We can slice up the unique set of facts that make up the idea of who we are in infinite ways. It’s not hard to find a combination of personal facts, quirks, or qualities that puts us in a vanishingly small demographic: a league of our own, if you like.
My claim to statistical improbability is that—until recently—I could claim to be one of the few people who loved watching professional cycling while also not being able to ride a bicycle.1Knowing how to do a thing is, of course, no actual prerequisite to watching it on the telly, but the ubiquity of bike riding ability makes this an improbable combination.
Data confirms my underlying suspicion: most people know how to ride a bike. Sure, the actual percentage of people who ride regularly is much lower (and is likely falling, according to survey data), but the point is that if you show people the arrangement of two circles and a few triangles and they’ll likely know what to do.2As a fun challenge, try to draw a bicycle—without looking at one, mind. It’s surprisingly difficult.
Young Benjamin
I always felt ashamed of not knowing how to ride a bike. In Australia, it’s mostly just assumed that everyone knows how to ride a bike and everyone knows how to swim. Of course, not everyone knows how to do these things, but it is an underlying assumption of many. And so, in a variety of situations, not frequently, but often enough to niggle, I’d have to feign casual familiarity with bike riding. Of course I can ride a bike, I’d say confidently, just like I can also do basic mathematics in my head.3The latter fact is also a lie. I do not imagine I was convincing. On a side note, you need to worry about those who proudly claim what adroit liars they are.
Most people learn to ride through their parents. For some, it could be like learning how to walk: something you don’t even consciously remember. It’s just there in your toolkit of skills. My parents didn’t have bikes and now that I think about it, I’m not sure if they could ride bikes, either. And so I never had access to a bike as a kid, let alone a bike that might be suitable for a younger me to use to learn how to ride. As far as I remember, bikes never came up.
Logically, I know there is no shame in not knowing how to do something. And yet, and yet—our emotions are seldom responsive to logical arguments. For instance, I know spiders aren’t actually coming after me as part of a coordinated plot to make me panic at semi-regular intervals, and yet panic I do whenever one of those furry leg’d fiends skitters across my path.
Each year my sense of shame grew a bit more, like mould in a poorly ventilated shower. And suspecting that not knowing how to ride was unusual made me unwilling to reach out to friends who would have been more than happy to teach me. Just like many problems in life, especially those caused by an overly neurotic mind, the longer I ignored the problem, the worse it became. Each year, my desire to learn increased and yet my shame also grew.
Less-young Benjamin
I might have continued to marinate in shame forever until I got lucky. Well, luckily unluckily. With thanks to my amazing doctors, I sorted out a persistent health issue earlier this year—an issue I didn’t even know was an issue, and just assumed how I was was basically how everyone was—and as a result have been feeling much more alive.
With this renewed vigour, it was time to throw myself into the deep end and learn how to do this thing that has always eluded me.
I found an instructor online, reached out and arranged an introductory lesson. I would have likely invented an emergency to get out of that lesson, yet I got the sense that the instructor understood the bundle of nerves common to people tackling something like this. It seemed I was going to be in good hands. And indeed I was.
On the way to that first lesson I was terrified. I confess I repeated the litany against fear to myself while I walked. It helped and also made me want to watch Dune again. I arrived at the local park where the lesson was being conducted and saw the instructor teaching a young kid. Once again, the temptation to retreat and to leave the world of cycling to others struck. Perhaps, instead, I should just hope to be reincarnated as a bike pump or derailleur and slowly come closer to cycling nirvana across a few centuries’ worth of lifetimes.
But I remember the kid getting off his bike at the end of the lesson and looking at me in such a brazenly nonplussed fashion that it absolutely shattered this whole artifice of shame I had built up. He didn’t care, or more likely he was self conscious that he himself was getting lessons. Another truth that makes logical sense but is hard to internalise: other people just don’t care about whatever you’re doing. They’re caught up in their own worlds, thoughts and worries. Sure, their attention might glance upon you for a second, but unless you’re doing something truly extraordinary—and even then—they’ll not notice or care. There’s even a name for this: the spotlight effect.
I did, however, feel a little intimated by a gang of twelve-year-olds who were riding around the area. I’m pretty sure I remember them wearing black leather jackets and having slicked backed hair. One might have even been cleaning their teeth with a switchblade knife. Eventually they moved on, perhaps defeated by my glowering in their direction, or perhaps because it was time to rob a milk-bar.
The lesson begun. Having watched a few (okay, quite a few) videos on learning to ride a bike for adult beginner videos online, I had a rough sense of what to expect. We started with a balance exercise, me rolling around on a pedal-less bike. Then the pedals came back, and away I went.
Teaching is not a skill we value nearly enough. The difference between an excellent teacher and a terrible teacher is the difference between learning something in a way that feels so unconscious and smooth and learning something in a way that feels like you’re being dragged across a field of broken glass.
By the end of that very first lesson, I was legitimately riding a bike. Not well, nor fast, not with aplomb, but that didn’t matter at all. I was riding! A large part of me had convinced myself I would never know how to ride, and it honestly felt jarring to be riding, especially so quickly. And yet I was riding. It was delightful.
I had a few more lessons and got better each time. I even celebrated my first fall during the second lesson. I don’t know if anyone has ever been so happy to fall off their bike, but I was just delighted: I knew that eventually I would fall, and so falling in my early viscerally taught me that falls will happen and that it will be completely fine. I had a tremendous bruise as a reminder of my adventure and fun. The instructor remarked that for a self professed nervous person, I was pretty brave, which by virtue of relaying this, you may infer I was proud to hear.
My confidence as a rider is still pretty low, so the bike that is living next to my tv is still almost factory new. But I know that I am capable of riding, and each time that I ride I will get a little better, and a little more confident.
There are fifty million things I want to learn; some of those I feel shame or regret that I do not already know how to do. Yet this experience has reminded me that there is no shame in not knowing how to do something; there is perhaps only regret if you never give it a try.
If you’re in Melbourne and need an excellent instructor, I could not recommend Cycling Unlimited more. He’s taught children, retirees, teenagers, the French, and even a neurosurgeon. But best of all, he taught me, and for that, I’ll be forever grateful.
Notes
- 1Knowing how to do a thing is, of course, no actual prerequisite to watching it on the telly, but the ubiquity of bike riding ability makes this an improbable combination.
- 2As a fun challenge, try to draw a bicycle—without looking at one, mind. It’s surprisingly difficult.
- 3The latter fact is also a lie.