Racing down the winding pavement, I pedal fast and hard, sweat beading across my forehead. The uneven road begins to slope downwards, my bicycle accelerating in response. With my newfound speed, the wind picks up, its harsh gusts biting my clammy skin and tossling my wild hair. I swerve to avoid the occasional pedestrian, the dingy wheels of my purple bike screeching in protest. Glancing over my shoulder, I am smug to find that my opponent is still a ways behind me. This late in the game, she has no chance of making up the space between us. My hamstrings burn and shake, and my sweaty hands grip the handlebars hard. And there it is, a mere twenty feet ahead: the Twin Coves Park exit, the finish line.
I’m well aware that I shouldn’t be riding this fast or reckless; I’m a novice biker and I’ve only just started biking during quarantine. It’s March of 2020, a few weeks into lockdown after the global outbreak of COVID-19. In an attempt to get the family out of the house, my mom has mandated a daily family walk each night after dinner. After weeks of the same routine, it’s like clockwork: Together, we eat as a family, clean up the kitchen, change into “working out” clothes, congregate at the front door with our water bottles in hand, and finally, parade out onto the street, heading off to the park next to our neighborhood. We’ve done this every night for weeks, and it was only just recently that my little sister and I threw bicycles into the mix.
Besides my obvious lack of experience riding bikes, I’m confident that my mom would not approve of the speed at which I’m soaring through Twin Coves Park either. But when your little sister declares war, a bicycle race, your mother’s cautionary scoldings can be disregarded.
My heart pounds hard in my chest, so hard that I can hear it’s rhythm echoing inside my skull and its pulse in my throat. With every push of my foot to the pedal, the spinning wheels beneath me pick up speed, doubling the distance I travel. The bragging rights that will come with beating my 9 year-old-sister propels me forward, drives me to cycle faster. The trees on either side of the road blur, becoming nothing more than fuzzy green masses in my vision. All I can see, all I care to focus on, is the park entrance up ahead. Just a few more yards, and victory is mine.
Abruptly, a flash of movement catches my eye. I glance to the left and there she is– my little sister with a determined grin plastered on her face, closing the gap between us with alarming speed. Panic surges through me as I strain to get ahead again, but she’s relentless, her little legs pumping incessantly as her bike inches closer to mine.
In seconds, she’s right beside me, swerving dangerously into my lane, our handlebars nearly touching. I’m veering to the side of the road, all the while I can taste the tension in the air, feel the unspoken challenge hanging between us. We’re both far too competitive, something we inherited from our mom, neither of us is willing to back down and let the other claim this victory so easily. My little sister edges even closer to me, a feat I didn’t even know possible.
“Move over!” I shout, but she just giggles, her eyes gleaming with thrill and mischief.
Suddenly, she swerves, her front wheel brushing mine. The contact sends a jolt through my bike, and before I can react, I’m veering off the pavement into the weed-infested grass. The world tilts, and my palms, slick with sweat, slip from the grips of my handlebars. My bike wobbles violently, puts up a good fight to maintain its balance, but ultimately, it topples over and takes me down with it.
It’s almost cartoonish how dramatically my body splats on the pavement. Of course, it’s just my luck that my bike lands safely in the plush grass while my body takes the hard blow of the asphalt. The road is unforgiving and hard, its grittiness enveloping my skin. I’m shaking, my heart fluttering with adrenaline. I can feel my face begin to flush from both the exertion of the ride and the humiliation seeping into me. It’s not until now that I become aware of just how many people are out walking tonight, just how many people saw me crash.
I sit there, slumped on the road, too embarrassed to cry. The adrenaline is wearing off as the rest of my family jog to catch up to the scene; they had been strolling a ways behind us. My right leg feels strangely numb, not in a painful way, but it’s certainly alarming. And that’s when I see it– the purple, oval-shaped mark on my upper thigh. The skin was scraped away in the fall, and what’s left behind is bruised and discolored. I’m no expert in dermatology, but I’m convinced I scraped some nerves off my leg. Maybe, biking isn’t for me.
And so, I’ve never ridden a bike in the four years since. I discovered that walking has its perks—like not having to worry about rogue little sisters with a penchant for sabotage. And whenever the topic of bikes comes up, I get to tell the story of how I bravely retired from cycling after a near-death experience, which sounds way more exciting than admitting I was taken out by a 9-year-old.
I’ve made peace with my decision. After all, who needs a bike when you’ve got a perfectly good pair of legs? And whenever I pass by my old purple bike gathering dust in the garage, I give it a respectful nod. We had some good times, but some things are better left in the past—especially when those things involve my sister and her relentless competitive streak.
