A month ago my brother-in-law Richie and I finally convinced my sister to buy a bicycle. She’s 29yrs old and has never ridden a bicycle in her life.
When she was a little kid she had a bit of an accident where one of our cousins smashed into her. She was on one of those kiddies play toys with wheels and he was on a BMX. Perhaps that out an end to riding for her? We can’t be sure but in any case she now has a bike:
Great deal on this little bike from Grant at MC Cyclery.
I left Richie to train her, not thinking about it much at all, when I asked her how she was going a few weeks later she said they were looking for training wheels, but no shops sold training wheels for adult sized bicycles. I thought to myself, surely she doesn’t need training wheels! It’s easy to ride a bike! Anyone can do it right?! Well, wrong.
Turns out she had no idea how to ride a bicycle at all, and all of us that learnt from an early age should consider ourselves lucky as she was really struggling to gain confidence and balance at the age of 29.
I took her to the kiddies track at Centennial Park last week (despite her being embarassed about it!). Jamie was scared of the conctrete so we found a grass field. I got her sitting on the saddle and then just literally walking/shuffling the bike around. After a few minutes of this we found a slight slope and I got her to do the same but try to lift her feet up and roll. It was then that I realised how hard it was for her.
We made our way over to the kiddies track and tried our best to ignore the little 3yr olds who were already riding without trainers! Watching Jamie push then not comfortably lift her feet up was strange. Definitely something we take for granted. Rolling at slow speeds isn’t easy so I tried to get her to push off harder and roll faster. What’s interesting is that handlebar control is so important when learning how to balance on a bike. She doesn’t know what to do with the bars, so when she lifts her feet up and the bike goes left she does nothing with the bars and has to put her left foot down.
She felt good after that day though. I didn’t push her too much, we started at the very bottom. She’s since told me that she’s started pedalling a little and has had a couple of stacks in the backyard. I’m pretty sure she’ll get it any day now.