As a Red-Blooded All-American Boy, I started riding a bike as soon as I could.

Or more exactly, I started TRYING to ride a bike. I was six or seven and it was a daunting task, as my mother, who raised only RBAAB’s, refused to let me have training wheels.

My mother was almost 40 when I was born, so to me she was always an old lady — especially compared to my friends’ parents. But in her youth, she’d been a genuine New York City tomboy. She roller skated in the streets, played stickball with the boys and swam in the East River. So to her, training wheels were the same as double-runner skates — the easy way out. Which in her book meant if you couldn’t take your fair share of thumps, lumps and bumps while thrashing your way through the jungle we call Life, you’d never amount to a damned thing.

She never actually said it, of course, but body language and death ray stares made the point perfectly.

So after an initial, and painful, period of half-baked balancing, brilliantly-hued bruises and multiple bouncings off the pavement, I learned to ride. And ride I did. In fact, I was on a bike so much as a kid that for three months out of the year, my legs became vestigial appendages.

Sometime in my mid-teens, I quit riding my bike. No doubt, I’d entered my next phase of RBAAB-hood, where cars were for young men and bikes were for kids.

So, bikeless I was, and bikeless I stayed for the next 20 years. I had my car for transportation, and I had running for exercise. But one day in my mid-30s and for no apparent reason, I decided to get back into biking. Of course, this meant I had to buy a bike, which was a big problem since I knew nothing about them. But luckily, I didn’t have to, since I’d always followed this bit of Mark Twain’s advice, “Never learn to do anything. If you don’t learn, you will always find someone else to do it for you.” In the case of bikes and me, that “someone” was my pal Fred Laughlin.

–

The beginning … and the end

–

Anything Fred did, he did well. And he didn’t rely on trial and error and his instincts. Instead, he studied in depth whatever he wanted to know. Since he’d been riding bikes for years, he became my cycling Man of the Hour.

I told him I wanted to buy a bike but had no idea how to go about it.

“What kinda bike are you interested in?” he said.

“I dunno,” I said. “One with two wheels?”

He smiled, barely and briefly.

“I only know,” I said, “that after all these years, I’m wary of those skinny tire, whippy ones.”

“In that case, you might wanna look at mountain bikes,” he said.

“What’s a mountain bike?” I said.

Keep in mind, this was 40-plus years ago. Mountain bikes — like me then — were in their infancy. They’d been a Cali thing for a while, but hadn’t made their East Coast presence very well known.

He explained what they were, which sounded good to me, and so we made our way to High Peaks Cyclery, where the owner/silver-tongued devil, Brian Delaney, gave me an in-depth tour of his wares. I took some spins around the St. Agnes parking lot and the next thing I knew I was the proud owner of a Cannondale mountain bike (and, which should go without saying but too often doesn’t, a helmet).

The bike was perfect for me, and in almost no time, I was zooming my way over hills, dales, main roads and obscure trails. The next summer I bought a road bike, and in the following 20 years I practically lived on my bikes.

But about six years ago, I pretty much quit riding. First and foremost, with so many morons texting and driving, riding on the roads got hairy. After a bunch of close calls, I decided to quit while I not only was ahead, but also HAD one. To me, riding hadn’t been only about exercise — it was also a lot of fun. But getting buzzed by nitwits in two-ton projectiles, a few feet off my left shoulder and flying by at 60 mph was clearly NOT my definition of fun.

Additionally, subversion by my hips and spine made me give up speed walking, too.

From then on, my only exercise was walking my dogs, and given their age, while there was forward motion, there was no propulsion.

And so, in a very short time, I’m sure you can figure out exactly what shape I was in … or more accurately, what shape I WASN’T in.

–

Dustin’ off the cobwebs

–

Now we fast forward to a few weeks ago when — again for no reason — I decided to give biking another try.

First, I shlepped my steed to Silver Birch cycles to have Justin and the boys get it back up to snuff, which they did in short order. Next, in order to preserve what dignity I have, I went to Placid Planet and bought a pair of well-padded bike shorts. And then, the Moment of Truth: I went for a ride.

The bike was fine, the weather was perfect, my attitude was tip-top, but I had a few problems: My legs were shot, my lungs were shot, my balance was farkakt. And beyond that, my bike smarts were gone.

I rode around for a while, but it was a struggle. On the uphills, my legs and lungs burned and I had to shift into the lowest gear. This just made everything worse because on a bike, momentum is your best friend: You are the least stable at the slowest speeds. So while I was creaking and gasping my way uphill, my bike was wobbling to and fro.

On the downhills, I had to ride my brakes, which not only killed my “into the wind” head trip but killed my confidence as well. Going through town, trying to ride with the traffic flow while at the same time monitoring cars and pedestrians was a real sphincter-slammer. When I got home, both my fitness and morale were at low ebb.

The next day, I rose bound and determined to erase yesterday’s lousy performance: I’d ride one of my old favorites in-town loops. Down Route 3 to town and through town, then on 86 to Trudeau Road, down Park Avenue, up Pine Street to River and Lake Flower to Route 3 back home. As I said, it’d been one of my favorites. I remembered essentially flying o’er the Macadam, and while I knew I couldn’t do that now, I figured I could at least maintain my breathing, a steady pedal cadence and my cool.

Sadly, I was wrong on all counts. After the first mile or so, it was just a struggle. I won’t bore you with the details, just suffice it to say I felt lousy … with a Capital I. And the next day, I was worse, as I was achy and wobbly and feeling nothing but my age.

–

Dustin’ off the attitude

–

Essentially, after only a few days as a Born Again Biker, I was on the verge of becoming a Has-Been Biker.

When, only a few days earlier, I’d put my bike and my sorry self back on the road, it was to get in good shape and have fun. Unfortunately, it looked like neither was going to happen — at least not in THIS lifetime. So the easiest thing would be to say to hell with it, put my bike back in mothballs, and take up gossip and gluttony as my Golden Age pastimes. But as I mulled over that, I came up with something else: Sometimes — maybe even MOST times — the easiest thing isn’t the best thing.

Yeah, sure, if I quit riding, in favor of sitting on my dupa, I’d never have to worry about sore muscles, flat tires, and deflated ego. On the other hand, I WOULD have to worry about becoming a zug, and a self-loathing one at that.

The more I thought about it, the clearer the issue became. Essentially, given my age and fitness (or more exactly, lack thereof), I was starting at Step One. But so what? Maybe I wasn’t starting where I wanted, but I was starting where I belonged.

Then I thought of other Step Ones, and writing came to mind. My first step in writing wasn’t trying to organize a paragraph or make a complete sentence. It was learning how to hold the pencil. After that, came the alphabet, then making letters into words, then words into sentences and so on. And when I thought about that, REALLY thought about it, I remembered it’d been so hard I didn’t think I’d ever learn to do it. Yet clearly I did.

But what about me and bikes? Obviously, I can’t be as good a rider as I was at my peak, or even at the end of my riding. And to be brutally honest, no matter how much I ride from here on out, I’ll never be a good rider But as long as I stay within the limits of safety and sanity, I can become a good enough rider. Good enough to get in better shape. Good enough to have fun. And most importantly, good enough to end my pathetic self-pity jags.

Ultimately, I concluded it all boils down to this: If your head’s in the right place, “good enough” can be downright great.