My Thai wife cannot ride a bike. She’s always wanted to but feels she would look silly trying to learn. And you’ll be killed if you ride one in Bangkok! That’s one thing I miss, my bike that I rode everywhere in Hawaii, and Albuquerque before that.
She does not know how to swim, either.
I had several leg problems as a kid, one of them being that my knees would pop out of joint if I so much as stubbed my toe. That pretty much precluded me from learning to ride a bike. I grew out of that problem but the memories of the pain I endured are a pretty good motivator for keeping my feet firmly on the ground.
32 yr old chiming in. I failed to learn how to bike as a child because the only person to teach me was my sister, and we didn’t get along at that age. A couple of beatings after failing to catch on quickly cost me any enthusiasm for cycling. Cycling is very popular in the Pacific Northwest, but with the raininess of the area and the heavy urban traffic it doesn’t make much sense to me. Indeed one of my old bosses (cycler) told me cyclists get in a major accident–read getting hit by a car–about every decade.
My 74 y-o mother never learned. They were very poor and didn’t have money for things like that, although several of her siblings learned on friend’s bikes.
Growing up, going on a bike ride was a quality-time-with-Dad thing.
I never learned. I’ve had a few people over the years say they’ll teach me-- the last being my ex-girlfriend a couple of years ago-- but I’ve made it to 33 without it.
I had horrible balance when I was a kid, and couldn’t even stand on one leg 'til I was in my teens. My balance has improved somewhat (I found I was able to walk tightropes recently), but the opportunity to use it in bike riding still hasn’t come up. At this late stage, it feels kind of pointless.
Yeah, they’re basically self-correcting. It’s more of a confidence thing.
Few people can really just balance a bike in a totally stationary position.
Doing a “track stand” or a “traffic light stand” involves the same type of corrective balancing that riding does. It just uses the motion of going backwards to correct for the lean.