“I think I’ll bike down on my own” I said. My 13th birthday was turning out to be a disaster – and I wanted to do something at least marginally memorable. My dad seemed preoccupied – and did not really consider what I was proposing. Still in his thoughts, he unslung my bike from the back of our Ford station wagon, and handed it to me. “Ok… We’ll wait for you at the bottom of the mountain. Just dont take too long.” he said.
It was 1993, my 3rd birthday in the United States. Both my parents had stable jobs by this point, we were off public assistance, and even started accumulating some rudimentary savings. Like many immigrants before them, my parents wanted to experience a bit of the material abundance that surrounded us in America. Not just to survive, but thrive. To own a piece of the big pie. To feel that we’ve made it. And this desire for ownership made them easy marks. So after being invited to “just a dinner”, which coincided with a real estate presentation by another immigrant from the USSR, they walked out of that “dinner” owning a timeshare of a cabin in the Poconos.
I don’t know if they had regrets. But the money was spent, we were on contract to keep paying for this cabin for another 5 years, even if we did not use it. So the Poconos, and their timeshared luxuries, became the premier, and only, vacation destination for our family. If we wanted to get out of Brooklyn, it had to be the Poconos. The rest of the US ceased to exist. And when my next birthday came along, I had no choice but to celebrate it in “our” cabin.
I was allowed to bring two friends. So two Russian boys I knew from school, our bikes, my parents, and my younger sister, loaded up into our old wood paneled Ford station wagon, and we left Brooklyn for the wilds of upstate New York. The trip there was uneventful, and as we checked into the cabin, the property manager told my parents about a rec center that had an arcade full of video games machines at the top of a mountain not far from our location.
My parents wanted to get us out of the cabin, to be able to unpack and cook my birthday dinner. So my dad was dispatched to drive the 3 boys to the mountain-top arcade. The road to the top snaked around the mountain in a series of wide loops, slowly tightening it’s grip on the peak as we climbed. The view kept getting prettier, and the 3 of us wondered what it would be like to bike down on the way and take in the sights at our own speed. Finally at the top, my father gave each of us boys five dollars for quarters, and left us to our own devices, promising to return in two and a half hours.
On our own in the arcade, with all the foresight of teenage boys, we proceeded to burn through all our quarters in the first 30 minutes, and then had nothing to do for the next two hours. I didn’t have any more money, or any way to call my parents. So we were stuck watching other people play, and when that got too boring, sitting on the steps of the arcade waiting for my dad to come back. As their boredom and frustration grew, my friends started to complain bitterly. This was all a bad idea. This was very badly planned. This is the worst, most boring birthday party they have ever been to. I sat there quietly taking it in. Feeling miserable and powerless. Cursing my parents, timeshares, the Poconos in particular, and my existence.
My dad finally arrived. In an effort to turn the birthday around, I proposed to my friends that we could all ride down on our bikes and watch the views from the mountain. My friends did not respond, and sullenly climbed into the back of the station wagon. Somewhat defiantly, I asked my dad for my bike. My birthday was already ruined. Things could not get any worse. So I might as well have this experience for myself. I adjusted my glasses, gripped the handlebars of my cheap Toys’R’us dirt bike, and watched the station wagon start on the road down the mountain. I was on my own.
Pedaling slowly out of the arcade parking lot, I was presented with a choice. Should I bike next to the outer edge of the road, or on the side next to the mountain? Biking on the edge, with the drop to my left, was scarier, but it seemed to make more sense. I was here for the views, the adventure and the cold wind. I was here for something new. So I chose the edge, and started my descent. The cars were few, while the incline was enough to push the bike forwards on its own without any further pedaling from me. All I had to do was steer, not get too close to the edge, and take in the the views.
The views were great. It was early May, the Poconos mountains were lush with spring growth. I could see foothills spreading out below, covered and pine trees, old oaks and white specks of vacation homes. A winding sparkling river was snaking towards the bigger mountains in the distance. Blue horizon stretched on in all directions, only accented by puffs of white clouds. Sitting up on my bike, as I rolled down without pedaling, with new vistas slowly coming into view for me, I felt like a spectator in a giant rotating panorama.
The wind picked up and I breathed it in. I felt myself relax, the cold breeze carrying away my hot annoyance, disappointment and sadness. This was ok. I was ok. My birthday was a mess. But it didn’t matter right now. Let it all be carried away by the wind. My friends were idiots. This cold wind and this beauty was mine to take in, but I could not even explain it to them later. There was something about cutting through the air, feeling the vibrations of the road from the handlebars, seeing the mountain and the horizon together. It was so different than passively seeing it through the window of a car.
The decline of the road increased, and I felt the bike pick up more speed on its own. I breathed in deeply, taking deep gulps of the cold wind, and imagined myself as flying. The bike frame holding me up, was I not gliding above the earth? The bike wheels were on asphalt, but my body was cutting through the air. It was my birthday, and this was the mountain’s gift to me. This feeling of freedom, of space, of flight.
Maybe it was a gift that I could never really share or explain to others. This moment of communion with the mountain and its beauty. Of what it felt like to fly, to glide, to soar, down this road. But it was still a gift, and I was here to receive it. It was good to be alive. To be a teenager and old enough to do things on my own. To choose to have amazing experiences. To make my own choices in life.
I noticed that my eyes were watering. I was going pretty fast. Probably the fastest I’ve ever gone on my bike. I got to fly on my birthday. Now it was time to slow down. With some regrets, I slowly started squeezing both break handles. First there was a whistle, and then a hiss, as the brake pads tightened on the wheel rims. The hiss got angrier but I felt no change to my speed. I kept applying more pressure, until the bike started to wobble. I looked down at the front wheel and saw smoke and sparks puff out from the front brakes. I was wearing the rubber of the pads down, without affecting my speed. A few more minutes of this, and I won’t have any brake pads left at all, just metal on metal. No way to stop then even if I wanted to. I stopped squeezing the break handles.
The bike continued to speed up. Maybe the decline increased further, maybe it was just the steadily increasing momentum. What I did notice, was that while downward going cars used to speed by me, by now I was following behind the same few cars and maybe even slowly gaining on them. When I finally caught up to my first car, maneuvering to slowly pass by it, noticing the shock on the driver’s face, I realized how close I was to death.
I was going faster than a car down a mountain road with no way of stopping. To the left of me was a steel divider and then the drop. To the right, the ragged side of the mountain. I had no helmet. My only protection were my glasses. Which were a lifesaver, as the facewind has by now become fierce and biting, making my eyes water nonstop. It was getting too cold to breathe through the mouth. My heart beat so fast it was hurting my chest.
Squinting and blinking away tears, I focused fully on steering the bike. The front wheel was starting to wobble from the speed, so I had to hold it firmly but flexibly, intuitively applying a million constant corrections to keep it pointing straight, while bracing myself against the pedals for balance. I had to lean down towards the handlebars, like a bike racer, which further increased my speed. I was still flying, I thought, but now more like a rocket. Racing towards a target, with minimal control, and no means of stopping.
I dont know how fast I was going. 20 miles an hour? 30? 40? I was whooshing past the other cars now. Coming in too fast for them to notice me, so I had to veer into the incoming lane to pass by the downwards going cars. What would I have done if there was an incoming car at the same time? There was no time to think about that. All I could do was steer and keep the bike from tumbling. A part of my mind noticed that one of the cars I passed was my dad’s station wagon. I don’t know if he noticed me flying by. It did not really matter. There is nothing he could have done for me now.
While most of me was concentrating on keeping the bike steady and steering around cars, another part of me was thinking. I was still alive. This was very strange. Anything could kill me at this point. If the bike tumbled from the wobbling, I’m dead. If I lost control from too sharp of a turn, I’m dead. Driving off the side of the mountain to the left, dead. Brushing up against the mountain on the right, dead. Touch one of the cars I was passing, dead. Get caught in the air wave of the incoming cars, dead. A bike wheel popping, any other part of the bike failing, the wind ripping the glasses off my face… dead, dead, dead. At this speed, anything could turn me into a pile of meat, blood, bones and metal in a matter of seconds.
I did not have any illusions of invulnerability. I was very clear on how close I was to being mangled meat. And I was confused that I was still alive. I was a shy, nerdy kid, with little to none athletic or kinetic ability. Yet here I was still hurtling down the mountain weaving between cars like a race driver. It felt fake. Silly. I was going to die here. And all the fancy maneuvers were just delaying this. I was already dead. Racing now on borrowed time.
It’s the rocks that really bothered me. I knew there were small rocks all over the road. I saw them when I was still going slowly at the top. There were lots of them, small jagged stones that fell off the mountain side on the road below. They would not bother a car. Or just be a bump for a bike at low speed. But at the speed that I was going, hitting one with my front wheel would send me flying. I could not see one. There was no way to avoid one. It was strange that I have not hit one yet. It was just a matter of time. There was nothing I could do about it. No amount of fancy maneuvering would help against a small rock at 40 miles an hour. It was out there waiting for me, and I was speeding towards it. So I decided to pray.
This made even less sense to me than still being alive. I left the Soviet Union 2 years ago. My family was in no way traditional or spiritual. I have never once prayed, or wondered, or talked, or thought of God in my life. No one I knew had ever prayed, or mentioned God in any form whatsoever. I’ve never read anything about religion, or stepped a foot into any house of worship. I wasn’t an atheist, I truly had zero thoughts or ideas about God. God was like curling to me. I may have heard about it as a concept, but that was it.
But I felt that I needed to pray to God at this moment. I just knew that this was the right thing to do. And I had no time to question myself about it. There was a rock waiting for me down the road, and this was the only thing I could do about it. So I started praying.
Somehow I was very clear that God did not need anything for me, and there was nothing I could do for God. There was no point in trading or bargaining for my life. I just had to be clear and honest. So I asked God to let me live. To let me survive this mountain somehow. Not even to leave unhurt. Just to not die. I did not promise to be good or do anything. I just asked to live. And I felt that I was heard. A clarity inside. That was all. I did what I needed to do. And now I could concentrate fully on steering.
So I kept driving. I stopped thinking or wondering. I just held on to the wheel and made the corrections. Weaved between cars. Blinked away tears. I don’t remember the vistas or the close calls. But I got to the bottom of the mountain. I remember realizing that I was now on a flat, straight road, but still going incredibly fast, towards the highway into which the mountain road merged.
I could feel the bike starting to lose speed. I started to slowly apply the breaks. Smoke and hiss again, but with tangible deceleration this time. As I approached the highway, still going too fast, my panic rising at the thought of bursting into lanes of traffic, I looked for another path to turn into. There was none. So I turned to the edge of the road, and then flipped my bike over into a dirt ditch. Spin and tumble. Blue, green, grey, black spinning. I was off my bike. Laying in the dirt. In pain. But looking up at the sky, some grass in my peripheral vision. Neither the sky nor the grass were moving. That was strange. It was strange not to be hurtling anymore. I was alive.
The rest of the memory is hazy. I had a lot of cuts and scrapes but no real injuries. The bike frame was ok, but my breaks were gone, and my wheel rims were covered in burnt rubber. I sat next to the highway merger until my dad drove up. No one seemed surprised that I was there first. I said I fell off my bike. My friends joked about it. My dad seemed annoyed. We did not talk about the views or what I experienced. I didn’t tell my parents about what happened then or later. I don’t remember the rest of the birthday.
I didn’t really process what happened afterwards. It was strange that I survived. That was not supposed to happen. It was equally strange that I prayed to God. I had to admit that I prayed, felt connected, and it worked – I lived. But I didn’t know what to do with that information. It just didn’t fit anything about my life. So I let it go. I remembered the story, kept it to myself, but didn’t focus on the prayer part.
It would be another 9 years, when I was 22 and in college, when I would seriously engage with God again. It would be another 3 years, when I ended up in a Rabbinical seminary in Israel, that I would marvel at what was already within me so long ago. It would be until now, 30 years later, writing this weird memory down, that I would realize that I’ve never expressed proper gratitude for what happened.
I survived. Against all odds. I did a very stupid thing. That should have cost me my life in a hundred different ways. But I prayed, I asked for my life, and I got to live. No small rock found my tire. I made it down the mountain.
Thank you God. Thank you for keeping me alive.
Now, just as then, I have nothing to trade for my life. You have saved me then. And so many other times, in so many other close calls, in the past 30 years. And I appreciate it. I am glad that I am alive. I am glad I am here. It is a good life. I got enough scuffs and scrapes, some bigger than others. But got to see some great vistas as well, with many more to see.
I am in it. I appreciate the borrowed time. I appreciate this life that could not have happened so easily.
I will see it through till the final highway merger. I will do my best to enter it at full speed.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
