Overcoming Fears on Two Wheels

Two weekends ago, Utku, my cousin, came to stay with us at my grandparents' place because his mother and sister were going on a trip. He came with his bicycle and actually I was hoping they'd bring a second bike as well because then we could go out cycling together. However, they'd only come with one bicycle so we had to acquire another bike somehow. With babaanne's help, we grabbed one of the many dusty old bikes on the ground floor of the apartment building. Most of them looked like they hadn't been used in years.

Utku and I brought the dusty bike to a nearby bicycle repair shop. The bicycle doctor put air in the tires and added a kickstand to the bike. That day, we rode around in town but the following days, we took trips to nearby villages. We ended up visiting Özbey, Yeniköy, and Kaplancık. Between, Özbey and Yeniköy is the Ancient Greek city of Metropolis. It was built in the Hellenistic period and then went through a Romanization during the Roman period. All of the writings we saw on the walls were in Latin. Apparently, the area was inhabited from 3000 BC onwards.

Utku is really talented on the bicycle and he's able to pull all sorts of feats that I hadn't even seen or heard of until my arrival in Türkiye this year. For example, he can lift up the front of his bicycle and continue to cycle for a couple hundred meters while balancing himself on the back wheel. At one point, we were exiting the parking lot of a shopping centre when he cycled down a flight of stairs that had about 4-5 steps. That's when I realized I was afraid to do the same. I felt fear and resistance about going down the steps. And that's why I went down the steps just to face that fear and it was weak because I used my feet to guide myself down slowly.

A few days went by and we happened to ride by the same shopping centre. I was feeling good and I had the resolution to go down those steps again in order to face my fear. I employed a technique that I thought would be helpful. I imagined the worst-case scenario. I imagined falling off my bike while going down the steps and breaking every bone in my body. The rational mind has a way of letting you know that these extreme scenarios aren't likely to happen and this makes you feel that if things go wrong, it won't be as bad as the scenario you pictured. It seems to work for me because this time, I stood at the top of the steps feeling hesitation and fear. Then, I shook it off and went down the stairs, pulling it off without much difficulty. Utku clapped.

A few days later, we were about to pass through an underpass to get to the other side of the train tracks. There were 5 teenagers there just hanging out by the stairs shown in the picture directly above (only two of the teens were still with us when I took this photo). Utku was able to go down those stairs easily and in fact, I'd seen him go down much longer flights of stairs. However, it was difficult for me because the number of steps, the steepness of the decline, and that the top of the stairs started on a sidewalk, meaning we weren't able to get a rolling start first. You had to lift your bike up from the street onto the sidewalk where you had about 90 cm or so before the stairs started going down.

It was much harder than the flight of stairs outside the shopping centre. However, I had a resolve to overcome my fear of doing this. I went down twice after great hesitation. It hurt my bottom and actually one of the kids there had told me to do it standing but it didn't make sense to me at first. After my second time, Utku told me to do it standing as well and I asked him how that'd be possible since the stairs are so steep and I'm tall. He told me to arch my body to the back, with my butt poking out as I stood. I tried it and it worked. It took three tries to get there and then I kept going down the stairs to practice my new vibration of feeling a little less afraid of going down those steps. 

The teenagers we met were sympathetic to my wanting to overcome my fear of going down those steps. In fact, a few of them admitted to sharing the same fear. The two that remained there with us were 13 and 14. The one who was 14 allowed Utku, who's also the same age, to use his rollerblades. Utku rolled around for a bit and then we were off.

Another day, we had visited the bicycle repair shop pictured directly above in order to ask about having the front gears on my borrowed bicycle repaired. The owner of the place, who can be seen all the way in the back of that photo, told us to come by later at night and to leave the bicycle there with him overnight. We went out to cycle around some more and we were gradually returning to the place when Utku jumped up from a speed bump, using it as a ramp as he always did, and then landed with the sound of something breaking. In fact, it sounded like his bicycle had shattered. He stopped and we took a look. His back gears were totally messed up from the jump. It looked as though, they'd been ripped partially off the bike. We returned to the repair shop to get his bike fixed instead of mine this time. They were able to fix it in about 45 minutes.

I had decided against having the front gears of the bike I was using fixed because the first time we stopped by, the bikemaster had shifted my front gears to the central gear, using his hands. That already served as a soul-ution to the problem I was experiencing of the gears being too low and too fluid. I would cycle a lot but only get so far and so it would tire me out, especially when we would go out to a village outside of town. However, now with the central gear in place, I was able to use a variety of different back gears that went from high to low. 

Utku is sitting at the top seats of the amphitheatre in Metropolis.

Utku left this past Saturday and around 6pm, I went downstairs to go for a solo bike ride. I saw that the bike had been locked up. The owners must have noticed that someone else was using it and decided to lock it up. It's a good thing, I didn't pay 500-600 lira to get the front gears fixed, I thought. The following day, babaanne talked to some of the neighbours and found out that she knew the owners of the bike. By Sunday night, I had the key to the lock in my hand. 

I took my first solo trip back to Kaplancık on Monday and I took a photo of the little village centre shown in the picture directly above. I sat around for about five minutes and then I returned home. On the way to the village, I had passed by the same underpass to get to the other side of the tracks. I stood at the top of the stairs, took a deep breath, and dove down on my bike. It wasn't as hard as it used to be. Today is Wednesday and I intend to go out and explore again in the evening. Let's see what adventures await!