Like so many kids, last summer I learned to ride a bike. Only I am in my 30s. When I was a child, I had no one to show me. My mom never learned. My parents divorced when I was four and, in an attempt to perform parental responsibility, my father bought a bicycle. But there was only one for my brother and me to share. It was a gooey flashy green colour, not quite Ninja Turtle green, more the extraterrestrial kind. Too “boyish” for my liking.
In hindsight, I didn’t fully trust my stepdad at the time. And it is important to have total confidence in the adult teaching you how to ride a bike. My brother had that bond with him. I didn’t. So, I gave up. The hardest part was on vacations where I had to skip bicycle sightseeing tours. In San Francisco, I wished I could zip along the Golden Gate Bridge on a bike like so many others. In Amsterdam, I just wasn’t ready for those huge bike lanes. I wanted the ease so many people seemed to be having rolling around almost carelessly on two wheels.
Later, I met a 69-year-old returning to biking after decades away. She decided to give it another go now that she’s retired. Her children and husband even cleaned her bike which had sat in her garage since 1983. She told me that when she was young “boys had bikes, but not necessarily girls.” Her brothers had a lot of freedom, but she wasn’t given the same chance, she explained.
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