THE EXERCISE BIKE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (02-03-22)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     I've been working from home for almost two years now, and my body misses the daily exercise of getting up way too late and running up and down the stairs at the train station, forgetting that I forgot to buy my ticket and running up and down the stairs again and then dodging Manhattan traffic instead of waiting for a green light. In midtown, instead of that flashing "DON'T WALK" sign that reminds you to run instead, there is a flashing numerical countdown, so if I see that I have 8 seconds left I take off in a dead sprint from half a block away in order to make it to the other side just before someone runs me over.

     To replace all that physical activity we bought one of those "smart" exercise bikes that you can use with online classes in real time. There wasn't a moment to lose, I wanted to get right into the saddle. I was too impatient to create a user profile and sign up for a session, I just wanted to put it into manual override and jump on for a quick ride. So I punched a few buttons, which got me pretty quickly into a loop of prompts that I couldn't find my way out of. I dug deeper into a couple some more menus, and before I knew it (and for quite some time after I knew it), I had changed the bike's primary language to Russian (I kid you not). I don't know if you're familiar with the Russian language, but it looks more like it's made up of a bunch of corporate logos and doodles rather than actual letters. I started panic-typing some stuff into several boxes, without knowing what I was saying, trying to get back to a language that might understand me better. I even went onto the internet to find out what the words "United States" and "English" might look like in Russian. But it only got worse, and instead I created an account that the Kremlin may be watching very closely.

     The next day I found a screen with an icon of a little picture of Earth, so I knew I was in the right place, and I managed to return to English. I booted up a little guided tour and started my ride. My wife assured me that the instructors cannot see or hear you, nor yell at you for doing something stupid. I can just imagine how it would go if they could:

     "Melén," my instructor says, "why don't you quit pedaling your Communist propaganda and get down to business here." I say, "That's fine with me, I think I might have accidentally initiated a military incident with Ukraine."  "War is no laughing matter, Melén." I counter, "Well then I won't bother with the joke I was going to make about a false-flag operation using Russian dressing. It needs work anyway." He says, "Melén, are you wearing bedroom slippers?" "Nyet, I mean NO, these are 'semi-wakeful athletic apparel,'" I lie. "Get yourself some bicycle shoes if you're going to be serious about your workout." I just say okay, but I picture bicycle shoes as having two little wheels on them, and maybe a bell.

     My mind was drifting a little remembering an actual ride I had in Amsterdam on vacation when I was trying to get to the concert hall. I knew it was on something-or-other-Strad, and it was by a canal, and it was somewhere north of where I was, so I was pretty confident I could find it. What I didn't realize was "Strad" means "street," so EVERYTHING is something-or-other-Strad, and also EVERYTHING is by a canal, and "North" covered a lot of territory, including much of Greenland. I would have thrown the bicycle into the canal at that point, but by then I couldn't even find a canal....

     "MELEN, do you have your toe clips on?" My instructor yells. No- I told him how I almost killed myself this morning when the phone rang. He says, "You might be one of those rare specimens who should be wearing a helmet even though your bicycle doesn't actually leave your living room." Our ride was taking us through Tombstone, Arizona, and I learned a lot about the place a I pedaled along. For instance, did you know that the gunfight between the Earps and the Clantons actually took place in a vacant lot? History thought it would sound better if they moved it to the OK Corral, a block or two away. I'm surprised history didn't find a corral that was better than just "OK," as long as they were changing the locale anyway.

     In my blurred reality, by mistake I ride right onto the street where they're re-enacting the famous gun battle between Wyatt and Virgil Earp, Doc Holliday, and the Clanton boys and McLaury brothers, and everybody stops shooting and there's an eerie silence with only the echoing of the gunfire and they're looking at me and not in a very nice way. I apologize and tell them to go ahead and fire at will, and for some reason I have a tough time convincing them that I'm not Will.