By the time you’ve become an adult, there are a few skills you’re expected to have mastered - and bike riding is definitely one of them. But what happens if you haven’t? Is that it? Have you missed your chance? Last year, at the tender age of 39, Vera Alves decided to give up worrying about helmet hair and spend some time developing a skill about 30-something years later than most - and discovered she may have learned it later in life, but definitely not too late.
People love to refer to things they find easy as being “like riding a bike”. For 39 years, every time someone used that expression, I would admit that, to me, it didn’t mean the same thing it meant to them. If something was like riding a bike, that meant it was something I couldn’t do. At almost 40 years old, I’d come to accept the fact I couldn’t ride a bicycle - and I wasn’t even that bothered about it.
As interesting as it might have been, for the purposes of this narrative, there’s no traumatic story behind this. Due to a number of very dull circumstances - including having grown up in a small apartment in a busy city and never having been a very sporty or outdoorsy kid - I got through my childhood years without ever having to ride a bike. Once I got to my teen years, I was too self-conscious to even consider putting myself through the humiliation of learning a new skill, so the only solution was to accept my fate and boldly walk into adulthood not knowing how to do something most 5-year-olds can.
During my adult years, I had a couple of half-arsed attempts at learning but always gave up at the first literal wobble because of the risk of serious injury. Not being in pain, and being able to work to pay my bills are, annoyingly, two of my favourite things. Having both legs on casts would really get in the way of those two things.
Somewhere along the way, we stop growing up and start growing old. All those missed milestones stay in the past, as we stop thinking about all the new things we could learn and settle into just trying to improve on what we can.
That all changed when my daughter, too, decided she wasn’t that keen on bike riding. Living in a small town with plenty of outdoor spaces, bike riding is a common activity among her peers. In fact, the annual kids’ triathlon is mandatory for children at her school so it was important to encourage her to learn.
As I pushed her around the block on two wheels with her protesting she’d really rather be home playing Lego, two things became clear to me: I was a hypocrite telling her she absolutely needed to learn something I had not bothered to, and I was very jealous of her increasing confidence and how bike riding was slowly expanding her world.
She wasn’t the only one I was jealous of either. Seeing all the commuters riding past as I sat in traffic always made me feel I’d made the wrong choice. Seeing families out on bike rides on weekends made me sad that ours could not do the same because I had been too much of a wimp to learn. Have you ever noticed how everyone photographed on a bike always looks cool? I wanted to look cool too, damn it. I wanted to ride my bike to places that were too far to walk but too close to drive to. I wanted to whiz around the local paths with my daughter on a sunny Sunday morning. I wanted to ride to the pub and hang my bike on the cool bike-hanging thingies (apologies, I have not yet learned all the cool lingo). I wanted to encourage my daughter to be a confident rider because I knew it would make her, overall, a more confident human - and I wanted that for myself too.
These realisations were the catalyst to get me trying again. A friend kindly gifted me her old bike (she probably knew I’d be too cheap to actually get one myself) and offered to give me some tips to get started. I wasn’t convinced this attempt would be any more successful than the last, but I did not account for one factor: my child was watching me try to learn alongside her, and despite my willingness (and sometimes eagerness) to disappoint others, I was not keen on disappointing her.
Apparently one very efficient way to start is to remove the pedals from your bike so you learn to balance properly. I did not do that, as evidenced by the numerous bloodied scratches I sported on my shins and ankles in the first few days.
While every scratch put me off the idea a little more (“I have a driver’s licence, I don’t need to go through this nonsense,” I kept thinking to myself), I eventually learned to balance. In fact, I managed to ride, on my own, in an almost straight line, within an hour of trying. That one bit of progress was enough to keep me reaching for new bits of progress and, within a few days, I felt ready to leave the false sense of security that comes from riding on grassy lawns and move on to the dangers of the concrete footpath, holding on to those handlebars so hard my knuckles were sore for days.
It turns out the whole thing about old dogs and new tricks is truly a load of rubbish because, there I was, riding my way into my 40s. A few weeks later, when I turned 40, I got a fancy pink helmet and took myself on a little solo ride, thinking about all the cool things I could now consider learning as well.
Sure, the road to learning to ride a bike was bumpy and, as I write this, there are still many parts I am yet to master (things like riding past other cyclists without worrying I’m about to crash into them; changing gears; turning left; turning right; and dismounting somewhat elegantly rather than like an octopus on acid). But it was also surprisingly fun and, despite all the pain in awkward places (I now fully understand why real cyclists wear those awful-looking padded shorts), not nearly as difficult as I’d convinced myself it would be.
Bike riding on the rise
A quick Google search tells me there are many adults like me out there who never really learned to ride bikes as children and are now faced with the added difficulty of learning as an adult with the very rational fear of getting hurt.
Auckland Transport (AT) runs bike-riding sessions for adults looking to learn or expand on their skills. I found it very comforting to discover that, while I thought I was the last adult in this country, potentially on God’s green earth, to learn to ride a bike, AT alone has trained 1108 adults in the past year. In fact, their most popular course is the “Adults Learn to Ride” one, designed for individuals who have never ridden a bike or who haven’t been on one in a while, to help them cycle safely.
According to AT, cycling is only becoming more popular as a form of transport.
“This year, we recorded 3,389,114 trips across our 26 cycle counters in Auckland, reflecting an average increase of 7.6% compared to the previous year,” AT’s head of active modes Adrian Lord said.
“Additionally, our latest active modes survey shows that 29% of Aucklanders have cycled in the past 12 months. The number of people using e-bikes is on the rise, and those riders are cycling more frequently,” he added.
Demand for training is also increasing, according to AT.
“Many people taking up cycling in adulthood will usually start for leisure reasons and value support by joining events and groups with other ‘newbies’ before progressing into cycling for everyday journeys,” Lord said.
Fitness is one of the main motivators for taking up bike riding and many people seek courses like the one AT provides because they want to stay safe on the paths.
The proliferation of e-bikes has also contributed to more people taking up cycling, whether or not for the first time.
In New Zealand, the ability to ride a bike is relatively high compared to a lot of other countries, with 77% of urban New Zealanders able to ride a bike, according to data from NZTA Waka Kotahi.
However, getting the opportunity to do so can be a challenge, with only 47% of those who can ride having access to a bike. Safety is another barrier to cycling. Public roads without cycle lanes, vehicles on the road, and cycling in the dark are key safety concerns for cyclists, according to the agency.
Five things to remember when learning to ride a bike as an adult (or learning any new skill)
While I am far from an expert rider, I do feel the whole experience gave me a new perspective on learning new skills and unlocking a whole host of experiences I never thought would be for me.
1. Forget shame
For my first bike-riding attempts, I found an empty section in my neighbourhood and waited until it was quiet enough outside in order to practice. I did not want any neighbours to see me wobbling my way around on a bike while my husband held the back of the seat and ran alongside me as I shouted, “DON’T LET GO, DON’T YOU DARE LET GO!”. Now look at me, writing about it for everyone to read, shame be damned.
Jokes aside, learning to be comfortable with feeling embarrassed is quite a valuable skill. I had to give myself some serious pep talks in the process, reminding myself that at least I was trying, and wobbling along was definitely better than not trying at all.
Don’t be afraid to reach out to your bike-riding friends and ask them to give you some tips. I have some very highly skilled friends who I thought would laugh at me but who, instead, reached into the recesses of their brains for the tips that helped them learn all those years ago.
2. It probably won’t take as long as you think
When I first got on a bike, I thought I was embarking on a months-long mission to even be able to ride down the road. I had built it up in my head to be one of the hardest things I’d ever have to do. The reality is that getting to that stage took maybe an afternoon or two.
Whatever skill you attempt to learn probably won’t take as long as you think it will - and even if it does, that time is going to pass anyway, so you might as well spend it doing something you enjoy.
3. Use the internet to your advantage
The internet is a cesspit of doom but it can also be a great place to find tutorials, how-to videos and, above all, a supportive community of people to help you reach your goals. I spent years thinking I was probably the only adult on Earth who’d missed out on learning to ride a bike, but it turns out there are heaps of us out there and even more people eager to help us learn. Whatever it is you want to do, you will find someone wanting to learn it too, and a bunch of people keen to help you.
4. You will wonder what else is out there that you can do
This one is not so much a tip as it is a word of warning: Once you learn a new skill at an older age, especially something you’d convinced yourself you’d never learn, it will trigger some kind of undeserved self-confidence and your brain will start thinking of what else you can learn.
Since learning to ride a bike I, for example, have bought a skateboard. It still feels impossible that my old, tired body will learn the necessary balance and co-ordination it takes to stand upright on one of those, and there’s probably an ACC claim or two in my near future, but - and this is the ultimate question you should ask before talking yourself out of something - what if I like it?
5. Find your “why”
It is now very clear to me that my previous attempts at learning to ride a bike failed because I did not have a clear purpose. I saw it through this time because I wanted this shared experience with my daughter. Having a strong reason will carry you through any adversities you face along the way.
I wish I could tell you my overall goal was a more noble one, like wanting to ditch my car and save the planet on my two wheels, but I wouldn’t lie to you. Still, despite being a bit more self-serving, my goal was pretty rock-solid. I wanted to have this shared experience with my daughter.
As I ride alongside her these days (if she agrees to ride slowly so I can keep up), there is not a single bruise or embarrassing wobble that I regret because they all got me to this day. On top of that, after 39 years of not being able to do something most people can, I will never not be someone who can’t ride a bike. That feels surprisingly great to say.
