write a topic on the day i learnt to cycle using vivid verbs
Answers
First time I was a kid, and I can’t really remember all that clearly; there wasn’t much room to ride where I lived back then, and I was quite little.
Then we moved out of the city center to the suburbs. I had just started to ride without the training wheels when disaster struck and the chain broke. My dad got around and fixed it. However, soon the chain broke again, and the bike went to the garage and wasn’t repaired again. It was a different time, mind you, and with the war in my country and my dad just starting his business at that time, things were just busy. It lay there forgotten in the garage, which soon got turned into an improvised community bomb shelter.
So, I never really learned how to ride a bike as a kid. A couple of years ago, with (then) three kids and a family of my own I resolved to learn how to ride one. So, I borrowed my wife’s bike, lowered the seat until I could plant my feet down, and set out to learn on a recreational bike path, half a hour of riding or, khm, “riding” at a time. It must have been quite a spectacle to watch a grown man sweat profusely trying to keep balance on a bike. Going up a small incline was terrible; I struggled to keep going straight and pedalling. Luckily I’m not the type to get embarassed about making a spectacle of myself in public ;)
A few months of doing this once or twice per week and I went from “Look at that, ha ha!” to “Just a guy riding a bike… a bit badly”. I raised the seat to proper height and started going for longer rides. It felt great to be able to do that and get on the road with confidence, first rural roads with little traffic and then city streets (that was terrifying the first time).
After figuring what I liked and didn’t like about her bike and borrowing a different bike to try and get more of a perspective, I figured out what I’d like to ride and ordered one tailored for my tastes. Now I take just about any excuse to go for a ride; from short and long (if time permits) recreational rides, to going shopping or for a coffee on the bike(Actually this was not my experience)