I got a bike, and it’s trying to kill me. But this nice guy named Jesus fixed it.

Walking: kills shoes, naps and travel plans. And people, when they blow away.

One of the most common European stereotypes of Americans is that they’re addicted to their cars. I think this is completely ridiculous…ly true. Here in Spain you would never think of driving to the grocery a mile away. Or even 5 miles away. You could definitely walk that. You probably spend over an hour a day walking here, minimum. As awesome as this is, I have a few problems with it:

• It did this to my shoes:

I call this the “classy hobo” look.

A third of my poor, overworked sole just fell off halfway through a crosswalk. I carried it around in my pocket the rest of the day because I didn’t know what else to do with it. Aaand, when this shoe died I was an hour and a half away from home, so I got to walk around like that for the rest of the day. Good theft protection, really. Definitely not worth mugging anybody with hobo shoes, even if they are dressy ones.

• I don’t want to blow away.

Walking makes you skinny. No necesicto enflaquecerme. (I don’t need to skinny myself.) I’m already skinny; earlier this year I was for real pretty much blown over by a gust of wind. If I get any skinnier I’ll have to tie a spool of string to my ankle and hire someone to reel me back down to earth every time it’s a little too gusty.

This is not an irrational fear. There’s photo evidence; it happened to this guy. I know it’s true because I found it on the internet.

Maybe it balances out, since I do consume small mountains of food for lunch and supper (and feel like a small mountain myself after every meal). But, on the other hand, they hardly eat anything for breakfast here and haven’t yet invented snacking. Either way, I’ve seriously considered carrying around a paperweight, just to be safe.

• I do want to ZZZ.

The average CC-CS student probably spends about 1+ hours walking around here per day, minimum. But I probably spend 2+ hours. Not because I walk any further, but because I’m occasionally what some people would call a really slow walker. I prefer to call myself a “walking connoisseur.” Walking is like tasting a fine rootbeer; you have to savor the walk.

The problem with savoring the walk is that I’m an even connoisseurier connoisseur of siestas, and the walk-savoring is cutting short the ZZZ time.

• Night keeps happening.

When you walk as slow as I do, your circle of explorable area is relatively small. Every time I want to explore somewhere relatively far across town, this happens: “I’m finally here! Wow, this is a really pretty—hang on. I can’t see anything. Oh. It’s dark again, isn’t it.” This might have more to do with the fact that exploring usually happens after supper, and supper usually happens at 9:30-10:30 pm. …Nah, blame it on the walking.

Solution to all life’s problems: the bicycle.

To combat these problems and improve the quality of my life in general, I rented a bike for 30 euros for the rest of my stay in Spain. This has been a great but not-entirely-flawless plan. First, it’s a little small. This is probably because I rented it from the kid I’m tutoring. Who’s 13. I’m 21. And quite a few feet taller than he is.

Meet my bike. Note the super-comfortable angle of the seat.

Second, it’s entirely possible that my bike is a) sentient and b) trying to kill me. (We’ve recently come to tentative terms of peace: it will behave or I will have Jesus attack it with a wrench again.)

My bike has exhibited two varieties of assassination attempts.

• The dive bomb.

I usually adjust the seat about as high as it can go to compensate for the fact that I’m riding a 13 year old’s bike. This makes it all the more surprising when the seat suddenly plummets back to earth, usually with a deafening clang when I’m halfway through a green light. This encourages me to  declare something stupefyingly intelligent like “mwurf-EEP!” or “aHAAawazach!” and wobble a lot.

• The bucking bronco.

For this trick, the seat holds level until you let your guard down. Then it  suddenly dumps you straight down onto the very-unpadded metal crossbar. This offers a wonderful opportunity for your face to get better acquainted with both your knees and the handlebars. I always counter this with a unique facial expression and a calm “AAAAAAHHHHRGLE!”

But you learn to expect that after a while. At which point the seat will dump you backwards the other way, so you’re just about sitting on top of the back wheel. This creates a very ironic emergency break/emergency generator. Overall, it’s like your legs are riding a bike and your rear end’s riding an evil seesaw of doom.

The horse in front is me riding my bike. The horse in back is normal people riding their normal bikes. On the up side, I guess I live a much more exciting life.

This personal little civil war between my bike and me gives the impression to any onlookers that I recently graduated from training wheels, and that I probably should’ve been held back a year. My trail is usually wobbly enough to warrant any accusations of spending all day locked inside a dryer. And when I dismount I kind of look like I’ve spent all day on a horse. Specifically a bucking-bronco type of horse. But it’s ok, because then I get to walk like a cowboy, and cowboys are still an acceptable level of cool in modern society.

Jesus fixed my bike

But it’s all better now. I fixed the dive bomb problem within a day or three by hand-tightening a screw. The seesaw-of-doom problem, however, required a wrench. Oddly, wrenches don’t grow on trees in Spain. (Oranges do. They’re all over the place. But they’re green. I’ve heard they taste completely nasty when they’re still green, and I keep meaning to try one but keep forgetting.) Antonia’s pliers didn’t work, and I wasn’t about to try the egg beater. When I went to the bike shop and asked if they had any wrenches I could borrow they assured me they didn’t and sent me away with two pamphlets and directions to their rather irrelevant guided bike tours. Thanks, bike shop.

My host mom told me Jesus would have a wrench, so we called him up and he came and fixed my bike. This was Jesus’ second coming since I’ve been here, the first being about a month ago. Jesus is my host mom’s son. Not because my host mom is Mary, but because this is Spain and Jesus is a normal name for people here. I guess I should technically be writing it Jesús (Hey-Seuss), but finding the accent button is cumbersome on this American keyboard.

So, thanks to Jesús, I now I have a fully functional bike, and it is no longer trying to kill me. It really is exciting! The whole town just got a whole lot smaller. I hope to show you some fotos from future exploration sessions soon. In the meantime, I still have to watch out for:

• People in the bike lane (The nerve of them! I would never do that! And I definitely didn’t blog about doing that just a month ago…)
• Motorcycles in the bike lane
• Bikes in the bike lane
• Trees (They put these in the strangest places)
• Poles (These put these wherever they can’t put the trees, I think)
• Walls
• Cars
• Moms with strollers
• Old people
• Small buildings

The only thing I haven’t had any trouble avoiding is the river. Knock on wood. Biking in Spain. It’s good stuff.