About ten years ago, my brother was nice enough to get me a really cool single-speed Surly bike for my birthday.
I rode it everywhere, which could be pretty intense living in hilly Honolulu, but it helped me get really strong. And it also made me look hipper than I actually was. đ
Single-speed bikes typically have what is known as a âfly-wheelâ, which most of you will recognize as the mechanism that allows you to crank the pedals backward without effect and forwards to pedal and propel yourself, well, forward.
However:
This particular bike allowed you to flip the wheel around to use an alternate single sprocket known as a fixed gear or âfixieâ.
Now, the thing with a fixie is that you can pedal forward or backward, and the bike will either move forward or backward. There is also only one gear and it is attached directly to the rear wheel, making it considerably harder to ride, and also more dangerous. Unlike a regular bike, the crank keeps turning because there is no flywheel to pause the gear as it moves. So that means the pedals are always moving.
So I decided to give the fixie a try one day.
After an hour or so, Iâm riding around feeling pretty good about my newfound skill, so Iâm like: âhey, why donât I ride down this big hill?â
As I picked up speed, I realized that the crank was rapidly becoming impossible to stopâ my feet were flying along with the pedals, completely out of control. Before I could think to react, both of my ankles more or less got sucked into the ground, dragging the tops of my toes along the pavement while the pedals turned the backs of my calves into ground beef.
Fortunately, after a couple of seconds of panicked suffering, I had the sense to extend both of my legs out to the sides. Typically in this position, youâd be going âweeeeeeeeee!â, but in this case I was just grimacing in pain as I death gripped the brakes, eventually coming to a halt.
It sucked, and it hurt really, really bad. So I sat down, took a breather, and then walked a couple of miles home to recover.
________
Flash forward to the year 2020, and all of us are on this massive, nightmarishly steep hill that we call the Coronavirus pandemic. And each of us has our own, shiny new fixed-gear bike that we call anxiety, anger, neuroticism, fear– everyone has a different one, and they are all equally destructive and dangerous.
Hereâs the thing: we can all succumb to the black hole of anxiety and fear that is going to keep moving faster and faster, beating the shit out of ourselves…
OR
…we can go âweeeeeeeeeeeee!â and just admit that there is not a damn thing we can do to control this thing.
We have to let go of the notion of control, and pump the brakes on this careening sense of anxiety and simply ride it out, because itâs gonna be a wild ride, but it will inevitably come to an end, either sooner or later.
And weâll all stand there afterward and say, âwow, that sucked,â then weâll reflect and recover and weâll move on.