Weird but True

Coffee this morning was accompanied by a litany of strange facts, one of my son's favorite topics. He told me that a pet hamster can run up to eight miles each night on its little metal wheel. I quietly kicked myself for skipping my two mile walk yesterday. Then he said that if a person bicycled none stop for three years they could bike to the moon. I quickly calculated the odds that I've biked to the moon in my lifetime, to temper the guilt for being more of a slouch than a caged rodent. My dad taught me to ride a bike when I was five. Here's an excerpt from a long poem I wrote called "The Bicycle," about learning to ride:

I learned to ride on a gravel road,
dad running alongside, promising to hang on.
The day I turned five we walked the blue Schwinn
out of the house, across a wooden foot bridge
onto the dirt road that wove like water through the woods,
where rattlesnakes sun themselves,
poison oak softening the edges. I walked with my dad---
the air smelt like drying pebbles,
hung like a shawl
around the shoulders of the afternoon.
Woodpeckers tapped a metronome beat.
Dad's breath even as he lifted me onto the bicycle,
placing a hand on the seat,
the other on the handlebars,
we began to roll.

At first I dangled like a string,
scared I wouldn't learn, scared I would.
Dad made jokes, chuckling even before
he spoke. Eased by him
I reached for the bars, my feet on the pedals---
riding began to overtake my fears.
My sisters zoomed past, turning to lift their arms to the sky,
their endless way of saying
look what you can't do.
"I can't; I won't; I'm too little," I shouted, then
leapt from the bicycle and ran back to the house
leaving my dad standing like a still life.

I can still hear the powdery soil beneath my tires
that blew like flour down mill pipes the day my dad
let go. Spring waxed into summer,
no rain since April, the road dried to a soft talc---
"Good for falling on," he thought. I pedaled off
accustomed to him trotting beside me. Over the weeks he shifted
behind. I only felt his breath, his steadiness.
"He's always there," I thought, his voice fading away
like a man falling into a hole. Like distance.
I turned my head, the tapping woodpeckers seemed to go quiet, and I saw him
standing, hands on hips, so far away.
"There you go," he shouted;
I fell to the ground.

From then to now, I would've had to average 1.6 hours of cycling a day to be standing on the moon today.

I leave you with this fact: a caterpillar has more muscles than a human being.