It’s taken me 30 years to get up the courage to ride
In honor of Women’s Bike Month, I’d like to share my 25-year journey of learning how to ride a bike, featuring the three people who helped me along the way. I’ve made a very gradual transition from happy, wobbly training-wheels me to happy, wobbly 30’s me riding to my local hardware store.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wished I could bike everywhere. I grew up on a busy, winding road where cycling was a recipe for getting killed.
When I was 5, I got a white bike with pink handlebars for my birthday. I loved riding around the parking lot on training wheels. But I was so afraid of falling that I couldn’t manage to graduate to 2 wheels.
Still on training wheels at age 8, I spent hours with my brother trying to learn to ride in the yard. The grass was so bumpy that I became more and more convinced that riding a bike was impossible for un-athletic little me.
Finally, the family convinced me to try riding on pavement without training wheels. 10 minutes later, I was riding. 🚴
I LOVED IT. An hour later, I had to stop riding around my grandparents’ block because it was getting too dark to see.
Without a place to ride, my bike career went on a long pause for the next 10+ years. But I still dreamed of being able to bike places. When I visited family in the Netherlands, I couldn’t believe that biking to work and to the grocery was the norm. In fact, today 1 out of every 4 people in the Netherlands bikes to work.
After college, my parents sold me a 2003 Chrysler Sebring, but I kept dreaming of riding my bike. I got a job in my hometown, a small city in Virginia where we had no bike lanes and almost no cyclists. Still, I wanted to try.
On National Walk / Bike to Work Day that year, I organized a 2-mile ride from downtown to my workplace. I sent out a mass email to everyone at work (200 people). I hoped people would show — I didn’t want to ride unless I had someone to go with me. When I was the only person to show up, I was undaunted. I celebrated the day anyway by walking to work on the side of the road, feeling like a badass in my black pleather jacket.
That year I also attended a beginner ride organized by a local bike shop. When I heard “beginner ride,” I thought, “Great! There will be families and little kids and I will feel right at home learning things.” I anticipated the ride for weeks.
Clad in jeans, I rode to the shop on my knobby-tired bike to find 8 people in spandex deciding between 10 miles of hills and 15 miles of hills. I rode with them for 3 blocks before giving up. I rode home, beyond discouraged.
Ten years later, things have turned around completely. I donated the Sebring to charity. I’m biking to work. I’m biking to the grocery store. I’m picking up 25 pounds of groceries in bags hung from the side of my bike.
What changed?
I haven’t changed. I’m still puny. I still have knee problems and and questionable balance. I ride like a granny. But I’m riding. And I love it.
What got me pedaling was meeting people who had dreamed the same dreams of biking to work and made those dreams a reality. At age 24, I started meeting people who started biking when they were out of shape just like me. They were scared at first, too. And like me, one day they put on their helmets and started inching shakily around the block.
These women wore down my insecurity. Without knowing each other, they worked together to get me on my bike.
The first person to start chipping away at my resistance was my friend Stephanie.
In 2012, she started a blog about how to ride around town and look amazing at the same time. Her blog Girls Biking to Work: Practical Bicycle Fashion for the Working Jane helped would-be riders select work-appropriate weatherproof bike gear. Stephanie was bike commuting year-round in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Her first post Biking: If I Can Do It, You Can Too! seemed too good to be true:
I don’t wear spandex. I don’t consider myself to be a serious cyclist, and racing, bike polo and bicycle touring in third world countries do not appeal to me. But I love my bike, and I love riding it.
When I moved back to Minneapolis in April 2011, I hadn’t ridden a bike in nearly two years. Newly single and on a shoestring budget, a few things became clear very quickly:
1) I needed my ’06 Ford Focus with 112,000 miles to last for many years to come
2) I could not afford to fill up my tank every week
3) I could not afford to pay for parking on a regular basis
4) The bus system in the Twin Cities left several things to be desired, including affordability and reliability
I was doubtful, but intrigued. I kept reading.
Stephanie’s story made biking accessible to me. Her down-to-earth advice and photos started to crack my belief that I wasn’t strong enough or brave enough to bike. It took a lot of guts for her to bike to work in below-zero weather. I devoured her posts and fantasized about someday getting a bike of my own.
That same year, a woman I’d never heard of named Emily Finch gave a biking conference talk called In Her Own Words.
In Her Own Words (see below) documents her journey from driver to cyclist. Emily started out with a giant SUV, a bunch of pregnancy weight, and 6 small children.
After an evaluation of what made her happy in life, she wondered if there could be a way to ditch her Ford Explorer and ride her bike. She sold the car and bought a Dutch cargo bike. Now she’s hauling those same 6 kids all over town on her bike.
“Bicycling is contagious,” Emily says. “Let’s get more unhappy people on bikes!”
I thought, wow. Emily’s not that much bigger than I am. If she can haul 6 kids and groceries, maybe I could learn to ride!
The person who ultimately got me on the road was Emily, a ride leader from a group called WE Bike NYC.
We women need a little encouragement to get on our bikes. It’s easy to feel intimidated when we know so few people riding. Only 25% of bike trips in the US are taken by women. WE Bike NYC is working to change that.
WE Bike NYC is a community of women who ride bikes! Our goal is to provide a safe space for women to ride together regardless of skill, speed and riding style.
When I heard We Bike NYC was hosting a beginner-friendly ride through Central Park, I was in a really depressed place in my life and spent most weekends in bed. I hadn’t ridden a bike in 5 years. But I wanted to try. I borrowed a CitiBike and showed up to the ride.
I struggled. Another woman on the ride, trying to make it easier for me, commented that it would be much easier to ride if I had my seat higher than its current all-the-way-down position. :flushed: I said, “Then I couldn’t get on.”
Someone then pointed out that perhaps I didn’t know how to get on and off my bike properly. I was mortified. While I recognized that they were being helpful AND offering to teach me something, I was having flashbacks to being the last person chosen for every gym class team. I must look to them like my 8-year-old self, scared and wobbly. I couldn’t respond. I had too many tears in my eyes.
I wanted to tell them that I would normally be lying depressed in bed right now. Even being vertical felt like a monumental achievement, let alone riding a bike in front of other people.*
In the end, I finished the ride. The group — a mixture of fitness levels and experience — was super supportive (including the people trying to help me, obviously). We were riding to ice cream — my ultimate litmus test of whether exercise is worth it. The group leader Emily seemed unfazed by my ummmm… “leisurely” pace.
I joined the group’s facebook group and have continued to get a steady stream of encouragement and ideas to make biking to work easier.
At the white elephant swap last Christmas, women gave me leather biking gloves, a fancy messenger bag, and a rainbow hub light. 😉
That was a year ago. I’ve gotten better. I still have my seat way too low, and I’m still learning how to get on and off. But I’m pedaling, and I’m getting places. It still feels as much like flying as it did that first day when I was 8. And I love it.
Thank you to Stephanie, Emily Finch, and Emily and the ladies at We Bike NYC for getting me on my bike. Your encouragement means the world to me.
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*| I later told a friend how humiliating the ride had been. She said, “Maybe you should have gone to a beginner ride instead.” 😳 This ride was the beginner-est of beginner rides offered in NYC. Efffffffff.
Ginna blogs about her journey toward a richer (heh…) life at frugalkite.com.