn’t me as a kid; it wasn’t me 40 years ago; it wasn’t me six months ago.

Just do it.

I have a new pair of sneakers, and I noticed Caleb had put on special pedals with short rubber spikes that caught on the ridges of sneakers.

To my surprise, my troublesome right foot clung to the pedal as if it was a magnet clipping onto a metallic field.

Maria was not looking, deliberately, I think.

The bike just moved forward, precisely as it was supposed to do, exactly as I wanted it to. No slipping, wobbling, tipping over. We just moved onto that country road, the bike and I set off, the wind at my back, my shirtsleeves puffing up in a gentle wind.

We passed pastures, trailers,  and I just kept moving, testing the gears to speed me up or slow me down. It was warm; I was sweating, I could feel my heart beating.

I didn’t give my open heart surgery a thought; my heart operations all made me better, not worse. It’s my job to keep the heart beating, and now, I had taken a big step in that direction.

Not only that, I had conquered a big fear in a big way. I shouted congratulations to myself, yelling “yes!” to the surprise of a little girl, who looked surprised as she sat on a lawn to play, and then waved. I waved back.

I had a bit of trouble turning the bike around in a small space, but once again, I had no trouble getting my feet on the pedals and moving.

This was exactly the kind of country road I was dreaming about—beautiful, framed by green hills, saluted by cows. We saw one car, and he gave me a wide birth.

The bike road took about a half-hour, Maria said. How good of her to come and wait for me. I didn’t want her to look at me falling, but I hoped she saw me succeeding.

She was still sketching. I came down the path to her shouting. My throat was parched; I had a good sweat, my heart didn’t skip a beat.

So I did it. The bike crisis ended today. Tomorrow I’ll get on the bike and pedal somewhere. Sunday in the late morning, I’ll go to my gym and get on the treadmill or the bike.

I’m already wondering how I made such a big deal out of such a small thing, but I’m also proud of myself.

I didn’t complain, I didn’t whine. I didn’t quit. I knew if I could just come to trust myself I would figure out a way to get on that bike and ride, no matter my age, my leg, my heart, my father’s ghost.

I didn’t hide from the problem, I got help – I think of Maria, Caleb, and my therapist – and it helped. It’s true about being crazy. You get the chance to recover every day, something many sick people don’t get.

And once more I learned simpler is sometimes better.

There are several morals to this story, but I don’t need to repeat them. They speak for themselves. Thanks for listening.