"Click"

     Clicking in the first time is hard. You feel trapped. Anxiety builds in the pit of your stomach, making it harder to react correctly. Then you start forward pushing on the pedals. "Wow this is really easy," you think. You feel the different muscles being flexed as you pull up. Then the normal motion of pushing follows. You ride forward, a little wobbly at first. But at the top of the hill is a stop sign and there is a car coming. So you try to stop,and remember I need to unclip. You make the motion but it doesn't work. So then it hits you. "Oh crap it wont unclip" But at this point there is really nothing you can do but brace yourself, As the world tips and you crash into the hard unforgiving pavement. Your bike crunches along with you, but lets face it this is not the pressing matter. You have just fallen over like a 3 year old just learning to ride. This is embarrassing enough in itself. But Murphy says there will be at least 3 people watching. So as you squirm around on the ground attached to your bike, trying to figure out how to get out of this crazy trap. You can at least find comfort in the fact that, it happens to everyone. So you climb back on the bike laughing at yourself and trying not to limp. You put on a good face as you wave off the "crowd" that is staring at you.
    The next hard part is, you have to convince yourself to clip back in. Knowing this exact thing really might happen again. Possibly right after your re-attached. But this is something you want to do. Your heart is pounding and you have that nasty, tingly "cortisol shot" running through your body, which was left behind by the embarrassment, pain, and adrenaline. The words run through your head. "You have to get back on the horse after it throws you."
     So you clip back in one shoe and begin to pedal, frantically trying to get the other shoe to also clip in. Your whole body is shaking, this makes it very hard to ride straight. This makes it even harder to clip the stupid, tiny, little clip into the pedal. Finally you succeed. Your thinking about how everyone back there is probably laughing at you. But the dreaded event has now happened. In the peace of this thought it hits you again that "pedaling is so much easier clipped in". Your knee throbs... But hey a scab is well worth the gain.