So how was the bike ride?

The surburban plot where my family has lived for twenty-four years is always changing to accomodate our newest tastes and hobbies. Twelve years ago a stately Japanese maple was planted in the center of the front lawn, around the same time a basketball key was painted in the driveway, and almost ten years ago plastic sheets temporarily replaced plaster walls as an entire second floor was added to the house. What never changed was where we were: at the apex of a concrete ski slope, hemmed in between dense woods and a dead end. Right on the edge of the worst place in the world for a kid to learn to ride a bike.

My mom used to let me rollerblade on our hardwood floors because, I think, she was afraid of what might happen if I went off of our property on wheels. Until I was in high school, potholes that filled like ponds pockmarked the whole street. Because biking around the neighborhood wasn't an option, my dad used to take me out to parking lots and playgrounds occasionally to ride. But I lost interest at around age eleven and I can't remember getting on a bike since.

Copenhagen is a city with a cycle culture. As sixty-year-old women in high heels blow by me on their one-speeds as I wait for the bus in the morning, I just stare at their coattails in admiration. I was pretty content being a cyclist spectator until last week, when the coordinator of my Medical Practice and Policy program announced that we'd be going on a bike tour as a part of this weekend's study tour. After she finished, I went to speak to her privately.

"So how intense is this bike ride? Because, I, well, I can't really ride a bike." I rambled on that yes, okay, I had learned, and I know it's like riding a bike because it is riding a bike, but maybe I was never really good enough that you could call it, umm, knowing, exactly. I took a breath. In typical Danish fashion she responded, "You'll be fine."

On Thursday our study tour began. I nervously disclosed to a few people that I was dreading the ride. Saturday morning, an hour before the fearsome ride, we found out that we had the option of either biking or taking a taxi to Grenen, the beach where everyone on our program would meet that afternoon. Instead of relief, though, determination surged inside of me. I had been too nervous for too long to not try. I rented a bike with the rest of my group and dragged it into the parking lot.

Even with the seat sunk to its lowest setting, I couldn't manage to get both feet to touch the ground while I stood over my new bike. Sophie, the Danish medical student who accompanied us on the study tour, was watching me from the side of the lot. She recommended that I go back to the rental center to get a helmet and a child's bicycle. I returned with both. With Garik—a kind classmate of mine who expected that I might need thirty seconds of practice before heading to Grenen—standing beside me, I tried to take off on the smaller bike. Ten feet, okay. Twenty, and I had no idea what to do. I slowed down, swerved, put my feet on the ground, and watched the metal basket pop off of the back of the bike as the handlebars crashed to the ground.

As I righted myself by the side of a dumpster, Garik, Sophie, and a DIS intern named Libby were conferencing. The girls who had decided to take a taxi had already left. I could walk to Skagen, but by the time I arrived, the rest of the group would likely be heading back for lunch already. What was I supposed to do? Libby and Garrick, who I imagine felt somewhat relieved, jetted out of the parking lot. Sophie walked up to me. "You're doing great," she said. "But I have an idea. Would you like to ride on a tandem bicycle?"

We rode the three kilometers together on one bike, from that parking lot to the beach. Sophie narrated the whole ride, telling me about the hearty flowers that we passed and asking about US politics. "This is fun!" she even exclaimed as we pedaled. We showed up in style and on time to Grenen: the very point where the waves of the North and Baltic Seas meet above the northern tip of Jutland. The two shores narrow until they finally converge, drawing together waters carried by opposite winds into a sparkling ribbon of water.

What was most magical about the whole experience was that Sophie made me feel proud for trying to ride a bike rather than embarrassed for not exactly knowing how. In a way, this attitude is distinctly Danish. Children here are not academically tracked until the university level; apparently few differences in ability or skill are even acknowledged inside schools at all. Even disabled children are, for the most part, mainstreamed. I think the idea is that if everyone is included and expected to learn, they will. Individual challenges can be handled, even when the individual needs a little help. Furthermore, problems are not seen as something to be solved, but rather something to experience. Seeking solutions is, like most things in Denmark, a pretty stress-free endeavor.

On the way back from Grenen, Sophie, Libby, and I—I was attached the back of Sophie's bike, after all—stopped at a grocery store to buy snacks for that night's bus ride to Copenhagen. As we loaded thirty-six bottles of water onto the two bikes, Libby asked Sophie if she thought we could carry all the extra weight. "Oh, of course. I've ridden with 90 beers on my bike before," Sophie answered casually as she finished packing the two metal baskets.