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This Old Dog Learned a New Trick
So this has nothing to do with marketing but I’m just so proud of myself I had to memorialize this moment with a blog. Drum-roll please … This weekend I finally learned how to ride a bicycle. At 36 years old.
Friends always asked me why I didn’t learn how to ride a bike when I was kid and my story was always that my dad wasn’t a very patient teacher or that I really liked to roller-skate and did that instead. The real truth was that I was scared. Really, really scared of getting hurt, of looking stupid, of not doing it well … These fears have haunted me my whole life and are the same reasons I don’t know how to dive, how to ski or how to play tennis. Bottom line is that I have absolutely no natural athletic talent – I even got out of taking high school gym with an iron clad doctor’s note about my bad back – and I’m uber self conscious to boot.
A few years ago my then boyfriend/now husband and I went on vacation where he attempted to teach me how to ride. The bike was too big, I didn’t get the hang of it and the lesson ended up with me needing 6 weeks of physical therapy for a bum wing. It took years for me to attempt it again, this time at the beach with a dirt bike that was more my size. I made a little progress and my husband got to let go of the seat more often but I hated it and cut the lesson short. At the end of last summer he was so supportive that he surprised me with my very own pink beach bike. It was just like I always imagined but even the sight of it made me nervous.
Fast forward another summer and now I have nearly 3 year old twins who are fascinated with their tricycles. One afternoon I watched them barrel around my driveway and I realized one day soon I would have to tell them that I didn’t know how to ride a bike. I realized that the thought of telling them this and potentially passing on my fear of trying new things was exactly the motivation I needed to learn how to ride the damn thing.
So last weekend it all clicked and I really rode my bike. We went on our first family bike ride (with them in a bike trailer behind my husband) and when we got back to the house my daughter was enthusiastically telling my parents how I had a pink bike and how I rode right next to her.
I’ve never been prouder of myself.
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