“So you’ll be riding, what? Twenty, thirty miles a day?” His scraggly, light-brown beard meandered from his chin toward the center of his chest. There were tattoos all over his arms, and rubber discs stretching his earlobes.
“Closer to forty,” Lily lied, trying not to stare. It was actually more like fifty miles most days, and even longer on a few, but the guy was already giving her a there’s-no-way-lady kind of look, and Lily didn’t want to risk him becoming even more skeptical or telling her that what she’d planned would be impossible.
“And the trip leaves when?”
“Next week.” The trip actually left in five days, but next week made her situation sound slightly less dire.
“Have you been riding a different bike?” the guy asked, with a dubious note in his voice. “Because that’s a lot of miles to start with if you haven’t been riding for a while.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine.” She smiled brightly, feigning confidence. “I do Zumba, so I’m in pretty good shape.”
“Zumba,” the guy repeated.
“It’s like a dance thing,” Lily said.
“No, no, I know. My nana does Zumba. Hang on.” He lifted the bike up (effortlessly, Lily saw) onto a frame, where he clamped it in place and gave its rear wheel a spin. Even Lily could see it wobbling as it turned.
“Your wheels need to be trued,” he said.
“Of course,” Lily said, and nodded like she knew what he meant.
“Chain needs to be lubed,” the guy said. “I’ll want to take a look at the brake pads, and the derailleur. And the gel in your saddle looks pretty shot.” He stopped talking to himself and looked at her. “Any idea when your tires were last replaced?”
Lily shook her head. At the guy’s direction, she climbed aboard a stationary bike and let the guy take measurements and adjust her bike’s seat and handlebars. She sat on a cushion that took an imprint of her bottom (her sitz bones, the guy said, but it looked like her bottom when she got up, which was the last thing Lily wanted to see). She picked out a new saddle, a pair of padded, fingerless gloves, and three pairs of cycling shorts with pads that looked like Depends sewn into the crotch and made her waddle when she walked, shorts the guy promised were essential for rides longer than a few hours. “You’ll want this, too,” he’d said, handing her a tub of chamois cream. Lily was too ashamed to ask him where the cream was meant to go.
When she got back home, it was early afternoon. Morgan was still at school. Don was still at the church. Lily dabbed sunscreen on her face and cream on the bike short’s padding, per the Internet’s instructions, before putting them on, along with a tee shirt and the gloves. She wheeled her bike to the end of the driveway. You can do this, she told herself, swinging one leg over the top tube. It’s just like riding a bike. That first trip around the block had left her dismayingly exhausted, and the next morning she’d been so sore that she’d almost screamed when she sat down on the toilet. But she’d kept going, riding every morning and every afternoon, first five miles, then ten, then twelve. She had persisted. She was not going to let her daughter down.
On Friday night, Don had helped them load their luggage into the trunk and their bikes onto the rack and hugged them both goodbye. Lily and Morgan had driven eight hours from Ohio to New York City. The city’s traffic had terrified Lily, but she’d made it to the hotel, happy to hand the keys off to a valet, who’d helped her and Morgan get the bikes off the rack, and up to their room.
That first night, Morgan had been fine, her cheerful, sunny self. She’d kept up a stream of bright chatter, reading Olivia’s texts from the Jewish, kosher, vegan summer camp on a working farm where her two moms had sent her (HELP ME Olivia had written, in all capital letters, beneath a picture of the meatless shepherd’s pie, which, even Lily had to admit, did not look very appetizing). They’d taken the subway to Chinatown for dinner the night before, and had gone back to their hotel near Battery Park, where they’d watched a movie and gone to bed early, their bikes parked at the foot of their beds, waiting.
And now, here they were. Or, rather, here she was, pedaling unsteadily along the bike path with her thighs and calves aching and sweat stinging her eyes and her daughter somewhere up ahead, off in the distance, not seeing, or caring, how Lily was struggling.
Abby had told them that the first thirteen miles would be the most challenging, and Abby hadn’t lied. The terrain was easy enough, flat and paved and smooth, but those very things meant that the bike path was completely jammed. There were people on sleek racing bikes and bulky rented bikes and little kids on one-wheeled bikes with seats attached to the backs of real bikes, pedaled by their parents. Signs at regular intervals read NO MOTOR VEHICLES/E-BIKES/E-SCOOTERS, but Lily had seen examples of the latter two, plus people on Rollerblades, which were allowed, and motorized unicycles with light-up neon wheels, which probably were not. Messengers wearing bulky insulated DoorDash backpacks zipped past, weaving through the slower riders, calling, “On your left!” as they rocketed by, so close that Lily could feel the wind rush against her in their wake. Little kids went caroming from one side of the path to the other on push bikes or bikes with training wheels, their helmeted heads looking too big for their bodies, usually with a parent or two in their wake calling out instructions, telling Colton or Hazel to get out of the way, to be careful, to ride on the right, no, not that right, the other one! The only good news was that pedestrians had their own paths. Whenever Lily managed a glance sideways, she could see them: runners and walkers and people with dogs on leashes, all of them moving briskly along.
Where was Morgan? How far had they gone? Were they close to getting out of the city yet? Lily knew she could check her odometer, but she was scared to look down. It felt like they’d been riding for hours. Except they still hadn’t gone under the George Washington Bridge, which meant that, as unbelievable as it seemed, they were still in Manhattan, and they hadn’t even covered the first thirteen miles.
Lily felt like she could barely force air into her lungs. Her hands, inside her riding gloves, were slick with sweat, and her padded bike shorts had gotten bunched up, with the padding slid off to one side. Her nose itched, but she was too afraid to let go of the handlebars to scratch it.
You’re fine, she thought, repeating the words like a mantra. You got this. You’re fine. You can do this.
One of the older ladies, the short one with bright blue eyes, rode up alongside of her. “You’re Lily, right? Are you doing okay?” she asked, sounding sympathetic. Lily wondered how lost she must look, if she was getting sympathy from the seventy-five-plus set. She managed a nod and a clenched-toothed smile.
“It’ll get easier. I promise,” the woman said. “And it’s wonderful that you’re doing this with your daughter.”
Lily nodded again.