Learning to bike as an adult

I learned to bike when I was well into - ahem, let's just say adulthood - and I received a lot of really bad advice in the process. Most people (and all people in the Netherlands) learn to ride a bike when they're under 10, usually somewhere between 5 and 7. They learn how to do it and they do it well, but basically they have no idea how they learned or really, what they learned. As an adult, you tend to think through things more, you tend to be more aware of risk, and your own (potential) failings - all of this consciousness actually works against you, and I would say that learning to ride a bike as an adult is much more difficult than doing so as a child, even a fearful child.

But, having said that, it's possible and it can be fun. It took me some concerted effort, but now I ride a bike everyday, amidst Dutch bike traffic which can overwhelm even a seasoned biker. That's not to say that I haven't had a spill or two, but I can get around, and I now know how to actually ride a bike!

So, here's a guide for adults learning to ride a bike, culled from my searches of a few web forums and my own experience.

1.Experiencing balance.

What most adults don't have is a sense of balance on a bike - that is, we know what biking looks like, but we don't know what it feels like. This is important because knowing what it looks like, helps you figure out when what you're doing is not working (when you're at a severe angle and are teetering, you automatically know, you not riding the bike right!), so that you can visualise the right thing, but it also helps establish some muscle memory. If your body know what balance feels like, it can try to achieve that automatically. So this part is about visualisation and establishing muscle memory.

• Lower the seat so that your feet are flat on the ground - this will make you feel like you'll catch yourself in a fall. If you can't do that, you'll spend all your time being afraid of falling.
• Take the pedals off the bike. If you can't take the pedals off, try to pretend they're not there.
• Sit on the bike and try coasting. Push off a little bit (ignore the pedals!), lift your feet off the ground and coast (it helps if you're on a very slight incline). You'll tip from side to side at first, but do this for a while and you'll eventually feel what balance on the bike feels like.I did this coasting exercise for about 10-15 minutes everyday for several days. It gets super boring and you feel like an idiot, but it's pretty crucial to be comfortable with balance before you move on to the next step. Comfortable balancing? Move on to step 2.

2. Connecting with the pedals

When you're frustrated with coasting, you begin to think, "How hard can it be? I just put my feet on those things and go." You're feeling cocky because you've mastered balance - that's good, because you need a little confidence to make it through connecting with the pedals. I tipped to the side a lot and having the seat low enough that my feet caught me helped a lot - it defused fear of falling and it meant that I would catch myself and get back on the bike very quickly since I wasn't actually crashing.

• Start slowly. Push off just as you did with coasting.
• While you're coasting, try and put your feet on the pedals.
• After you've coasted and made contact with the pedals a few times, add pushing the pedals (that is, actually pedaling).
• Stop frequently and visualise (imagine, in detail) exactly what it is that you're trying to do: "I'm going to coast and balance, and that feels normal. Once I've pushed off and I'm coasting, I'm going to gently place my feet on the pedals. Then I am going to push the pedals. If I lean to one side, it's ok to stop with my feet and start again."

I made a few mistakes that are actually connected to balance, but became apparent at this stage: 1) I leaned on the handlebars - that's what I thought they were there for. This is wrong. You lightly rest your hands on the handlebars. They do not do anything for your weight. 2) Connected to this issue, I didn't know where my weight was supposed to go, so I put it on the handlebars and on the pedals - that's why I kept tipping over.

• Your weight rests almost entirely on the seat (or saddle as true cyclists will tell you). You do not put weight on the handlebars - that is, don't lean on them - and you do not put weight on the pedals - you pedal using force, not necessarily your weight.
• Imagine that your centre of gravity is right through your seat (the one on your body and on the bike), like you're sitting in an very upright chair. This will help you avoid leaning on the handlebars and on the pedals and disturbing your balance.

3. Practise!

Practise in short segments (15-25 minutes) so you don't tire out and get sloppy. Some of amount of frustration is good - it motivates you to say, "I'm just going to push off and go" - and that's actually what happened for me. I practised a lot and I didn't seem to be getting anywhere - which wasn't true, but I was extremely frustrated - and I just kept imagining pedaling for more than a couple of revolutions and staying upright. I then hit a point where I was doing it, but I didn't realise I was doing it, because I was preparing to catch myself from falling!

After that, it's just more practise, and soon enough you have a shot at being as good on a bike as your friends who learned when they were 6.

A few general tips

• Do it by yourself. Remember that people who already how to ride a bike, probably don't know how to learn to ride a bike - that means they're full of well-meant but useless and often complicating advice - so having them around, especially at step 1 may be counter-productive.
• It's ok for your feet to touch the ground. Experienced cyclists know that it is more efficient (in terms of strength and pedaling) to have a high seat, so that you're on your toes when you get on the bike. You're not an experienced cyclist, you're learning to ride a bike. That means you need to feel safe and be safe; it's ok to have the seat low so that your feet are flat on the ground.
• Practise on smooth ground. I thought grass or gravel would be best, but asphalt is far easier to coast on, and if you have your seat low enough, you can always use your feet to brake. I found empty parking lots and cul de sacs to be perfect for practising.
• Remember, your weight should be on your seat, not your hands.

That's it! Good luck!

European Englishisms

It strikes me that European English speakers have a range of things they say that are sometimes grammatically correct, but not a construction that native speakers would ever use, and sometimes grammatically questionable, but charming in its own way. So, I'm going to list them as I hear them:
- "quite many" where we might say, "quite a few"
- "nice" as a descriptor for, well, practically anything. For example, "we had a nice conversation today" meaning a productive or useful interaction, this is a "nice" article, same deal.
- the tendency to begin sentences with "probably"; e.g. "Probably it will rain today".
- and truly annoying to me, the constant use of "i.e." i.e. if it rains, the roads are slippery i.e. there is water on them. Yeah, the "i.e" is not so much for me.
- "it's ok" as a response that, I think, is the equivalent to "Yeah" or "Good"; so if I said, "I'll see you there" "It's ok" might be the response. I find it not to be grammatically quite right, or scan right or something, I can't quite tell which it is, and in certain circumstances, it sounds like the person is trying to give you their approval when their approval is completely unnecessary and would be condescending.

Burn, bikes, burn

New Year's Eve in the Netherlands proved way too exciting. Who'd have thunk it? I expected the usual over-drinking since on ordinary days here drinking is a primary recreational activity, I wasn't going to be surprised by exponential celebratory drinking.

But what was shocking were the fires in the street, burning bikes, broken bottles, and the constant, insane level of fireworks. WTH? We (my sister and I) went to an acquaintance's gathering slightly south of the centre. In a very traditionally Dutch neighbourhood - with bricked streets just large enough for a car and two bikes to pass and blocks of attached housing - where there were so many fireworks going off around midnight, people were coughing from the smoke, and you couldn't see through the smoke to the houses 12ft across the street. This must be what it's like to be a soldier in an urban war - the sister suggested that "Bombs over Baghdad" should have been the soundtrack for the evening.

But wait, there's more.

An incredible wall of fog also began to descend. And when I say wall, I mean there were spots where you literally could not see your hand in front of your face. Take that San Francisco. Anyway, as we walked through the centre to get back home (since I live north of the centre), we saw fires in the street. Fires as in bonfire with random sh*t thrown on them - not much in the way of wood - but bikes, tires, glass (WTF?), couches, tv's. You get the idea. In the street, as in the middle of the street. The most amazing one was huge - two-thirds of the width of a paved roadway - and had a bike rack, with the bikes attached, burning in the middle. And by bike rack, I mean a sturdy metal structure that is embedded in concrete for people to park their bikes, like this one here.

Convicted of inappropriate recycling

A colleague recently had what I think is the most positive quintessentially Dutch experience I've heard in my time here. She was getting ready to leave for work, when she hears a loudspeaker outside, "Attentie! Attentie!" ("Attention! Attention!) and not being a Dutch speaker, she ignores the rest, but registers that something serious must be happening. A few minutes later, as she's about leave the house. the police ring her doorbell.

She opens the door, startled by the sight of two cops, who sternly ask, "Do Mary and Maria live here?" (her two roommates, and obviously not their real names). My colleague, F., says, "yes, but I live here too." I'm holding my breath at this point in the story, nervous on her behalf. Well, it turns out that F. and her roommates had all placed their paper recycling beside the neighbourhood recycling bin, because it was full; of course, they'd piled it up neatly and placed it in a cardboard box. The police, having apparently rifled through the box to locate the owners of the paper, were now tracking them down to - what, jail them? Well, at the very least given them a serious ticket.

F. was so relieved at the what she viewed as the minor nature of the offense that she tried to explain that none of the residents the household spoke Dutch and were simply trying to be good people and make sure they recycled! Apparently, after a severe talking to, and a decision to let this serious offense go - just this first time - the police left.

At the end of story, F. and I couldn't stop laughing: in other countries, the police usually have more serious things to do than chase after recycling criminals. It's very nice that that's the most important thing the cops need to occupy themselves with.