The Bike Did Not Care About My Feelings

January twenty-fifth. The class was forty-five minutes. I know this because I counted. Not the rotations, not the intervals, just the minutes, in the way you count minutes when you are doing something that is harder than you expected it to be and you need to know it is finite.

It was Simone's idea, technically, though she would probably say she only named the flyer and I was the one who looked it up and registered us both. That is factually accurate. The indoor cycling class at the community center has been on the schedule for months, I had walked past the sign at least a dozen times on the way to Wednesday yoga, and I had not once considered attending it. Then Simone said, in the corridor after Tuesday's session in early January, 'that spin class fills up fast' in the tone of someone who has noted a fact rather than issued an invitation, and I was registered within the week. I don't entirely understand my own decision-making.

mid-class, one of us had found the rhythm

What I can report: Simone looked like she had done this before. She adjusted her bike in about four seconds, clipped in, and for the entire forty-five minutes had the posture of someone who was not panicking. I, meanwhile, spent the first ten minutes negotiating with the resistance knob in a way that I think the instructor noticed and graciously did not address. By the twenty-minute mark I had made a kind of uneasy peace with the bike. By the end I was mostly upright. That counts.

after. she was fine. I was not fine.

We stood in the corridor afterward and I had my hands on my knees and Simone put one hand lightly on my shoulder and said nothing, which was the correct choice. I have done harder physical things than this, the outdoor bouldering in January 2017 comes to mind, the frozen ground, the real rock. But those things I had prepared for. The spin bike I walked into cold, which turns out to be a different kind of hard. I would go back. I'm not sure what that means about me, but I would go back.