Girl Meets Bike

Over the weekend Pat started to talk about wanting to get a bike so he could go out and ride with the kids. What?? And leave me at home? Not that I couldn't use a break from time to time but I've had it in my mind for a while that I wanted to learn how to ride a bike and it sounds like a fun way to spend time together as a family. Besides, now was a perfect time for me to learn because Corbin's been going with his training wheels for a while so we can learn together and, frankly, because I still have health insurance right now. It will be ending soon when my job does and if I'm going to learn something that is fairly likely to result in me breaking something it's better to be insured when I do it.

So we went to a few places to look at bikes on Sunday and Monday when I got home from picking up Corbin from school Pat was there with a surprise...my first bike! So it's official. At 28 years of age I am finally attempting to learn how to ride a bike. I barely tried as a kid. Actually, if I remember correctly, I think I was rocking the training wheels, tried one time without them for about 10 minutes and decided it wasn't for me. But as an adult I'm a lot more confident and determined than I was as a child so I have that on my side at least.

Of course I wanted to ride it right that minute. Riding a bike looks like so much fun. So Pat took me out into a grassy area beside the club house in our community and ran behind me holding onto the back of the bike to help me balance like you would a little kid. I tried to pedal some but mostly just kept putting my feet down despite him telling me 500 times that I should use the brakes when I wanted to stop. I feel like I learned a lot that first day even though none of it had pretty much anything to do with me actually riding the bike. Here's what I learned in no particular order:

1. It's not as easy as it looks.

2.  Bikes are heavier than they look.

3. They don't actually help you stay upright at all. In fact, they seem to think you look better thrown on the ground.

4. If you're not used to riding a bike that seat is really flippin uncomfortable. Like someone kicked me in the crotch 20 times in a row uncomfortable.

5. I don't actually need to keep the steering wheel steady and straight. I don't know why I thought that. Unfortunately, Pat didn't think to tell me until the end of the lesson that I should be actually steering it to help keep my balance. It sounds obvious but it wasn't to me and its been so long since he learned to ride he forgets to tell me things like that.

I practiced for about half an hour or so before we had to give up because our kids kept trying to run away while Pat was helping me.

Later that night I looked online at websites describing how to teach an adult to ride a bike. The thing I kept seeing over and over was to lower the seat all the way so that your feet can touch the ground well, find a sloped area and  ride down without pedalling over and over to help teach you to balance. I'm not exactly sure how this is supposed to compute to Florida terms. For those of you not from here, Florida is the flattest state ever. The closest thing we have to hills is landfills.

Not to be discouraged though I did have Pat lower the seat all the way and started riding the bike more like a scooter for the past couple days and I feel like my balance is improving. A little. Nowhere near as much as I'd like. It gets frustrating after a while and I just want to be able to put my feet on the pedals and ride at more than 0 mph. Every once in a while I'll actually get myself coasting and balancing for a few feet and get some false confidence and try to really ride...and then fall over.

So after two days of this I've decided tomorrow I want to go out on my own with the bike while Pat watches the kids. I mostly believe his intentions are good and that he's following me aorund because he wants to be close by in case I fall to my doom but sometimes I look at him and he's got this smirk on his face while he's watching me like he just wants to laugh at me so bad but knows I'll kick him in the nuts if he does. Plus Corbin keeps making smartass remarks about how slow I am. Easy for him to say. He still has training wheels.

But mostly I want to go on my own so I can yell at the bike. Pat sees complaining as weakness and seems to think an angel dies every time I utter a curse word so I can't say half of what I'd like to tell the bike. I want to be able to yell out things like "You stupid piece of shit! How dare you throw me on the ground!" without him glaring at me or unintentionally teaching Alora a new favorite phrase.

So thats our plan for tomorrow. Just me, the bike, and a lot of yelling and crashing and hopefully a little more balancing. Wish me luck.