Greetings!
Yesterday, while I was outside trying to remove clothes I had hung on the line because it was starting to drizzle, I saw a lady in her late 20s (I presume) struggling to ride a bicycle. The way she was acting, flickering with fear, caught my attention, and I couldn’t help but laugh, thinking she was too old to be displaying such difficulty in riding a bicycle.
Throughout that moment, my brain kept comparing the ease of riding a bicycle for an adult to things like riding a motorbike, driving a car, or even piloting an airplane. Maybe it's because I know how to ride a bicycle that I saw it differently.
Learning to ride a bicycle as an adult is much simpler than learning to ride a motorbike or drive a car. A bicycle doesn’t require any significant technical knowledge or electrical application (except for electric bicycles). All it takes is to sit, balance, put your feet on the pedals, and pedal off. That's why, whenever I see an adult who says they don’t know how to ride a bicycle, I attribute it to laziness, as there’s really no excuse. Even if they don’t own a bicycle, just observing one and imagining the process should make it clear how easy it is. Please someone should prove me wrong🫣
I once had a conversation with a friend in this Blockchain who told me that she knew how to ride a bicycle when she was little but not anymore as an adult.
“HOW, WHY?” I asked, and she explained that she is now scared of the whole system. I couldn't hold back my frustration.
When I learned to ride a bicycle, I was aided by my siblings because I was little, and it was our culture back then to help any young child willing to learn, especially to chase off the stereotype that everyone learning to ride a bicycle must sustain a deep injury to be successful.
That’s what it was like for children, but it shouldn’t be so for adults. An adult should be abke to pick up a bicycle buy himself and go and train by himself.
For an adult, a bicycle should seem very manageable, just like a motorbike appears handy to someone experienced with it. When we learned how to ride a bicycle as kids, the bicycles were bigger than us, and there was no way we could sit on the seat directly without getting the bicycle moving first. If we sat on the seat first, we would fall because our legs couldn’t reach the pedals correctly. It was only when the bicycle was in motion that we could reach the pedals with our short legs.
But for an adult learning to ride a bicycle, it’s straightforward: just take a balanced seat, put your feet on the pedals, and start pedaling. It's as simple as that.
I really wish an adult who can’t ride a bicycle would read this and explain their difficulties.
Thanks for reading.
All photos were designed on Canva
