Second step

But it’s worth knowledge. For one, it’s actually fun. If you educated to ride decades ago maybe you’ve inwards how it first felt, but it’s an incredible sensation to race through the park or down a demanding road, the air whooshing in your face and the world soaring by. You are free to go wherever you want and capable of getting there without having to alternative to shutting yourself off from the world in a car or train. You feel brilliant in body and mind; it is a workout, and it is a joy. For another—and this is an actual, semi-serious justification I have used on myself—what if you’re being chased by an ax murderer with good foot speed and you come across a bike? Do you or do you not want to be able to get away from the ax murderer? Here’s the underground to learning to ride a bike: Just keep trying it, you’ll get it soon. Wait, don’t leave! I know that sounds like terrible, of no use advice, but it’s the only advice that matters. I overlooked everyone who gave it to me all through my failed attempts, but they were 100 percent correct, the know-it-all. No one can tell you how to traverse, because it’s a muscle-memory thing and a practice thing. You really do just have to get on a bike, screw up for a while, and you will, incredibly, start to rotate up less. It’s not magic, even though it’ll feel like it. But there is conduct to give you the greatest probability of getting it. First: Find a bike. When I made the tentative conclusion to do this, I obviously didn’t own a bike, and didn’t have space to keep one. So I researched where I could rent them by the hour. And really, an hour here and an hour there is all you need. The very first time I rented a bike, out on Governor’s Island in New York harbor, I felt myself starting to figure out my sense of balance in about 45 minutes. Yes, that preordained 45 minutes of clumsy, halting, 10-foot rides, and endlessly bashing my shins on the pedals, but that was a small price to pay for tangible proof that I was capable of getting superior at this. And here’s the extra-great part: When I got on a bike again a couple months later out in Flushing Meadows (another hourly rental), I picked up almost exactly where I had left off. Your brain will memorize everything from the first assembly, and from every subsequent session! You don’t have to do any work; your muscle memory is better than you think. By the second hour, I was doing impressive that you wouldn’t be laughed out of the room for identifying as, in theory, a man riding a bicycle: