{"id":139411532,"date":"2009-06-02T13:25:32","date_gmt":"2009-06-02T13:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=139411532"},"modified":"2009-06-02T13:25:32","modified_gmt":"2009-06-02T13:25:32","slug":"for-adult-learners-bike-riding-isnt-as-easy-as-it-looks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=139411532","title":{"rendered":"For Adult Learners, Bike Riding Isn\u2019t as Easy as It Looks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[Note info on our adult classes can be found here: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimorespokes.org\/article.php?story=2008041713505581\">https:\/\/www.baltimorespokes.org\/article.php?story=2008041713505581<\/a>]<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nI was 16, a senior at a public high school in Manhattan, and I had never learned to ride a bike. So my friend and classmate Josh had walked with me to Riverside Park, taking along a bicycle from his family\u2019s apartment on the Upper West Side. We adjusted the seat low, so my feet could easily touch the ground, and Josh tried to explain the key concept behind bike riding: namely, balance. (Training wheels were not an option, at my advanced age.) I got on, and started to pedal.<br \/>\nIt did not go well.<br \/>\nI could not manage to travel four to six feet before the bike \u2014 and I \u2014 swerved wildly off course. My attempts to compensate for the bike\u2019s tilt in one direction by leaning in the other ended with my falling, repeatedly. Josh gamely tried to hold onto the back of the seat and run behind me, but it did not help. Our bike-riding lesson ended in failure when I fell onto (or was it over?) a park bench, scraped my arm and damaged the bike\u2019s front rim.<br \/>\nAs New York City goes through something of a bicycling renaissance \u2014 with the construction of new bike routes, improved bike parking, and even the closing of parts of Broadway to vehicular traffic \u2014 one issue has received little attention: there are some New Yorkers \u2014 and I\u2019m not talking about 5-year-olds \u2014 who do not know how to ride. Until I was 18, I was one of them.<br \/>\nMy embarrassment was heightened by the fact that I was part of a tiny minority. The National Survey of Bicyclist and Pedestrian Attitudes and Behavior [pdf], released last year by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, found that only 3 percent of adults surveyed said that not knowing how to ride was the primary reason they did not. Lack of access was the most common reason cited \u2014 by 28 percent \u2014 when respondents were asked why they have not been on a bike in the last 30 days or never ride during the summer.<br \/>\nThe League of American Bicyclists, a national advocacy group based in Washington, has been \u201cgetting more calls from the lost generation of 30- to 50-year-old adults who were less likely than their parents to ride,\u201d according to Meghan Cahill, a spokeswoman for the organization.<br \/>\nMs. Cahill said that \u201cbalance and fear of ridicule are the two biggest factors to overcome\u201d in learning how to ride.<br \/>\nThere have been anecdotal reports that demand for adult bike lessons is rising.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com\/2009\/06\/02\/for-adult-learners-bike-riding-isnt-as-easy-as-it-looks\/\">https:\/\/cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com\/2009\/06\/02\/for-adult-learners-bike-riding-isnt-as-easy-as-it-looks\/<\/a>oldId.20090602132532992<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Note info on our adult classes can be found here: https:\/\/www.baltimorespokes.org\/article.php?story=2008041713505581] &#8230; I was 16, a senior at a public high school in Manhattan, and I had never learned to ride a bike. So my friend and classmate Josh had walked with me to Riverside Park, taking along a bicycle from his family\u2019s apartment on &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=139411532\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;For Adult Learners, Bike Riding Isn\u2019t as Easy as It Looks&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139411532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking-elsewhere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139411532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=139411532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139411532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=139411532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=139411532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=139411532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}