Learning to Ride a Bike at the Bicycle Riding School

[Music] I'm Susan Rodriguez and I run the bicycle riding school in Somerville Massachusetts where over the last thirty plus years we've got about 4,000 people how to ride bicycles riding a bicycle is a basic skill in a lot of people's thinking if they don't know how to ride many people feel like there's something wrong with them they're embarrassed and ashamed and they feel left out so when they learn to ride it's a great relief and a feeling of accomplishment one of the things I really love about this work is how much it means to my students getting over a decade's long problem in a few short hours and sometimes in a few short moments someone goes from not knowing how to ride a bike to being a proud bicycle rider about half of my students come from other countries more than half of them are women I also teach kids follow those feed our air is polluted and cars are one of the main causes of that pollution contributes to global warming which threatens life on earth cars take up a lot of space in cities and many people die in car accidents cars separate people in their own little spaces when people ride bikes they're more open to their surroundings they get exercise so they stay healthy and they also keep other people healthy by not polluting besides bicycle riding is a lot of fun about 6 percent of Americans don't know how to ride bikes 6 percent for women and 5 percent for men but I have about 80 percent women at my bike school I'm guessing this is because women are more willing to accept help and admit that they don't know how to do something I've been a bicycle mechanic since the early 80s I was happy to be part of the bicycle community because I love bikes and hate cars but being a mechanic was not really a passion for me it was the idea of fighting the car culture and saving the planet that really inspired me most of my students come from the Boston area but I have a few people each year who fly in from out of town I started out teaching people one on one and it's nice that way we tell each other our whole life stories and we bond and it works but actually group classes are fun in a different way it's reassuring to people to learn with others in the same position if you love bicycles and you love teaching and you live in a town where there's not a bike school already I really recommend that you start one you'd be surprised how many people could use your help it's such a pleasure seeing one person after the other discover the joy and empowerment of riding a bicycle for more people they ride bikes the more likely we are to save the world for future generations and the more people will enjoy their freedom and pleasure of bicycle riding in this section we're going to talk about choosing a bicycle to learn on a good bike to learn on has upright handlebars and you want to have the seat down nice and low a comfort hybrid is a good thing to ask for if you're going to the store you want to have the seat nice and low so you can get on put your feet on the ground and have a little gentle bend in your knee you don't want to be hotter hang up there somewhere scared so this way you start to fall over you just catch yourself no big deal on my fleet I have padded pedals but the pedals will be off when you're just starting to learn so you'll be okay so the handlebars want to be nice nice and high so you're not leaning over much you're pretty much sitting sitting straight up here you can feel nice and comfortable catch yourself if you start to fall you don't have to but it's nice to learn on open frame bikes sometimes called women but I consider them just open frame if you start to fall you can go half fall and catch yourself and you're fine otherwise if there's a top tube here whatever you do that's not good you feel it a bike that you do not want to learn on it's something like this a racing bike with dropped handlebars you do not want to be leaning over when you're learning how to ride a bike so this is good for going fast across France but not for learning how to ride another bike you do not want to learn on is a mountain bike it's got straight across handlebars which means you're leaning over quite a bit we don't like to lean over to learn to ride you want to be nice and upright once you can ride you can decide now let's look at some smaller bikes this specialized hot rock is a nice learning bike now that I've modified it I put these handlebars on because it came with leaning over handlebars for some reason bike companies seem to think that any big kid or really short adult wants to lean over which is not the case so this little red here is only good because I put the handlebars on same with mr. gears here it's a specialized hot rock the 20 inch wheels with the 11 inch frame comes leaning over so I just put a stem riser on here and this is a nice nice bike in my teaching fleet now it's funny just one inch shorter in the frame the 10 inch frame with the 20 inch wheels the same bike they call it specialized hot rock although it's totally different between the 10 and the 11 inch frame is a nice comfortable one for writing this is a real workhorse in my fleet Red Rover here and this Trek jet is also a very comfortable bike for learning how to ride blueberry is one of my oldest teaching bikes and everybody loves blueberry nice and upright in kids bikes they don't really make open frames but people manage and for the little ones the four and five year olds or they're really short kids this woom is a nice option but something with a high handlebars low seat this is a really comfy bike I've got the pedals off here like I start everybody and I even have crank pads for to make it easier to not hit your legs or not hurt if you hit your legs on the cranks so your ideal bike for learning has high handlebars a low seat an open frame and will take the pedals off before you start now we're gonna talk about safety gear first thing to put on when you want to go biking is a helmet that's the first thing we give people when they come here to learn how to ride and they should wear it off through their biking career it's also kind of nice to have gloves knee pads and elbow pads most of my students let the pads go when they graduate from bike school but I recommend that my elderly students keep the elbow pads and knee pads and just make it all the safer and anybody who's especially nervous you know there's nothing wrong with wearing knee pads and elbow pads when you're riding a bike it gives you that feeling of security that you need so be it [Music] [Applause] in this chapter we're going to talk about setting up the bike to learn on we want to adjust the seat so that your feet are nice and flat on the ground you can even have a little bend in your legs you'll put it up later but to begin with you want it nice and low so to get the seat the height that you want loosen the bolt that's here assuming it's a regular bolt this one means an alien wrench once you get it loose twist the seat and it should be able to move around so if you wanted to lower it to be like that then you tighten it back up you might just need a regular wrench a lot of bikes make it easy for us to change the seat height by having a quick-release where the seat post goes in so these are made to push in and get tight and then you just open them out and it gets loose so you put the seat wherever you want it and then you push it in with the cup toward the inside if it feels like it goes in really easily you would tighten it up the two sides together and if it felt like it was you couldn't even push it in you'd loosen it up a little bit and then you want it so that it pushes in securely and that'll hold your seat wherever you need it this is a good thing to have as your learning you will be wanting to change your seat height as you go so it's nice to have a quick release but once you're all set you can have a regular bolt and you'll probably be leaving the seat where it is so you don't need to a quick release first we'll remove the pedals to learn how to glide which we'll talk more about later it's much easier to start out when you don't have the pedals getting in your way to get the pedals off you put a wrench right in here where the pedal goes into the crank and on the right side you screw it off the way that you would any old mayonnaise jar counter clockwise over here on the left you have to turn the way you would think would be tightening it up and it's actually loosening it up that is clockwise lots of times the pedals are thus flat here is too narrow for a regular adjustable wrench in which case you need a pedal wrench which most people don't have but if you go into a bike store they'll be happy to help you get your pedals off we get to get our balance first and then once you have your balance then we worry about pedals in this section we're going to talk about getting your balance to get your balance you have to push off and then turn the way that you're leaning you don't want to go straight you want to see which way the bike leans or which foot of yours wants to go down and whichever one it is you turn the bike that way so you lean to the right you turn right you lean to the left you turn left and I mean really turn I just turn a little bit but really really turn all over the place and the reason you need to do that is because you're leaning off to the side so your body is here and your bicycle is not under you so if you turn in the way you're leaning that gets the bicycle back under you and then lots of times you'll go too far and you have to go the other way so you're always going back and forth you're trying to get the bicycle under you and eventually you'll still be doing lots of little back-and-forth you'll never be quite straight your Corrections will be so small you won't even notice them Holford don't look down look forward while you're trying to get your balance it's very important to find the right location for learning to ride you need a broad paved gently sloping place ideally if you're working with somebody else if you're one-on-one the slope is optional you can just walk along and push somebody but the best thing is if you have a gentle slope if it's too much of a slope it's scary and there always be having to use their brakes but just a little tiny slope sometimes when I tell people we're going to go to the top of the hill they say what Hill it's such a gentle slope but it's enough to keep people going think about the brakes a lot in the early part as soon as you can go anywhere at all it's very important to practice stopping and slowing down if you just put them on a little bit you'll slow down then you put them on all the way that'll stop you the right lever controls the rear brake and the left lever controls in front see how it squeezes and just stops you by pushing on the rim there the front brake is more important than the back brake when you put them both on that's the one that slows you down most but don't get thinking ah the front brake is really good maybe I'll just use it by itself think if your front wheels stopped suddenly and your back wheel is still going and especially if you're leaning over in a sort of a racing kind of bike but even so the back wheel can come up and over and it's a bad thing don't at all get afraid of the brake so that you don't want to use them thinking of that but don't ever use the front brake by itself if you just get in the habit of always using the two brakes together that's the simplest thing you don't have to worry about it [Music] if you don't have a hill you just walk along pushing the person from the small of their back don't hold the seat or the student just keep them going and you're not running beside the person you're going regular walking speed whichever way the bike leans you turn the bike leans right you turn right the bike leans left you turn left if one foot goes down you turn that way whoa that was great we use the same techniques for children but for those who need a little extra reassurance we sometimes use a harness so that we can give them a little gentle pull up and then if they start to fall in this section we're going to talk about learning how to pedal when you can go a long way with your feet off the ground you can put your pedals on but remember that your right pedal goes in the right way that you would expect it to that is clockwise and the left pedal goes in the way you would not expect it to counterclockwise now you want to raise the seat a little bit maybe an inch or less firket when you get the pedals on the first thing you want to do especially with our experience of having the pedals off and reaching straight for the ground try to put in your mind things are really different now you have to watch out for the pedals they're going to get you in the legs if you're not careful so you need to reach for the ground in a different way notice how they go around backwards and nothing happens so that's how you get the pedals where you want them to start out push off a little bit then just get your balance and if you're feeling on a good balanced stretch then put your second foot on but the thing to keep in mind when you're going downhill you'll get your feet on the pedals but you don't need to pedal unless you're going too slow do a lot of just getting your feet on the pedals and saying hey great I'm writing because coasting is part of the thing when you can get peddling you want to just follow the bike for quite a while try to do circles in one direction circles in the other direction you'll find that gradually the bike will just start going where you wanted to I don't know how this happens but I know that if you follow the bike it will return the favor and start going where you want it to go once you're riding around pretty comfortably you can start thinking about gears gears determine how far you go for a pedal stroke in a high gear you go a long way for a pedal stroke and then a low gear you'll go a short way which means that it's easier you don't have to push as hard faster and looser in a low gear so the reason that we want gears is because sometimes we're going uphill sometimes we're going down otherwise we if we're always on the flat we just stay in one gear but when you come to a hill you're going up it's hard so you want to make it easier so you're willing to sacrifice how far you go for a pedal stroke to at least have your feet be able to move so a lower gear will make it easier to pedal and then we are going back down the hill you go into a higher gear so that your feet aren't just like totally fast and loose so you're always just looking for a comfortable amount of resistance you want it to be possible to pedal but not too easy so most of the time you do your shifting on the right which is changing where the chain is on the back on the freewheel but if you want to make really big changes you change it on the left we've got three chain rings up here most of the time you want to be in - that's your medium range going from one to seven on the back or whatever it is however many gears you have back there but if you want to be in a really low gear you're in a really steep hill you put it in one over here and then one over here is just your lowest all together and if you really want to go fast down a hill for some reason which I do not recommend you put it in three here and seven there and then you can really get going you go a long way for each pedal stroke when you're going up a hill you want to pull it towards you like this and going back downhill you pull it back away from you and the chain is changing places back here the chain on the biggest cog that's your lowest gear for finding a hill and then back into high gear you have to have the chain moving to make it shift and actually something like a little bit faster than once a second this is how fast you want to have your feet going around and if you're riding with people and you see that everybody's feet are going around a lot faster than yours you might say hmm maybe I should go for lower here but find what works for you so for general riding you're not going up a hill you're not going down a hill I would have your gears on two on the left and something toward the top six you know six or seven or five if you like a little easier feeling but something toward the top on the right hand side most of my fleet has twist grips but now we're going to show a different kind of shifting I'm coming down I want kind of a higher gear there we go that feels pretty comfy so I'm in high gear for going down clicking this thing here and what the heck we'll go all the way nobody comment oh good so here I am going up a hill six five this thing's pretty comfy could even go a little lower for three how the hills getting pretty steep here two one so this is my lowest fear without using the left but actually yeah there we go now I'm in my very lowest gear I'm even in the low on left so this is the lowest gear all together now I'll put the left back into the usual spot and go higher for going down hills but don't worry too much about what gear you're in exactly just be sure it's comfortable for you not too hard not too easy [Music] now we'll talk about some of the tricks I show my new students once you can ride around and you can go kind of where you want to in a general way then it's good to practice standing up off the seat that's good for going over a bump or if you wanted to ride right through a pothole or over a curb or something to start standing up you want to be coasting with one foot up and one foot down and then just take a little weight off your seat if that feels okay go ahead and stand up with your weight on your bottom foot so do it little by little first just a little bit and if that works then you just stand up same thing with the looking around you do it little by little okay I can look to the side that's not a problem I can look almost back hey I can look all the way back and then same thing with taking a hand off first just loosen your non-dominant hand then take it off a tiny bit and then if you can go a long way with it off a tiny bit then you can start waving to your fans before you go out on the street you need to learn how to make signals most of the signals you do with your left hand this is I'm going left this is I'm going right kind of like you're pointing over that way and this means I'm going to stop or slow down and you can also do your right signal with your right hand if you want we're showing this on a street and this is where you would use all these things a lot of the time but if you're trying for this for the first time you would want to do it back in the school yard or big open space where you learn to ride when you can control the bike well enough to stay within a 5 or 6 foot path in the open area you'll know you're ready to go out onto the real bike path so when you're first starting to ride on the bike path you want to just make everything as low stress as possible anytime you have any doubts about anything just stop when you start out that's the most wobbly time so you want to start out when no one is about to pass you here no one is whizzing by so just look ahead look over your shoulder even if it's nice and clear you start really there is no harm in stopping whenever you are not quite sure or somebody seems a little close you're a little flustered just stop here we're coming up to a little road we'll just stop and check out the situation not usually a lot of traffic here but we want to be sure so I'm just going to put my foot down very lightly and look everything is clear okay here we go okay we want to pass this pedestrian so I look forward and I see that the path is all clear ahead of me for a long way but now I've got to look back because a fast biker could be passing me at the same moment and I go around her with plenty of room and everybody's safe it probably will be a while before you're passing bikers but if you come across a really slow biker or once you get to be a good fast biker you may pass a biker and you do the same thing you have to you know look forward look back and you go around and you should always say passing on your left it's almost always the left but some people like to say passing on your left - any pedestrians they pass and there's certainly nothing wrong with that sometimes you'll have a pedestrian in front of you that's kind of hogging the lane hogging the path they're out of their lane a little bit into the left lane and you can say something like excuse me on your left but don't just Barrel on by assuming they're gonna hear you and respond you know see what happens a lot of times when you want to pass somebody there's no room if you wanted to pass the pedestrian and there was someone coming from the other way don't tell yourself oh he's over here he's over there I think I have room no as a new Baker you want to have the whole left lane clear and you go way out there and there's no questions no squeezing between people please sometimes you might just have to stop okay we have a pedestrian up in front and I think the curve is far enough away that I can see so I look back and it looks good so I'm going around and I gave them plenty of room most of the bike path has the ground beside it pretty level so you don't have to worry if you go on or off but here you've got a little lip it sort of goes down a bit so if you were to try to ride right back on your wheel might get caught so if you go off the road and you notice it going down just get off your bike and walk it back on let's talk about seat height when you start out getting your balance you want to be seated with your feet flat on the ground and even a little bend and then when you get pedaling you put the seat up so that you're flat-footed but with straight legs and then when you get pretty good you get your heels off the ground a little bit I usually graduate people about here where they can get the balls of the feet down but their heels are all the way off good bikers say that's much too low and if you do start going 20 miles a day you have to get your seat higher so the ideal place if you're a really good writer and you're going long distances you want to have your leg practically straight at the bottom of your stroke I ride a little bit low so my Bend is a little bit more than a tiny bit but something like this is about ideal and but you can't get on and off like we're used to from beginning bike school so let me show you how good riders get on they stand in front of the seat like this and just step down and sit down once they're going here's how they get off they stand up they take their top foot off and step down so you see you're not on the seat anymore if you were to stay on the seat and just reach down with your seat up at the standard height there'd be no ground there and you'd fall over unless you managed to jump off so you should do what's right for you if you're comfortable with that maneuver of getting on like this and off like this then you can have your seat up at the standard height and it's more comfortable for your knees and it's better for your knees but if you get into a fumbling situation it's not quite as good so if you decide you're ready for standard height and you want to put your seat up do a couple of long rides where you don't have your seat that high but you pretend you do so you always get on like this and off like this and when you can do that reliably then you can set your seat high up and when you're buying a bike don't let people browbeat you into having your seat higher than you want if they tell you your leg has to be almost straight you tell them you're new rider and you want to be comfortable and your bike teacher told you you should have the balls of your feet on the ground but tell them you'll put the seat up later so they don't have nightmares so you want to make it comfortable for you not with the people in the bike store say many of my students say they never intend to ride on streets and that's fine riding on bike paths is a really fun and healthy thing to do but for those who are so inspired biking on streets is a great way to get around you want to get plenty of practice on bike paths before you even think about going out onto the streets but when you can really go wherever you want you don't have any close calls and you can try the streets the things to think about when you're on the street are just going as straight as you can it's never going to be perfectly straight bicycling is a little bit of a wobbly business very often there are parked cars in the cities and so you want to be far enough away from the parked cars that if somebody opens the door unexpectedly you're out here you might be surprised but you don't get bored as they say if you're going along pretty fast and someone opens the door and you run into it you can be head over heels which is not a good thing so right out there it feels a little bit nerve-wracking sometimes but that's where people are supposed to ride and they have these little things on the road they call sharrows that tell the lakes where to be and also tell the cars where the bike should be so look up cars don't get mad at the bikes if they're a little bit out farther than they might wish it's really nice that a lot of towns are giving us these bike lanes so the bikes where to go and show the cars that the bikes are part of traffic but they're often a little too close here I like to ride toward the left side of the bike lane because if you're in the middle or on the right side you're right in the car door area where the car doors would open up so here we are riding kind of on the left side of the bike lane see how close that bike lane is to the cars we don't like that so you bike along in your pretty straight line thinking where would the car doors come if they opened up and staying outside of that space so here I am riding outside the car door spaces riding outside the doors hello it's a bikers job to ride far enough out that they don't get bored but car drivers can help bikers by using the Dutch reach where you reach around and that reminds you to look in your mirror and behind and here I see a biker so I just stay here for a minute so now I get out the only time you might ever go into a little space between parked cars would be if you had a car waiting behind you on a narrow street in which case you would have to stay there until you could look back and be sure you had plenty of room to go back out onto the street or when you have a really long space with no cars parked this space is long enough I can't resist it so we'll tuck in away from the traffic here but I'll be sure to remember when I'm going out I've got to look around as if I'm going out onto the street for the first time nice space here okay I'm getting close to the cars parked Oh nobody's back there perfect they can just come out sometimes I might just have to stop in the space if there were a car right there and they didn't have time to get used to the fact that I was there so anytime you're riding around as a new rider and you feel like things are a little bit too much for you you always have the option of just taking your bike off to the sidewalk and walking it don't ride on the sidewalk at least unless there's nobody there and if you decide to ride on the sidewalk it's narrow and you have to look at each driveway crossing but as soon as anybody comes along just get off the mock pedestrian should not have to think about bikes on the sidewalk and then in business districts around big squares like Harvard Square Davis Square it's actually against the law to ride on the sidewalk anytime you want to change lanes you want a signal [Music] I'll just hang out a little bit and late for those in space coming the other way okay after these guys have gone looks like a pretty nice space so here I go you can always hover over to the right if you're not quite sure if you can go then wait for a nice big space lift urns are a little tricky especially as a new rider so if it seems like there's just too much going on you can always just become a pedestrian and walk across so I'm coming to a crosswalk here I'll see what the situation is and it looks pretty clear on the other side oh they're making criminy thank you thank you thank you I appreciate it the cars in Arlington are very polite and respect the traffic rules so they stop for me and I walked over but I was safe waiting there as long as I felt I needed to till there was plenty of room for me to walk across when you've been riding on roads for a while you'll probably want to start making left turns like more experienced riders do where they look over their shoulder and move over to the left and then when they have a space they do their left turn sometimes people will leave you across they'll stop and want to let you go through and that's nice but sometimes people wave you across when they really don't have the big picture you're the one who's putting your life on the line going where they say you don't even know this person so somebody waves you across you take a few seconds today okay is everything okay here great then you can go across so we're riding in the bike lane this is a very nice thing some cities give us [Music] if we wanted to turn right here we would move over out of the bike lane into the right turn lane but we're gonna keep straight we always want to be as far right as we can be but still that allows us to go where we want to go so here we want to go straight the right-hand lane is a only turning right so we stay out of that just continue on straight here [Music] lake plane is painted in a way that reminds people of that but even though even if there were not a bike lane here if there's a right-hand lane and we're not going right we ride to the left so on a lot of city streets there isn't really room to comfortably have a bike in a car pass each other so when you feel it's like that just ride out far enough that nobody would think about passing you just take the lane you know don't keep somebody behind you for three blocks well here's a nice little I'm gonna tuck into here let the car around gonna go around guy there are two of them okay so I have to stop and now I look back and we've got enough space so I go back out don't feel like the cars have a right to go just as fast as they might run to and you've just got to do everything to stay out of their way you're part of traffic and you're actually doing a favor to the whole city waiting behind a bike is part of traffic and that's what cars have to do sometimes okay we're coming to a rotary here so I'll go most of the way around it and go off on Broadway there okay we're coming in I'm gonna go toward the middle of the rotary okay the middle of the rotary here is a little like an eddy I can just hang out here if there's not a good time to go I can just wait here and even stop if I have to but it looks like there's not too much traffic here so I'll just make my way across make friends with these people here see letting me go thank you [Music] if I hadn't seen that that guy was letting me go I would have waited but he waved me across so I went if you don't feel comfortable riding in a rotary just walk your bike there's a lot more that could be said about riding on roads of course but I hope this has been a useful introduction to some of the things to think about we have a couple of links included below that will give you more tips and information one is by mass bike and one is by the League of American Bicyclists it's a very simple story with me I grew up in the depression there wasn't any money the one time when I got up enough courage to ask my father who's been out of work for several years can I have a bike he said what kind of you when your sister is going to eat and after that I never asked again that was the end of that story so then you know college came and other things came and I just never bought it and now I think I've told you about the motivation the interest my granddaughter wants me ride a bike that's the motivation otherwise I probably wouldn't know at this stage the game but she's nine year old beautiful blue eyes she just looks at you to say grandpa will you come ride with me you can say last year I couldn't help Oh n ride so I said well let me just see if there's something called a bicycle school and to my surprise there was this bicycle school which was I was very excited about and so today was Owens first lesson and I haven't been on a bike in 30 years and Susan just very calmly was able to help me make my granddaughter re honest with me and my why don't you trial yeah but Susan says well why don't you and she just made me feel so comfortable that I found it really easy and I think it's wonderful that there is a place that you can go and learn how to ride no I didn't we had one bike at home and all the boys monopolized it so I didn't yeah so the boys also have taught themselves and because we were many other than one bike there wasn't enough time for the girls so the older boys learned how to do bad this is my first day on a bike I have a 13 year old daughter and a footie notes and they ride their bikes and I kept testing I need to learn how to do this I can do it with them my last thing was I so hard in the beginning I felt good after a while after I got comfortable number I stopped thinking about the bike and enjoying myself I became easier yeah yeah the fact that I couldn't on the first day I was able to buy lunch I mean that surprised me presently yeah and it's fun just feeling that we don't my face I was good I never ride a bike because I was very slow to do things physically and my mother was very worried that I would get hurt sitting on the couch let alone riding the bike so I never because I never learned how to ride a bike and it's just in my whole life I've tend not to orient to physical goals you know I don't I can't I couldn't I couldn't skip when I was a kid I don't run when I see a ball coming I duck you know I'm just not physically oriented and I've always wanted to see what it is like to try for an achieve a physical goal rather than intellectual goal and I just wanted to see how it felt to ride a bike and it's been wonderful I don't think I'm gonna be playing tennis or anything those balls I submit coming I just can't do it in this life one happily settles for a lack of athletic medals but I've fallen and faltered my balance I've altered and now I want bicycle pedals when I was six my parents bought me a bike it was a sweet Thunder pink huffy dirt bike and it was the only thing that my parents ever got me that all my friends had they weren't the kind of people who would buy me something just cuz everybody else had it and this one time they'd spent more money than they would have on a bike for me to do this and so my brother who's five years older than me he would have been 11 tried to teach me and we were going along and he let go of the seat I fell over the axle or you know it's called Freddy went into my ankle and it was one of the worst cuts I ever have it I was bleeding and after that I was too scared and then people every year every summer everyone says I'll teach you how to ride I'll teach you how to ride and every summer doesn't happen and every year I've been thinking I wish there was a class I could take here it's here's my opportunity I finally get to do it I'm just so happy I was feeling kind of embarrassing while walking with the helmet and the knee path walk in the practice even once I got on and I started to find my balance I was so glad that I came I rode a bike when I was a kid my dad had one bicycle there was ten of us we had an opportunity to steal the bike I would steal a bike and go for a ride or do errands or whatever and then I didn't ride for years and years no she tried to sign me up last year but the class was full she kept reminding me yeah she kept reminding me mom make sure you signed up and I did so she was delighted I'm planning and riding the bike with my daughters and I'm trying to get my husband to ride out so yeah so that's my goal I guess once you ride once you never forget well I was always afraid to do things my husband and my son always tried to buy together and I just don't join them I never thought anyone could teach me scary you know so when I saw it I immediately jumped on it the first time I saw that there is when I saw that I can I can stand while sitting I immediately felt better because they my husband has these very very tall bikes so I thought you're gonna put me on one of those and like my husband did with my son he basically put him on on a bike and pushed him and he made it you know you think about the making levels like that you can continue and continue with you forever [Music] there riding on a bike can be a really wonderful way to get around it's a great contribution to traffic your bike takes up a lot less room than a car it makes less pollution it makes you healthy and everybody else healthy and the more bikes we have in the traffic flow the better it is for all concerned [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Susan McLucas

Views: 84,181

Keywords: how to ride a bike, learning to ride a bike, bike riding, adult bike riding, teach yourself to ride a bike, bicycle riding, how to ride a bicycle, adult bicycle riding, bike tutorial, bike school, how to learn to ride a bike, how to learn to ride a bicycle, learning to ride a bicycle, adults learn to ride a bike, teach yourself to ride a bicycle, bicycle tutorial, bicycle school, fear of bike riding, fear of bicycle riding, afraid to fall off a bike

Id: D7lQXKsht7A

Length: 46min 17sec (2777 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 09 2020