Having recently made a move to a neighborhood fairly close to my place of employment, I have become a member of a wonderful class of people known as “Bike Commuters.” I’d secretly wanted to do this for years, seeing as how the trips to and from the office are the only times I can manage to spend on my bike. So as soon as the weather turned favorable, I mounted up, threw a backpack over my shoulders, and hit the streets -- an enthusiastic, shining example of why it’s so cool to ride your bike to work.

It was somewhere on my fourth or fifth day of bike commuting that I got my first flat tire. I was halfway home on the post-work trip, riding near the campus of The Ohio State University, when I suddenly noticed that I wasn’t moving quite as easily as I should have been. A quick glance down revealed that my rear tire -- which I had replaced only a few days before with tires better suited for commuting on paved streets -- was starting to hang off the wheel like an old woman’s pantyhose. I hopped off the bike, followed the cruel hiss of escaping air, and found a staple the size of a Ford Focus planted firmly in the rubber. I was left with the choice of either walking my bike the remaining three miles, or calling my ladylove to come and pick me up. You get one guess as to which route I went with.

One week and one replaced inner tube later, my bike and I were back on the road, suffering through an abysmally hot and humid Ohio morning, headed into the land of the breadwinner. After entering the charming old neighborhood of Victorian Village, replete with brick streets, my rear tire decided to have another adventure in decompression. With no domestic partner to rescue me this time, I half rolled, half carried my bike over street and sidewalk for two miles, legs getting nicked and scraped by the pedals, and my dislike of bicycle commuting ever growing. If it weren’t for the high price of gasoline, the cost of new inner tubes might very well overtake that particular merit of riding my bike to work.

And yet, I shall continue to ride my bike whenever possible, because… well, damnit, I CAN.

To aid those who also might be new to the world of the bike commuter, here are some other unexpected lessons that I have learned during my travels:

Dogs are not the most hazardous creatures that you’ll encounter on a bike path. This title goes to Canadian Geese. These birds will form a kind of street gang, blocking your path whenever they are able. If you swerve to avoid them, they’ll hiss at you and flap their wings, occasionally even giving chase with sticks and knives. (They migrated in from the bad part of Canada, obviously.) I’ve found the best way to deal with this menace is to aim directly at them, close your eyes, and hope for the best. And even if you’re lucky enough to avoid a flock of grounded geese, you still have to watch out for one of their more subversive attempts to thwart a cyclist, namely a hazard known as “slick pile of goose shit.”

While you should always be cognizant of automotive traffic, I advise you to be doubly or even triply so if your route takes you past a retirement community. Old folks and cars are a recipe for excitement! They bob. They weave. They attempt to pin you against parked cars. And twice now I’ve nearly been clipped by a Buick-wielding blue hair as he or she has come hurtling out of the community’s parking lot. These people will also appear in other random places, such the occasion where a kind old woman blew the horn of her Lincoln at me for not moving out of her way as she drove past. I should mention that at the time, I was stopped on the sidewalk. She simply glared at me, navigated her car up the sloped curb, and proceeded to drive down the bike trail along the river -- apparently not associating her Towncar as being one of the prohibited “motorized vehicles” mentioned on a nearby sign. I wasn’t sure if she was confused that the bike path was actually some kind of service road, but I felt that she would reach an understanding when it would soon dead end into a park where she couldn’t turn her behemoth car around.

Finally, there’s a hazard toward the other end of the age spectrum: the hot collegiate girl. As your bike route may take you near a college or university, you’re likely to come across this phenomenon in your travels -- they can be doing anything from sunning themselves in a park to jogging or rollerblading along the path with you, and they will do anything in their power to overt your eyes from the road in front of you, opening up the possibility of running over rocks, small children, geese (although we’re agreed this is actually acceptable), or at the very worst, another attractive girl.

If you ever have to call your wife to come and pick up you and your disabled bike because you were in a collision with a co-ed, I can guarantee you that getting flat tires will be the least of your bike commuting worries.