The weather in Oakland has been gorgeous. Sunshine to beat the band, blue skies, spring flowers busting out everywhere, and my bike has not left the garage in over a week.

I have excuses. I’m just trying to remember them right now.

In the meantime, I’ve been thinking a lot about the title I chose for this blog. It was an impulse-thing. In the spirit of clichés and homilies. But as I go along, I notice that everything I do has these two sides to it: that one can fall into almost any activity fairly easily, and in order to really do that activity, one has to face and give up the fear of falling.

Easier proselytized than done.

Example: I was never a good skier. I come from a family of non-skiers. A few times, in high school and college, I tried. I bundled up in borrowed clothes, took ski school classes, learned to snow plough, to shave through powder and ice in a slow, wobbly side-to-side across a grade while holding my feet in a “wedge.” Gamely I hugged the bunny slopes at various ski destinations while friends went whizzing by on their black diamond jaunts. Eventually I had to admit this to myself: I’m too afraid of falling to actually SKI. You have to be willing to risk that to literally “get anywhere.”

I have other stories that end better. The time my friend Gabie convinced me to learn how to rock climb and I ended up traversing a 40-foot face in Bear Valley, at sunset; the time another friend offered me a flying lesson in a two-seater Cessna, and I toured the Bay Area from the sky.

And even though in both cases I was terrified, and enjoyed both tremendously, I became neither a rock climber nor a pilot. Maybe one bite of risk was enough, or maybe those activities just weren’t quite my flavor.

I have other excuses for what might seem like an inordinately cautious nature: My mother.

She probably wouldn’t mind my telling you that we think my mother could have had a successful career as a disaster-forcaster for the CIA.

Most every activity had risks, and my mother could list them. My favorites were the man who was going to inject me with drugs at Disneyland, or the mall, and kidnap me, and the man who was going to do something similarly nefarious to me in the ocean if I went to the beach without adult supervision. In high school.

I can’t say my mom was wrong. Even as I type this, I believe that bad people do bad things in public places. Some of the time.

But on which day are you going to break your leg? And how many slopes go unskiied because of that fear?

In light of all this, my ongoing commitment to improv theater is a bit of an enigma. Granted, the likelihood of grave physical injury while playacting is fairly small, but the fear of falling is no less in operation in that world: being onstage, with people watching, having to MAKE SOMETHING UP?

(You can’t put embarrassment or humiliation in a cast and have your friends draw on it.)

Lately, I’ve fallen into knitting, as you know, and gourmet cooking, with gusto. The only falling risk here is metaphorical — a badly constructed garment, a less-than-tasty meal. Okay, I do worry a bit about food safety, so I wash my hands a lot, and I’ve burned and cut my fingers a number of times…

But, I’m clear I don’t have that “T” gene the scientists have been talking abut these days. There’s even health insurance policies marketed to thrill seekers. This site actually tells its potential customers they can “party hardier,” knowing they have purchased this type of medical coverage.

Which leads me back to biking. Clearly, there is physical risk here. And as you know, I struggle with it. And one can lead a perfectly fine life without getting on a bike. I’ve managed up to now. But I also have a little bit of that road-not-taken feeling (pun unintended). I don’t want to not bike because I might fall. I don’t want to not do anything in my life that might give me joy because of fear of failure or injury. But I can’t just get on a bike because I started a blog about it either…

The question is, will I ride the bike today out of guilt or joy?

Honestly, I’ll probably wait until the weekend.

Meanwhile, I’ve been all-talk about the various knitting of hats and posted no photos to prove it, so here are those:

This first one came out kind-of girlish, and a little small, and square-ish, and I wanted to keep it, and I had enough yarn left to try again, so…

This one looks great on Scott.

Instead of following the directions in the book, I tried another method of decreasing that was sort-of what another pattern I had bought described, and sort of something I made up: Dec 4 sts, evenly spaced, each rnd, making sure decs are not on top of the ones in the previous row.

Both hats didn’t seem to WANT tassels or earflaps. So I will have to try again with another hat better designed to take those augmentations.

And, yes, both match “his” scarf.