Look, Ma, no hands!

Actually, I never got a chance to say that as a kid. I did my share of stupid stuff, like going off jumps on my Wal-Mart special (actually, I got it at Sears, and I taco-ed that wheel but good!). For some reason, though, I never tried to ride no-handed. Maybe my brother and I never dared each other, or maybe my other moronic adventures honed my already-hyperactive sense of consequence.

It wasn't until I was 21 that I finally figured it out. The significance of the fact that I could legally drink at the time might imply that liquid courage helped me overcome my fear of crashing, but sorry, that is not the case.

I was en route from Akron to Cleveland with the Case Cycling Club. We had stayed in Akron overnight and were riding through the Metroparks to get home. Spirits were high and the pace was not-so-high, so to amuse myself I pushed off the handlebars, leaned back, spread my arms, and found myself riding no-handed. And that was that.

See, over the previous months, as the weather in Cleveland had grown semi-tolerable, I had started riding outdoors, and I had gotten more and more angry that I still couldn't ride no-handed. Every day, after a few hours on the road, I'd coast down the street I lived on and try to convince myself to let go of the bars.

I'd relax my grip on the handlebars, then try to get myself as centered as possible. I'd stare at my front wheel and open my hands, leaving only the heels of my hands on the bars. Once I felt solid enough, I would lift my hands an inch or two. The front wheel would immediately turn, the bike would veer, my center of gravity would shift way outside the wheelbase, and I'd grab the bars to save myself from hitting a parked car. This happened every day.

I was trying to ease into it, to progressively get further and further away from the bar until I was sitting upright. The truth is that all I had to do was instantaneously sit up, getting my weight onto the rear wheel and committing to the no-hands position.

The moral of the story, kids, is that many things in life can only happen if you fully commit. I suppose this is comparable to the cliche of ripping off a bandaid. Anyway, I bet you'd like some second part of the story, a parallel that I could draw to give context to my no-handed riding story. Well, lucky for you, there is such a story.

Karaoke, like riding no-handed, like removing a bandaid, is only properly done when you fully commit. There is no hiding, no wall-flowering, no spectating. Karaoke is a total-immersion activity.