At the beginning of October, I wrote and delivered a sermon at my church (which has lay-led services on a regular basis). It's something I've wanted to do for a while, and in typical fashion I (1) underestimated the amount of work required to complete this; (2) procrastinated for far too long; and (3) in spite of the utter insanity this brought into my life for this short period of time, completely loved the experience.
I'm a person who makes grand plans for all sorts of things: my epitaph could easily read "Always bit off more than she could chew." But even when I choke on the bites, it's usually a darn tasty meal.
I've had a number of people ask for the text of the sermon, since the audio version wasn't as clear as it could have been (my fault, Ralph - I talk too fast). So, for anyone who missed it or is curious about all the fuss I made about this last month, here you go:
Lessons from a Tandem
At some point in our lives, we’ve probably all had someone we love suggest something completely insane and thought, “Hey, that’s a great idea! Let’s go skydiving! Let’s sell our house and go live on a tropical island! Let’s have another baby!” In my case, it was my husband David suggesting that we buy a tandem bicycle.
Although David is the bike rider in family, I was willing to entertain the idea. It was cold and snowy that night, and a tandem represented sunshine and warm weather and long carefree summer days meandering down scenic paths. The reality was a bit different….but I learned some valuable lessons on the back of that tandem that I think apply to our lives in general.
It turns out that properly fitting a tandem is a tricky business, but the great folks at the local bike shop found us a used tandem that was the right size and the right price, and we headed on over to try it out.
For anyone who’s not familiar with tandem riding, there are 2 distinct roles: captain, and stoker. The captain is the person in front. To quote cyclist Sheldon Brown’s web page:
The captain should be an experienced cyclist, with good bike-handling skills and good judgment. The captain has two major responsibilities: (1) To control the bike, including balancing it whether stopped or in motion, as well as steering, shifting, braking. (2) To keep the stoker happy! A tandem isn't a tandem without a stoker. The captain must earn the stoker's confidence, must stop when the stoker wants to stop, must slow down when the stoker wants to slow down. … When a couple fails to make it as a tandem team, it is almost always due to the stoker being scared as a result of an incompetent/inconsiderate captain.
Contrary to popular belief, the stoker – the person on the back of the bike – is not just lounging around back there. The stoker’s job is to pedal, especially in intersections with really short traffic lights, and to avoid doing anything that could make the captain crash the bike.
As we got onto the bike, it occurred to me that this was a really, extremely, profoundly bad idea. I thought about all the articles I’d read that called tandems “the divorce accelerator” (Presumably these are not the same articles David was reading….) I don’t like riding all that much. I’m afraid of falling. I don’t like going fast. And I didn’t like the idea of NOT steering the bike. I was going to have to turn over the responsibility for my physical safety and well-being, and I wasn’t even going to be able to see around David’s shoulders to set him straight before he led us into disaster.
It wasn’t particularly reassuring that he steered us into the side of the building before we’d gone 10 feet.
The salesman asked, very politely, how long it had been since we’d ridden a tandem. When we explained that we were complete novices, he gave us a very nice lecture on all the things that David had done wrong and I had done right. (You can imagine how satisfying this was for me.) When we got ourselves all straightened out and pointed in the right direction, I realized that I couldn’t bear to look. I literally had to close my eyes and pedal, waiting until we’d gotten going and the tricky steering parts were over, because I could not stand to watch. The urge to pull my feet off the pedals and jump off was almost overwhelming. Real bike enthusiasts will tell you how great it is to have shoes that clip into your pedals, so you can make the most of your effort; but I thought this sounded like tying myself to the railing of the Titanic somewhere in the North Atlantic. There was absolutely no way that I was going to remove the option of jumping off as soon as it got too hard or too scary or I couldn’t muster enough trust in this man I married.
But what did that really say about me? Because all of a sudden, this wasn’t about a bike ride anymore. It was a microcosm of every important relationship and scary new endeavor I’d ever undertaken. I’m not good with long-term things, and I have a pretty consistent history of running away from things that are hard or frightening. I’d always assumed that a certain amount of churn was normal as we go through different stages of our lives. But now I had a really disturbing thought: was it me? Did my need to retain the option of flinging myself off the back of the bike in the face of impending disaster say something larger about my ability to stick with it when the going got rough? It was not a comforting thought. And it wasn’t the sort of internal dialogue I wanted to be having while we wobbled our way down a side street, eyes clenched shut and gripping the handlebars for all I was worth.
So herein lies Lesson #1 From a Tandem: Sometimes you just have to clip in.
I ended up buying bike shoes with toe clips a few weeks later, and here’s what I found: Eventually I didn’t have to keep my eyes closed every time we started and stopped. The captain got better at his job, with practice. It wasn’t so scary after all. I could trust him to steer us well, even if it wasn’t exactly the way I would have done it. And it made pedaling up those long hills a lot easier.
As we worked our way up to longer rides, I learned something completely unexpected about my husband: He’s a chatterbox. This may surprise some of you – it sure surprised me!
We were toiling up a particularly steep hill on the Leelanau Peninsula, in the middle of a really hot day. When I’m working hard – say, giving birth, or pedaling up this hill – I don’t want to talk. I go into my “zone” and focus everything I’ve got on getting it done. But David – holy cow, that man can talk! And not even useful things like “we’re almost to the top” or “this is a 35-degree incline, according to one of the 3 bike computers I’m using right now.” Just – noise.
I was muttering nasty things about him under my breath and wondering if he had all this extra energy because *I* was doing all the work, when it occurred to me that this must be what it’s like to live with me. In our everyday lives, David goes along and does his thing and mostly keeps his thoughts to himself. I, on the other hand, think out loud. I have conversations with myself. I talk my way through my list of things to do.
It’s interesting that David and I switch personas when we get on the bike, and also very irritating. It occurred to me that we don’t often get a chance to see our own qualities so clearly expressed in another person. We’re not always as easy to live with as we assume. And I got to thinking that if I like this every day, this was Lesson #2 From A Tandem: Live by the Golden Rule, even if you’d rather smack the other person.
There’s an enormous amount of material written about the Golden Rule, and the closely related topic of empathy. Noted American psychologist Carl Rogers points out that “a high degree of empathy in a relationship is possibly the most potent factor in bringing about change and learning." He goes on to explain that empathy means having the ability to “lay aside the views and values you hold for yourself in order to enter another’s world without prejudice.” That’s a tall order for anyone, at any time. But if I wanted this marriage to change and grow and work for both of us, I needed to notice when David needs quiet and solitude, and let him have it. And I can’t do it with a sense of sacrifice or martyrdom – although I certainly hope it’ll be reciprocated the next time we’re headed up a hill.
On one particularly long and icky ride, I found myself getting really frustrated with David. Sometimes he forgets that the captain’s Number One Job is keeping his stoker happy. He was taking turns too tightly, braking too hard, going faster than I liked, and generally acting as if he was in charge. I kept telling him what I needed, and he’d get around to my request… eventually.
I spent the better part of the ride getting irritated and working up all kinds of reasons why I was totally justified. I was being clear. I was being specific. I was even being nice. But when we passed the last bathroom on the route after 3 requests for a pit stop, I completely lost it. I started pounding on David’s back and yelling. He looked completely surprised. “Why didn’t you ask me to stop?” he asked, quite reasonably. And hot and sweaty and frustrated as I was, I let him have it.
There’s a slide I use in a lot of my workshops on effective communication skills. It says simply, “I’m only responsible for what I say, not for what you understand.” It usually generates a few chuckles – but if we’re honest with ourselves, that’s how many of us actually feel.
I knew I was doing everything I was supposed to in order get my message across. And while I had, in fact, been a good communicator in lots of ways, I hadn’t been… loud. It was a breezy day and we were moving pretty fast and the wind can whistle through those vents in your helmet. David hadn’t heard a single word I’d said the entire ride. He thought we were having one of those lovely, harmonious, synchronized pedals that happens when a tandem team is in perfect accord. There’s Lesson #3: Make sure you’re not just spitting into the wind.
This was a valuable and very immediate reminder to me. It was essential to my comfort and happiness that David respond to me, and I didn’t check to make sure that message was getting through. I had a miserable ride and was really angry by the time we stopped. If I’d been holding up my end of things and not just assuming he could hear me, the day would have turned out much differently. Effective communicators make sure that their message is being understood. If you really, really need that bathroom stop along the way, it’s a good lesson to keep in mind.
In any long ride, there comes a point when it’s just not fun anymore. The initial thrill of being in the saddle has worn off; you’re out of water and snacks, there are no scenic spots coming up, the hills are steeper than you realized, and your butt hurts. I think there are probably a lot of spots in our lives that look like this.
This is especially hard for me. I love novelty, and finishing anything is hard for me, unless it’s a book. Settling into that mid-ride stretch of flat, boring farmland – literal or metaphorical – is torture. More than anything, I want there to be scenic turnoffs and occasional thrills.
But real bikes rides aren’t like that, and our actual lives aren’t either. When you’re on a bike, you need to get yourself to the finish line – and that’s all there is to it. The bike isn’t going to pedal itself. Even on an organized rides, the SAG vehicle will fix a flat tire, but they don’t pick you up and drive you in just because you’re sweaty and bored. Here’s Lesson #4: The only way out is through – sometimes you just have to duck your head and pedal.
This is by far the hardest lesson for me. Granted, there is some comfort in the idea that no matter what you’re going through, you’re going to get through it if you just keep pedaling. But I’m not really suited to perseverance – if I was a fictional character, I’d be Tigger. He’s great fun, but he’s definitely not who you want on the back of the bike.
Those of you who are familiar with the Enneagram have probably figured out that I’m a 7. We have some great qualities – we’re optimistic and energetic and we have lots and lots and lots of interests…. Our blind spot is “actual limitations,” and sticking to something and seeing it through is a challenge, because there are just so many options out there.
In some ways, being the stoker is a great job for me because I get to do so many different things. I get to pedal, of course, and come up with sassy replies to all the people who think it’s a vacation back there. I get to be the navigator, since I can hold a map and pedal at the same time. I can look around for landmarks without crashing the bike. I can fiddle around with all the buttons on the computer. I can take pictures. I can exchange email addresses with people taking pictures of us.
But once we’ve picked a route for the day, we’re pretty much committed to it. At some point we’ve got to get back to the car, and the only way to do that is to keep stick to the plan and keep pedaling, because the kids are too young to come pick us up.
One of the good things about being on a tandem is that you have someone else riding at the exact same pace, someone who’s in it for the duration, someone whose energy and level of commitment is going to get you through those steep hills and scary turns and boring stretches of farmland. More than anything else, this part of being on a tandem team is marriage in a microcosm. I agreed a while back to clip in, so here I am. I’m goofing around with the map and keeping myself entertained. I’ve even let go of my need to steer, which is frankly pretty uncomfortable. But it’s also a good reminder that I don’t have to do it all - I have a partner in this. We picked a good route. Sometimes just pedaling is enough, and it’ll get us where we need to go.
Back in 1996, I had a mountain biking accident. My tire got caught in a rut while I was riding downhill, I panicked and hit the brakes, and the bike stayed put while I kept going. I’ll never forget the feeling of flying through the air, the sound of my own breath loud in my ears, and what it felt like to hit the ground. I broke my leg and sprained my wrist, and for reasons that don’t really bear repeating, I got back on and pedaled my way out, another 2 ½ miles on the trail. I guess I take that “keep pedaling” stuff a little too seriously sometimes.
I’ve never been brave, but the accident left me fearful in ways I couldn’t have imagined before that day. Every time I get on a bike I think about how much it’s going to hurt when I fall. My whole body remembers what it felt like. I remember the panic I felt every time I saw an obstacle in front of me on the trail. I was with friends on this ride; from their point of view, I had an ugly fall and toughed it out and it made a great story. From my point of view – well, it’s a still a great story. But I don’t often talk about the pain and fear of those last couple of miles, and how some part of me was convinced that if I complained, they would despise me and leave me.
As the stoker, I have lots of time to look at the pavement below our wheels and think about what it’s going to feel like when we fall. This is quite literally the most terrifying thing I can imagine, because it’s made up largely of memory.
David is a good captain, and he’s diligent about checking in and making sure I’m OK. It’s a measure of my trust in him that we once got up to 42 miles an hour going down a hill – it was terrifying and exhilarating and it made me feel that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t the biggest coward on 2 wheels. But it was inevitable that at some point – not, thankfully, that exact point – we were going to fall.
We did an urban sightseeing ride through Detroit one spring day (that’s the Tour De Hood from last week’s t-shirt, for those of you that were asking). There was a point near the end when we had to go from the road to the sidewalk to fit through a gap in the fence. There was a clump of wet leaves on the sidewalk, and of course that’s the spot we rolled over.
One minute we were pedaling along, and the next the bike was sideways on the ground, with both of us clipped in and still holding the handlebars. The fall happened so fast that we almost missed it. Everyone stopped to make sure we were okay, we caught our breath, and we got back on to finish the ride. I fell and it was…okay. Nothing broke. I’d spent hours and hours of my life panicking about this fall before it happened – I’d sucked an enormous amount of enjoyment out of this activity. In fact, we did so well at falling that we ended up doing it again a few weeks later. I have no doubt that there are more falls in our future, too.
And now that I’ve actually fallen – I think I’ve got this. That’s Lesson #5: Stop dreading the fall. It’s going to happen – it’s going to hurt – you’re going to be fine. If you spend all your time being afraid of it, you’re going to miss the fun of flying down the hills you just worked so hard to climb.
The whole point of getting the tandem was that David and I would be able to share an activity even with the demands of work and family. For a number of reasons, it hasn’t worked out quite as I expected. The last couple of years have been very light on bike riding, and our lives seem to have gotten busier as our kids get older. Still, even without actually being ON the tandem, I’ve learned some things that I carry with me:
Clip in – it’s a better ride if you’re committed to keeping your feet on the pedals.
Remember that people need different things when they’re pedaling up the hill.
Just because you’re talking doesn’t mean they can hear you – check before you get mad at the captain.
Keep pedaling. The hill will end eventually.
And don’t worry so much about falling. Being scared now won’t stop it from happening, but it will make the ride a lot less fun.
Riding a tandem is like a lot of other parts of our lives. You can hit a brick wall pretty darn fast if you’re not paying attention. Every minute of every ride relies on communication and trust. Keep that in mind, and the wheels will turn keep turning just fine.
