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Great story. Here's my variant. I never learned to ride a bike as kid. At age 33, I realized I was about to move to a city where biking is close to mandatory

Great story. Here's my variant. I never learned to ride a bike as kid. At age 33, I realized I was about to move to a city where biking is close to mandatory (Melbourne), so I sucked it up and went for a couple of one-on-one adult bike lessons. Despite a first lesson that was so painfully fumbling and awkward I almost gave up, I showed up once more and figured out the key: when you start to fall over to the left, steer to the left, and you will suddenly no longer be falling. Rinse and repeat. We did a little cruise around the neighborhood, and hey, I was biking! Although I did have my ceremonial first fall when I crashed into a bollard at the end of a bridge (at very slow speed, fortunately). Then I started commuting to my new workplace by bike. 15 minutes, a nice and easy ride, mostly on bike paths separated from road traffic -- but it was still scary as hell initially, and I walked the route a few times, trying to figure out exactly what I'd need to do to cross every road and turn every corner. The first morning was freaky, but I still remember the feeling of adrenaline rush when I arrived at the office the first time: Whoo! I survived! And then on the way back later that day, my shoelace gets caught up in the gears and I do a slow-motion crash onto the bike path. No real damage, but my nerves were sufficiently shot that I had to walk the bike home and skip the next day. Two days later I was at it again. Next I attempted to learn curb hopping. My spectacularly mistimed 2nd attempt saw the wheel hit the curb full on, so I flew head over heels and shredded one knee to bits on gravel. Turns out you can keep biking just fine with a bloody knee, it only starts to hurt once the blood gets a chance to congeal. And now I commute by bike every single day, rain or shine, 0 or 40 degrees. I wouldn't give it up for the world and am considering upgrading from my current trusty but heavy mountain bike into a zippier road model.

cancan 14y ago
Hey. Really nice story. I have a similar story; one time in high school I really got into curb-jumping and essentially had the same thing happen to me where I wasn't orthogonal enough and hurt myself badly. Anyway, just wanted to say, definitely give a nice road-bike a try. They are really amazing, wonderful machines. I have a feeling you'll never want to ride anything on road ever again :)
jiggy2011 14y ago
If you do get a road bike, don't curb hob on it or you will destroy the wheels in no time! If you are not totally confident in bike handling you might be better off with a hybrid model where you still have some of the comfort and control of a mountain bike but with slightly skinnier and slicker tyres. Road bikes go faster and destabilise much more suddenly ,especially in the wet.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  You can curb-hop without destroying the wheels but you'll likely mess up often enough that practising that is best done on a very old bike. Obviously hopping 'down' is no problem at all, hopping up the front wheel is easy (just pull up on the handlebars as you approach the kerb, shift weight backwards and push on the top pedal, then drop the front wheel which should have come off the ground by now on the kerb so it never sees the step and make the drop gentle). You can practice that just fine without a kerb. The rear wheel part of the gentle kerb hop is the tricky bit, I can do it with my eyes closed but describing it is a lot harder. The basic idea is to move your cog forward quickly while at the same time squeezing on the pedals inward. That way you can lift the rear end of the bike onto the kerb. If you flex your knees a bit then you can do this even onto substantial kerb heights. Once you've mastered that hopping down is mostly the reverse to spare the wheel from impacting too hard at the end of the drop. If you're really good you can do this at speed without any noticeable bounce. I'd hate to do this with my 120kg fully loaded 3 people bike ;)
  - Luc 14y ago
    Great description. This reminds me of the guy who (basically) won the world championship cyclocross by being able to hop over the barriers instead of carrying his bike over: http://xxcmag.com/archives/8282 http://xxcmag.com/archives/8282
jacquesm 14y ago
Push your laces into your shoe and put your sock (a long one!) over your pant leg on the chain side. That'll save you at some point in the future. You got pretty lucky, falls can be quite nasty. Another safety tip: on any turn that is a bit sharper stop pedalling and keep the inner pedal highest. That way you increase ground clearance (pedal strike on ground or kerb becomes next to impossible) where you need it most. And if you're going for a tenspeed style racing bike (or 27 speed these days ;) ) or something like that please don't use toeclips until you're a very confident rider.
- cturner 14y ago
  I'm not sure if there's a way to avoid problems learning toeclips. I cycled since childhood but was terrified by stories of "death clips", and decided not to get them. But at a race prep meetup for a long triathlon I was the only one without them, and got mollycoddled by the organisers. They gave strong advice to get them. So I got them and took it easy - riding around a park, slow rides. I still had several bad falls when I got onto the roads though. And I need to go through busy roads to get to the country (no car). I found that you need to be very deliberately transactional in the way you cycling when you have clips. For example - as you approach lights, once you get a certain distance out of it's still read then that's it - you just start start unclipping. You don't want to play the game of edging up to the lights, because a car might do something confusing and then you're screwed. You need to position yourself in traffic much more carefully, and hold off on some situations you wouldn't have thought twice about when you had pedals.
  - slajax 14y ago
    I agree. You can't learn to use death clips without a little pain. I'm all for them on road riding or mellow XC rides, but some of my buddies started using them on full down hill tracks like in whistler BC. They swear by them and yes a lot of world cup racers now use them, but I think it's few and far between because of the learning curve. I don't think I could ever do it, I'm not fully comfortable on a full suspension bike unless I can eject quickly. It's bad enough getting tied up in your handlebars, let alone not getting your feet out as you endo a cliff drop.
- 14y ago

cancan 14y ago

Hey. Really nice story. I have a similar story; one time in high school I really got into curb-jumping and essentially had the same thing happen to me where I wasn't orthogonal enough and hurt myself badly. Anyway, just wanted to say, definitely give a nice road-bike a try. They are really amazing, wonderful machines. I have a feeling you'll never want to ride anything on road ever again :)

jiggy2011 14y ago

If you do get a road bike, don't curb hob on it or you will destroy the wheels in no time! If you are not totally confident in bike handling you might be better off with a hybrid model where you still have some of the comfort and control of a mountain bike but with slightly skinnier and slicker tyres. Road bikes go faster and destabilise much more suddenly ,especially in the wet.

jacquesm 14y ago
You can curb-hop without destroying the wheels but you'll likely mess up often enough that practising that is best done on a very old bike. Obviously hopping 'down' is no problem at all, hopping up the front wheel is easy (just pull up on the handlebars as you approach the kerb, shift weight backwards and push on the top pedal, then drop the front wheel which should have come off the ground by now on the kerb so it never sees the step and make the drop gentle). You can practice that just fine without a kerb. The rear wheel part of the gentle kerb hop is the tricky bit, I can do it with my eyes closed but describing it is a lot harder. The basic idea is to move your cog forward quickly while at the same time squeezing on the pedals inward. That way you can lift the rear end of the bike onto the kerb. If you flex your knees a bit then you can do this even onto substantial kerb heights. Once you've mastered that hopping down is mostly the reverse to spare the wheel from impacting too hard at the end of the drop. If you're really good you can do this at speed without any noticeable bounce. I'd hate to do this with my 120kg fully loaded 3 people bike ;)
- Luc 14y ago
  Great description. This reminds me of the guy who (basically) won the world championship cyclocross by being able to hop over the barriers instead of carrying his bike over: http://xxcmag.com/archives/8282 http://xxcmag.com/archives/8282

jacquesm 14y ago

Push your laces into your shoe and put your sock (a long one!) over your pant leg on the chain side. That'll save you at some point in the future. You got pretty lucky, falls can be quite nasty. Another safety tip: on any turn that is a bit sharper stop pedalling and keep the inner pedal highest. That way you increase ground clearance (pedal strike on ground or kerb becomes next to impossible) where you need it most. And if you're going for a tenspeed style racing bike (or 27 speed these days ;) ) or something like that please don't use toeclips until you're a very confident rider.

cturner 14y ago
I'm not sure if there's a way to avoid problems learning toeclips. I cycled since childhood but was terrified by stories of "death clips", and decided not to get them. But at a race prep meetup for a long triathlon I was the only one without them, and got mollycoddled by the organisers. They gave strong advice to get them. So I got them and took it easy - riding around a park, slow rides. I still had several bad falls when I got onto the roads though. And I need to go through busy roads to get to the country (no car). I found that you need to be very deliberately transactional in the way you cycling when you have clips. For example - as you approach lights, once you get a certain distance out of it's still read then that's it - you just start start unclipping. You don't want to play the game of edging up to the lights, because a car might do something confusing and then you're screwed. You need to position yourself in traffic much more carefully, and hold off on some situations you wouldn't have thought twice about when you had pedals.
- slajax 14y ago
  I agree. You can't learn to use death clips without a little pain. I'm all for them on road riding or mellow XC rides, but some of my buddies started using them on full down hill tracks like in whistler BC. They swear by them and yes a lot of world cup racers now use them, but I think it's few and far between because of the learning curve. I don't think I could ever do it, I'm not fully comfortable on a full suspension bike unless I can eject quickly. It's bad enough getting tied up in your handlebars, let alone not getting your feet out as you endo a cliff drop.
14y ago