Power Assist Berlin

We sail along Bundersstrasse’s bike lane, headed toward Berlin’s Spree River and East Side Gallery’s political murals. My oldest daughter, Lyda, leads the way, although neither of us is familiar with the route or the bikes. They’re on-demand bikes, red and clunky with a big metal basket in front, affording plenty of space for my purse and water bottle. A simple bike, with only one speed and brakes in the pedals, like the bike I learned to ride on: a metallic purple wheelie, with a banana seat and pink streamers fluttering from the ape hanger handlebars. While this Berlin bike falls short on style it does have something my cool wheelie did not: power assist.

Both of us are seasoned cyclists. Lyda commutes in bike-friendly Seattle where she lives. I tackle long distances, pedaling fifty to a hundred miles in a go, most often on designated bike-paths, as the drivers in Tucson, Arizona, where I live, are fast, sometimes furious, and often don’t share the road.

So it’s scary riding downhill on wide Bundersstrasse with cars whizzing by on my left. I’m used to cars veering into my territory at intersections and I hug the bike lane’s edge. These don’t. They stay in their lane, and they’re well behaved: no honking, no wise-ass comments that I should get out of they’re way. They’re German cars with German drivers who respect cyclists and keep to their side of the avenue. But I am leery, all the same.

Because I’m riding without a helmet. Scary and odd, verging on weird, not riding in spandex shorts, a cycling jersey, grippy gloves, or closed-toed shoes either. My long hair flows out behind me as we fly south in skirts, Ts, and sandals. I do have my red dark-tinted M-frame Oakley’s on, the only shred of my cycling persona. The wrap-around sunglasses keep bugs from my eyes and make me look like a real cyclist, even if I am wearing a skirt.

Not.

I wobble when I slow, no longer competent with pedal breaks and I fumble as I push off from stopping, my feet engaging brake pads. Oakleys or no Oakleys I act like someone just learning to ride. Lyda is no better. She too is troubled by the braking pedals.

Jet lag doesn’t help.

We arrived only yesterday afternoon and stayed up after dinner yakking, then arose at dawn and wondered around our neighborhood, Prenzlauer Berg, until we found breakfast. We both felt we had the 9-hour time difference under control when we remembered our Apple Ids so we could download the bike rental app, although we knew better. Seasoned travelers, we’d come to Berlin to intercept my youngest daughter, who was in the country as a foreign exchange student, and in Berlin for just the morning, so we could not afford to take it easy or sleep-in to re-calibrate our brains. We’d made rendezvous arrangements for 9:30 am in front of Brezhnev and Honecker Fraternal Kiss at East Side Gallery, an easy-peasy half-hour bike ride away.

Other bikers pass us on both sides. Most are in shorts or skirts, some with gorgeous scarves looped around their necks. (How do they make it look so stylish? When I try, I look like I tangled myself in used Christmas wrappings.) Dogs, sitting perky in bike baskets, accompany some. Other cyclists travel on three-wheeled cargo bikes with kids and groceries stowed in front. One man, dressed in a suit with expensive looking leather wing-tips, pedals his two school-aged kids, perfectly maneuvering the cumbersome-looking three wheeler.

On my left, spandex-wearing, helmeted, and gloved riders zoom past. I raise my left hand and give a slight wave to the peloton, like I would at home, a ‘howdy’ to other tribal members. But the cyclists do not respond. No wave. No thumbs up. I am just another commuter. They must not have seen my Oakleys.

We hit a hill. It’s hot. A heat wave has rolled over Europe, smacking Germany and particularly Berlin, hard. I don’t like the hill. I have no gears, so I know I’m going to sweat, and my crisp T-shirt will become limp and soggy, not the cool mom attire I’d planed on when meeting my youngest, her buddies, and the teacher chaperones. But when I dig into my pedals (braced to come to a sudden halt), I discover the power assist and sail up the hill, hardly working at all, my cool mom-outfit saved.

Arriving at the Spree River, the East Side Gallery is on our right, with its bold murals painted on remnants of the Berlin Wall. We decide to terminate our ride here, as having the bikes with us as we walk between murals will be cumbersome. This is an upside of on-demand bikes, use them when needed, and when not, sign-off on the rental with the app. But first a photo. We position the bikes along the railing, with the red sandstone Molke Bridge over the Spree in the background.

One of the peloton cyclists which passed us earlier positions his group in a photo, too. They are up on the bridge waving. In English, I suggested he join his group and I’ll take their photo. But he doesn’t understand. He is Spanish, he says, and doesn’t speak German either.

“No problema,” I say in Spanish. “Andele con sus amigos y voy a tomar el photo.”

This time we understand each other. He snaps photos of Lyda and I with the Moke Bridge in the background before he joins his group. I yell at them to smile and wave, as I capture their moment in his camera. We are of the same tribe, after all.