Joined: 23 Jan 2006Posts: 457Location: Remington Country
I'm just curious: what kind of kid grows up not learning how to ride a bike? Or swimming? Those seem like basic skills you should learn as a kid. Right?
Sheldon Brown wrote:
One of the many tasks parents must undertake is teaching their children to ride bicycles.
It must be true if he says it.
Has anyone here taught an adult how to ride a bike? Or learned as an adult? Any interesting stories from doing so?
Drunkan
Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 10:28 am
Joined: 09 Sep 2007Posts: 95Location: Wallingford
My friends girlfriend back home had never ridden a bike and he taught her at 29. Apparently it was a good thing no one else was around to watch as it was a difficult process. Ultimately a success (after many days) if I remember correctly.
snyd3282
Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 10:32 am
could suck the fun out of a blowjobJoined: 23 Jul 2007Posts: 588Location: Ballard / Fremont
Last summer I taught a co-worker, who was raised outside of the US - Africa if I remember right, how to ride a bike for the first time.
It was a long process, but now she enjoys it and comes out on the occasional lunchtime ride.
ro
Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 10:45 am
Joined: 29 Jun 2007Posts: 317
I learned as a kid, taught by an older cousin. Which means find the biggest hill and push the little kid down the hill. I was seven years old, which means if I do the math was 1/2 century ago.
I taught a woman who was in her 30's how to ride (not the steep hill method), it was a bloody affair for a few weeks, but she is still riding to this day.
Alex
Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 10:48 am
Joined: 18 May 2006Posts: 3128Location: Roosevelt
I learned when I was a kid. My dad bike commuted and we'd go on weekend rides. Bikes were a pretty integral part of my childhood.
About 8 or 9 years ago I took a non-cyclist (a friend of my wife's who had never ridden a bicycle) on a few rides on our tandem and she had a good time. We started to teach her how to ride her own bike, but that didn't really go anywhere.
alex
SeditiousCanary
Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 10:51 am
sorry, can't make it!Joined: 26 Jan 2006Posts: 2315Location: Fremont Troll
Remington wrote:
Has anyone here taught an adult how to ride a bike?
Several actually while working for bike shops. I have always found it to be pretty easy, but I learned later in life (12) than many. I also have a method which works very well, which helps alot.
TrikerTrev
Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 11:02 am
Joined: 23 Oct 2006Posts: 2303Location: FOCO, MOFO!!!
growin up in the suburbs of Denver in the 70's you either walked or biked where ya wanted to go...and with everything inconveniently spaced out walking was for the uber poor.
I rode distances then that, as a parent now, would make me cringe! But back in the day we didnt worry about the fucking freaks like we have to now, of course, there was a serious lack of people in my area then too.
I lived on a mild hill too, so i learned by the coast or crash method. Ya also didnt have helmets or have to worry about drivers not yielding to kids on bikes like ya do now. I cant even recall a close call with a car, and only had one nasty wreck (Huffy...front wheel fell off bunny hopping up a curb on its maiden voyage doing like 20...ouch!)
god i wish i could go back...
And as a cycling parent, one kid down, one learning.
Razi
Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 11:07 am
Joined: 16 Dec 2005Posts: 866Location: Seattle
My dad taught me when I was young. I remember the process pretty clearly. First I could start but could not stop. Then I could stop but had trouble starting. Finally I woke up one summer morning really early and decided that this would be the day where it would all come together. I went outside and got on the bike. Saddled up, rode for maybe 100' and then stopped without issue.
I rode around for a bit before going home and waking my mom up to tell her the big news (dad was already at work). My friend Ryan came over and the two of us rode our bikes all day. When my dad came home that afternoon he scooped me up off my bike in a huge hug. I even remember the shirt he was wearing.
I learned young, I started with training wheels, but they work horribly on unpaved surfaces like the dirt road I lived on. The dirt road was more fun to make skid marks on with coaster brake bikes. I don't remember who actually taught me. My dad used to bike commute as a result of the 70's bike boom, I remember thinking that was so far but was probably only ~12 miles, on par with what I do now. I think I finally got permission to ride the 4 miles to the last day of 6th Grade (Elementary). About a mile of that was the busy truck laden Mt Baker Highway though so understandably the concern.
I guess I could say I am still learning how to ride a bike. Moving here for college I was a pretty crappy city rider at first.
mork the delayer
Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 11:24 am
Joined: 06 Apr 2006Posts: 548Location: Providence, RI
My riding was discontinuous. My memories of early life are minimal, but I do remember this black and neon green bike I had and crashed spectacularly on the gravel road to my house. I think it was a Murray or something. I lived on a lake in the 'burbs and rode to friends houses, the beach, DQ, all fairly short distances.
After I outgrew that bike I had a blue one that may have been a Trek. I stopped riding much in highschool, though I brought that bike to Seattle when I moved here for college. I left in in the garage of my first apt. on 8th Ave by I5 and it was vandalized and had a wheel stolen. I was pissed and I left it for scrap. I probably didn't ride that bike in Seattle more than 5 times.
When I moved across the block to 9th Ave I found a Trek 820 under the porch of the house I moved into. That started me biking again. I still have that bike.
_________________ Adam
pete jr
Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 12:06 pm
Joined: 13 Dec 2005Posts: 1930Location: balls deepx
my ex-girlfriend never learned to ride a bike. she was pretty scared of learning, and i never had anything that was the right size for her. to the best of my knowledge, she still does not know how. bikes were a contributing factor to that breakup, though i think it had more to do with me coming home all drunk and smelly after having ridden bikes rather than her inability to ride.
it was very frustrating, though.
beware, remington.
langston
Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 12:15 pm
Joined: 25 Jul 2005Posts: 5547Location: Columbia City
after a few years of Big Wheels, I got my first bike for my 5th birthday, just after moving to Phoenix. My dad taught me to ride, with the run-behind-holding-the saddle technique. It took a couple of days, but I never needed training wheels or any of the zany techniques (no peddals, etc) that I've since heard of.
I remember my first bike clearly, it was a Diamondack BMX bike he got from a coworker whose kid had outgrown it. I kept it for a few years, then got a bigger bike (schinn somethingoranother) when I turned 10. I got a new bike when I turned 14, some cheap MTB thing, and rode it up until I got my drivers license at 16. In Mukilteo, everything is a miles-long hill so there wasn't a lot of riding to do other than into Everett on the fairly busy arterial.
FieryIrie
Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 1:15 pm
Joined: 25 Jun 2007Posts: 554Location: Wallingford
This thing of not knowing how to ride bikes til you're grown up... It's like a far off tale I've only heard about.
Santa brought me my first bike when I was... ooh, 6 or 7. A hot pink splatter paint huffy. She was the best. There was another girl down the street with my same name and the same bike (weird.)
I have the best memories of trying to ride that bike and I totally remember the first time I took off and didn't fall over. SOOO EXCITING! We were a neighborhood of bike riding kids. All those little hills seemed so big! It was definitely a big art of our social culture.
Then Badhill really ran with it. That kid's one serious oldschool biker.
Love hearing your guys stories!
Bentkunin
Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 1:38 pm
Joined: 16 Nov 2007Posts: 6Location: North Seattle
I re-taught my wife how to ride when she was in college. She had learned as a kid, but she had her bike stolen. Her parents got her another one, but it was too big and she never rode it.
I learned when I was about 5-6. I remember my first real wipeout was when I was 6 heading down the hill in front of my house. My bike still had training wheels and I hadn't learned how to use the coaster break yet. A car pulled out of a driveway and dragging my feet didn't slow me quick enough, so I ditched it, ending up flat on my back with various sidewalk rash. Did the same thing a year later on a skateboard. :)
kalen
Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 1:42 pm
Joined: 10 Apr 2007Posts: 342Location: Olympia, on the farm
My early memories of bikes involve a big wheel, and later my neighbor's dad taking my training wheels off when he decided I didn't need them anymore. He tended to do a lot of things like that (shoving me into the pool, for instance).
I never liked the school bus, and lived about 3/4 mile from my elementary school, so in the 3rd grade, I took the bicycling test and rode to school almost every day for the next 4 years. I rode my mom's old green Motobecane, which she rode in high school, and eventually moved up to my dad's Raleigh when I got taller.
Middle school put cycling on hold until the end of high school. I bought a schwinn hybrid with my graduation money in preparation for moving to Seattle and going to the UW. From there things slowly progressed, culminating with my Trek 520 as a college graduation gift. Since then, things have gone downhill much more steadily.
Eric_s
Posted: Sun Dec 02, 2007 3:36 pm
Joined: 07 Mar 2007Posts: 1691Location: the dirty south
I rode bikes all around as a kid. I never maintained them, and neither did my parents, so I would occasionally have mechanical failures, including one going down a gravel alley where my chain came off and I ended up missing patches of skin from my ass, two days before I went to scout camp the first time. Talk about a fun time: Being 12 years old, at scout camp, having to change a bandage on my own ass.
Actually, We rode bikes all summer long around the neighborhood, skidding and jumping and making jumps and crashing and going to visit friends.
_________________ That's Lemmy, Not Jesus.
gsbarnes
Posted: Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:52 pm
Joined: 15 Aug 2006Posts: 2666Location: No Fun Town, USA
Speaking of both skills Remington mentioned, I learned to ride a bike at 5 because it was the earliest I could, and swim at around 3, because we lived in the midwest and swimming was what you did summer afternoons to avoid turning into a pool of sweat.
My 7-year old learned how to swim at around 3, too, but appears only now to have learned how to ride a bike. The 4-year old we haven't tried on a bike, but we have tried to get him swim lessons and he refuses to go into the water. We figure when he's older and everyone else can go in the pool but him, he will change his mind.
My wife says she didn't bother learning to ride a bike until her younger brother was just about to learn, then she picked it up in a few days so she could beat him to it.
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surlykat
Posted: Sun Dec 02, 2007 5:37 pm
Joined: 05 Jul 2007Posts: 658Location: in the CD
I think I was 6 when I learned to ride a bike without training wheels. I remember distinctly that the bike had a banana seat; I thought that it was the coolest bike on the block. (I think my parents picked it up at a neighbor's garage sale.) I rode with the other kids, and with my brother, but moving to Denver where we lived on a rather steep hill caused a decline in my cycling.
As a high schooler (in Texas) I would ride around the trails behind my neighborhood, but not often, since I had no one to ride with and my bike was pretty crappy by this point. I often borrowed my mom's - a mid-90's Schwinn hybrid.
When I went off to college (the first time) my parents bought me a Trek MTB for graduation. It weighed about 50lbs and I hardly ever rode it, especially since I never bothered getting fenders. I sold it when I dropped out of school and didn't ride a bike for a few years. I considered adopting a pink Huffy (hey, it was AWESOME) that was abandoned in the basement of the place I used to live; however, after one trip on the saddle I quickly re-abandoned the bike, and ignored bikes for another year and a half.
Then this April I started thinking about it again, and how much more efficient it must be to ride than to walk or take the bus. I found an old Sekai road bike on CL and rode it enough to know that I liked riding bikes, but I didn't really fit the bike. Then when I graduated I bought my Surly, and joined .83... the rest, they say, is history. Or something.
My 7-year old learned how to swim at around 3, too, but appears only now to have learned how to ride a bike. The 4-year old we haven't tried on a bike, but we have tried to get him swim lessons and he refuses to go into the water. We figure when he's older and everyone else can go in the pool but him, he will change his mind.
That's what you think! Ask the lifeguard who tried to coax me into the pool as a small kid. I responded by breaking her foot with a heel stomp when she tried to jump in while holding me.
My parents apparently paid the class fee and gave up... I ended up teaching myself to swim when I took up dinghy sailing many years later, but not before I had learned to do a dry capsize.
My father never taught me to ride since he was away for work so often; I ended up teaching myself if I recall correctly. My parents bought me a Sears bike (with coaster brakes and solid rubber tires, no tubes!) and had attempted to hide it in the basement for Christmas. I found it and took off on the training wheels. Mum gave up and took the training wheels off and gave me the bike early. Within a week I was a pro.
lantius
Posted: Sun Dec 02, 2007 10:33 pm
1337Joined: 22 Jul 2005Posts: 6705Location: right over
i learned how to ride a bike on our summer vacations at long beach, washington:
the bike itself was actually picked up from the dump, sanded, and repainted with green house-paint. hence the sort of bikes i ride now?
Razi
Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 12:38 am
Joined: 16 Dec 2005Posts: 866Location: Seattle
I learned to swim about the same time I learned to walk. I really believe that learning to swim as young as possible is one of the greatest priorities parents should set for their kids.
Gotta start 'em young. My little guy is a bike fiend at 15mo. He screams and points whenever he sees daddy's bikes...and he has his own.
langston
Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 8:20 am
Joined: 25 Jul 2005Posts: 5547Location: Columbia City
Razi wrote:
I learned to swim about the same time I learned to walk. I really believe that learning to swim as young as possible is one of the greatest priorities parents should set for their kids.
likewise. It is my understanding that infants come pre-conditioned to know how to swim and it is only once they mature a little that it is a skill that is needed to be relearned. I learned to swim at ~2, in the pool at our house in Florida.
Remington
Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 9:14 am
Joined: 23 Jan 2006Posts: 457Location: Remington Country
Learning to ride a bike is one of my earliest memories, along with crashing a Power Wheels jeep down the hill off the same driveway I learned how to ride. I blame my younger brother for that one; passengers should not grab the steering wheel. I remember that the most exciting birthday/Christmas presents were always new bikes. I guess that one fortunate side effect of my parent's divorce when I was four was that my dad ended up moving to an apartment with a swimming pool where he taught both me and my brother to swim.
Seven
Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 9:52 am
suddenly quite whiny!Joined: 24 Aug 2007Posts: 345Location: Cap Hill
My dad had been a hardcore cyclist back in the day. Not like a squid or anything but the same way I am now, in that he would ride his bike everywhere he needed to go, and wouldn't hold back if he wanted to go somewhere far away. He lived in L.A. and he rode from their to San Fran on more than one occasion. So needless to say, he taught me to ride at a pretty young age. They provided me with bikes all the way up through my younger years until I replaced it with a moped when I was about 15. I rode that until I was 19 and then I got a car and forgot about pedals for a few years. Moving to Seattle really kind of rekindled that for me. Honestly, I don't ever want to own another car.
n_claw
Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 12:27 pm
Joined: 02 Jul 2007Posts: 517Location: the only hill: Beacon
My first "bike" was a classic lil red trike at about two or three years old. Later my father brought me a Huffy with a coaster brake for my birthday. My stepfather promptly removed the training wheels after we figured out that they were crooked and actually causing me to fall over! He taught me to ride figure-8s, to zig-zag up a hill to ease climbing the grade, and then sent me on my way.
Thru my adolescence, bikes greatly contributed to my ability to get into trouble, from fist fights to boozing with the neighborhood rateros. At one point I even ran away from home on my bicycle. Actually I guess this means that very little has changed, eh, other than that I'm no longer jailbait and nowadays I can run towards home! Heh.
In college I commuted in a leather jacket, mini-skirts and combat boots thru rain, sleet, snow, hail, and mud on an extremely shoddy and ill-maintained dept. store MTB. I had no idea what I was doing, so while I was constantly working on it, the derailleur was constantly throwing my chain, the brakes were non-existent, etc. I was 'that crazy biker girl', and I felt like a beautiful rogue of a creature. Later I actually found out there are other people who aren't squids that ride bikes, and I continue to thrive happily ever after.
Alex
Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 1:54 pm
Joined: 18 May 2006Posts: 3128Location: Roosevelt
lantius wrote:
the bike itself was actually picked up from the dump, sanded, and repainted with green house-paint. hence the sort of bikes i ride now?
Nice shiny new bikes with good bits? I think all three of your bikes were welded and painted in 2007!
lantius
Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 3:01 pm
1337Joined: 22 Jul 2005Posts: 6705Location: right over
Alex wrote:
lantius wrote:
the bike itself was actually picked up from the dump, sanded, and repainted with green house-paint. hence the sort of bikes i ride now?
Nice shiny new bikes with good bits? I think all three of your bikes were welded and painted in 2007!
yep... but still ugly!
Razi
Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 3:08 pm
Joined: 16 Dec 2005Posts: 866Location: Seattle
I find the ugliness of surly bikes to be somewhat charming.
I have a friend who is in her late 20s and didn't learn to ride a bike until a couple years ago at burning man. she told me it was a lot easier to do when she was drunk.
I learned to ride a real bike when I was 7, and I thought I had a late start. my parents pieced together a beat-up BMX bike, and I lived on those until about 10 or 11, and by that point I could tear down and rebuild one basically from scratch. then i got into skateboarding for a while. at about 14 I had a mountain bike that probably never saw a dirt trail in the couple of years I rode it. then I stopped for some reason. picked up biking again about a year ago and have been wondering why I didn't do this my whole life. I still build my bikes from scratch.
Gotta start 'em young. My little guy is a bike fiend at 15mo. He screams and points whenever he sees daddy's bikes...and he has his own.
This is where those Oh Boy Oberto kids come from, isn't it? Dude, those kids in the U16 category give me a five minute head start and they still catch me. Granted, they're not riding in traffic, but still...
apocalypsewow
Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 4:43 am
Joined: 11 Oct 2007Posts: 82Location: wallingfnord
My first was a blue Murray BMX i got for my 5th birthday my dad pulled the old "Ill hold on to the seat" then pushed me down a hill
derrickito
Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 11:09 am
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bobhall
Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 11:48 am
Joined: 28 Jul 2006Posts: 460
My dad bought me a pink fixie when I was 6 and I've been riding it ever since.
Seriously though, I did the usual no-training-wheels push behind the saddle fall-to-get-off-the-bike-'cause-it's-too-big-for-you thing. Then when I was in the sixth grade I inherited my brother's paper route. That's why I always tell people my very first job was being a bike messenger. That's right, I was cool before I realized how cool I was being :)
laura
Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2007 4:43 pm
Joined: 22 Jun 2007Posts: 1050Location: wherever the dance party is
I don't remember who taught me ... the 1st bike I remember was this Huffy that had knobby mountain bike-esque tires that I rocked all over the neighborhood in 1st & 2nd grade. Everything on that bike was pink: the seat, the handlebar grips, the tires, the pedals. It even had a pink "2" on this plastic sign on the front.
I thought I was super bad-assed on that bike.
After watching the older boys ride off a ramp, I tried to perform my 1st "jump" over a cinder block. I fell and lost the top layer of skin on my foot (learned the important lesson of flip flops + bike = no-no). Lots of tears until a neighbor brought me an ice-cream sandwich.
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