Don’t Like - Not Being Able To Ride A Bike

The most inconsequentially embarrassing thing about me is that I can’t, for the life of me, ride a bicycle. This is a particularly embarrassing because I live in Portland, OR—a cyclist’s paradise. I don’t know why I never learned to ride a bike. It’s partially a product of where I grew up, which was in a nice area of Los Angeles but also a place that didn’t have sidewalks and on a street filled with cars driving 50mph down it at all hours. The picture in today’s post is a google street view of that street. But, it wasn’t the only place I grew up. I also spent a lot of time as kid at my aunt’s house where my cousins had bikes that I could have learned on. Yet, I never did. I have two memories from childhood that involve crashing bikes. Once, I was biking and managed to turn the handlebars so quickly and severely that I was threw myself over them. Another time, I got a supposedly helpful push that was actually an unhelpful shove. This led my second hard introduction to the pavement. Those falls didn’t break any bones but they did break my confidence. In the years since, I’ve tried several (albeit brief) times to learn but it hasn’t clicked. Maybe I’ll try again this year. My friend Jenny has given me a standing invite for lessons. And it would be good to finally learn how to do it—it’s not like writing about it will change anything. Then again, I’ve also made it this far without being able to ride a bike. It isn’t a requisite skill for living. Plus, there is a chance that I just might be terrible at it. Someone has to be, right? The truth is I’ve never had good balance, and no one is expecting me to take up gymnastics. Maybe it’ll happen. Maybe it won’t. However, I can’t shake the feeling that the next time I meet the pavement will be my last.