According to psychiatrists, fear of falling is one of the most common phobias, especially among the elderly. I’m not elderly, but for a long time just after I began my adult cycling career, I was as terrified of falling from my bike as many grandmothers are of stepping out of the tub. And with good reason. I have a history of unplanned dismounts from bicycles—as a five-year-old, I fell over often enough to earn the nickname Cathy Crash and Burn. Things haven’t changed much in thirty-one years, and so I developed a fairly reasonable fear. I’ve never endo’ed or collided with a car or an animal; my accidents are never that dramatic or awe-inspiring. And that’s because I don’t actually crash. I just tip over. Often.
I began bicycling back in the early 70’s, when children frequently disappeared into their neighborhoods until dusk, helmet-less and sporting only orange flags on long white fiberglass sticks for safety equipment. My best friend Kevin learned to navigate mud puddles, gravel parking lots, and the Gudbransons’ vicious wiener dog, Snapper, and once I reluctantly disposed of the training wheels, I wobbled along behind him. When it was time to dismount, I tried to imitate his casual hop-off-and-toss, but more often than not, my feet became tangled in the frame or the chain or the saddle. Even with flat pedals, I couldn’t dismount with grace. By the time I graduated to toe-clips in my late twenties and then clip-less pedals in my early thirties, I was a one-person circus event.
There’s this to be said about falling: when I fall, I’m in the majority, as far as accidents go. Falls are among the leading causes of accidental death in the United States, killing as many as 15,400 people annually. Of course, over 60% of those folks are over 65 years old, so my falls might be more indicative of a similarity to the elderly than any connection with the general public. These statistics don’t comfort me when I fail to extricate my feet from my pedals quickly enough to avoid falling over in a parking lot at the start of my first 25-mile ride with a group of strangers. The numbers offer me no solace as I lay there in shame, a sad, crumpled, thirty-five-year-old version of my five-year-old self. And the stats don’t help when, in attempting to shift on a 45-degree hill, I lose my momentum, and tumble, prompting a passing motorist to pull over and offer assistance through his muffled laughter.
This happened again and again when we moved into town and I tried to navigate the streets on two wheels. I fell everywhere: at a stoplight; coasting down the barely detectable slope of my front yard; after mounting for the ride home with two panniers full of groceries; in the driveway of the neighborhood fire station while a half-dozen shirtless, bronzed, twenty-something firemen playing basketball watched. I tightened my helmet. I bought leather gloves. I started wearing long pants. But none of that equipment stopped me from falling, and so I succumbed to my fear of humiliation and put the bike away, or I rode alone, and only at night, when I could bounce off the curbs and sidewalks unnoticed. I felt less bruised and battered; my ego healed, but my heart didn’t. I was missing out—letting my fear steer me. And then something happened that got me back on my wheels for good.
On a rare afternoon ride through downtown one December day, I stopped at an intersection and witnessed a giant pick-up truck fail to yield the right-of-way and strike a woman, who staggered to the sidewalk, dazed. I tossed my bike to the ground and ran to call 911. While other witnesses parked their cars or stared as they drove by, I sat with the pedestrian and held her hand while we waited for the paramedics to appear. She told me her name was Margaret, she was 62 years old, and her leg hurt, she told me. Glancing down, I spotted blood seeping from her calf through her slacks. I remembered what I’d learned in a dozen first-aid classes: keep the victim warm, keep her talking, stay calm. I placed my fleece over Margaret’s upper body and asked her questions about her family, her home, her dog. When the paramedics arrived, I hopped on my commuter bike, Star, and rode away.
I realized that afternoon that the true hazards of the road are far scarier than tipping at 2 miles an hour, and as I’ve learned—vicariously, thank God—cyclists have much more to fear than just tipping over. Cyclists (and pedestrians, for that matter) are exposed to danger in ways that motorists aren’t: our faces are unprotected by UV-filtering glass, we are smaller and more easily crumpled, we tend to invoke the wrath of hurried drivers who see us as obstacles, and we have a limited range of vision. Our lights don’t shine as brightly, our horns and curse words are hard to hear in traffic, and we typically have to dodge hazards like garbage and small animals that drivers can simply crush.
Regardless, while cyclists are unquestionably more vulnerable than other road users, we are also almost always more aware of what’s going on around us and more keenly attuned to our place in space. We can’t be maneuvering somewhere approximately between the lines, rolling casually back and forth between the median and the gutter. We don’t have a twelve-foot margin of error and two tons of steel to protect us. Unless we’re diligent about the three-foot biking lane or the narrow strip of rubble on the right, a tiny twitch can make us tonight’s Traffic Tragedy on the King 5 news.
And so cyclists, because we have less physical protection than drivers, develop a mental edge. Luckily, we have fewer distractions than drivers; no cup holders or stereo systems or radar detectors or cell phones. Definitely no DVD players. This simplicity can make cyclists safer on the road than other drivers; we are more aware of our surroundings, readier to respond to the actions of others on the road. Theoretically, less likely to bump into something we shouldn’t.
This increased awareness means that cyclists see a lot of things that they would otherwise miss, were they encased in steel and glass: ants devouring a Quarter Pounder that’s been tossed from a car window, for example, or maggots consuming a squished opossum. We crunch through leaves in the fall and splash through puddles in the spring, and fight the wind and savor the sun. We experience a connectedness with the world and feel more alive than would if we were belted in motorized lounges listening to Kenny G and sniffing our little dangling new-car-scent air fresheners. We see accidents, and fly from our saddles to respond. We are more danger-aware than drivers, although not danger-proof.
On a bike, the most hazardous distraction I personally face is my own brain. Without a radio or a cell phone to fiddle around with, I’m stuck inside my helmet with just my own little fantasies and the imaginary soundtrack that accompanies them. As Queen’s “Bicycle Races” spins through my head, I wheel down Cornwall, imagining that I am the new female Lance Armstrong and, emerging from nowhere, I, a thirty-six-year-old librarian from a tiny corner of the country, stun the international bicycling community. I hear the velodrome announcers in my head, frantically shrieking about my sudden, mysterious appearance. They’re shaking their heads. They don’t know what to think. No one, absolutely no one, becomes a professional athletic phenom beyond the age of 25, unless they’re like, a seventy-five-year-old competitive shuffle board player. The crowd is ecstatic. Belben is amazing. They’ve never seen anything like this.
And then I hit a curb and fall over.
The more I crash, the less I fear crashing. I haven’t become careless, exactly, just more conscious of the fact that despite the bruises and the scraped palms, bicycling is an important part of who I am. I won’t pretend that crashing has cured my fear completely, just that this fear has been replaced by some more reasonable fears, like losing all my teeth or falling off the Space Needle. I still can’t scale higher than 10 feet while rock climbing (and don’t even ask me to belay you); I won’t pet your pit bull, and I’ll never do any electrical work around the home. But I don’t fear falling as much. I’ve been dumped, had jobs threatened, totaled a car, racked up $8.97 in overdue fees at Blockbuster for a video I didn’t even watch. I don’t want any of these crappy things to happen again. But they might, and I am a stronger, more confident person for knowing what it feels like to confront these events head-on—to crash, again and again—and to learn from every experience.
I can’t pretend to know Lance Armstrong’s pain, but I do think I’m closer to comprehending his drive—once you’ve faced scary stuff and nearly lost everything, the scary stuff isn’t so scary. You might as well take the risks—if you win, your risk has been worthwhile; and if you don’t, you still gain knowledge, and experience, and strength. When you nearly lose it all (your partner, your job, your money, your life), you don’t necessarily cling more tightly to what you have. You’re actually freer to let it go, because you know what it feels like to crash and burn, and more importantly, you know what it feels like to heal.