Suicidal Bicycling

I bought a bike! Everyone here -- and I do mean everyone, from the grade-school kid to the 90-year old headmaster, rides a bike. Cars are too expensive to use and too expensive to park, and apparently too hard to drive around the sharp winding cobblestone streets of Oxford, so the majority of people bike all around town, on the road, with the buses and few cars that are driven here.

Because of the proliferation of bikes here, there is also a proliferation of bike theft -- so everyone warns you not to get a pretty bike. The advice is always to get the ugliest bike you can find, don't get too attached to it, and then lock it up with the biggest lock you can find. So, of course, I followed their advice and bought the prettiest bike I saw, proceeded to name it, and fall in love with it. Henry I (so that I can name its successors in order once its jacked) is a vintage (which just means 30 years old) silver Peugeot with cool orange writing on it.

When I picked it up at the shop (after they shined it up for me and put a fun bell on it -- a bell with a loud ding so I can warn pedestrians to get out the way when I barrel through town), I honestly sat and stared at it for a bit whilst I got together the cojones to test that bad boy on the road. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I'm a horrendous driver -- and let me assure you, my biking skills are on par with my driving -- so add that to the fact that I now have to ride the bike on the road with the cars, on the other side of the road, on a road that has squiggly lines and zig zags that I don't understand. It does not paint a pretty picture. Riding Henry I from Cycle King back to the dorm was the most exhilarating and terrifying bike ride of my short life. I just held my breath when the buses whizzed by me, an inch from Henry's handlebars, and tried to wait for a car to be turning right before crossing over traffic to make a right-hand turn, and yelled "excuse me" politely and smiled whenever I grazed a jaywalking pedestrian. When we got back to the dorm, and both of us hadn't lost any parts along the way, I knew that Henry and I were destined to have a great year together.