It's like riding a bike, right?

You know the saying, "It's like riding a bike." You learn when you're a kid, and even though you haven't done it for many, many years, you instinctively know how. Well, I know I told almost everyone I bought a bike. I was so happy to get it - and it wasn't cheap. It wasn't the most expensive bike out there, but it was over the price range Steve and I had set. It was exactly what I wanted - no shocks, SPD clip pedals, and it can go extremely fast. And it's blue (I wanted the blue one! Blue, Blue Blue!)

Yesterday, we picked up the bike, and Steve decided to take surface streets for a while - we weren't in any hurry. I mentioned that I was hungry (Ok, more like kept mentioning it), so we hit the drive-through of one of our favorite places and then stopped in Murray Park for lunch. After we ate, we got my bike out.

I've been taking spin classes, and riding a bike is so easy there! I kind of forgot two things:

1) I haven't been on a bike in over ten years, and there's this little thing called balance that's required, and
2) I don't have much experience with the clip shoes on bikes yet - even the ones in spin class are a little bit tricky.

I tried clipping in and clipping out a couple of times, thought I had that all down, and then off I went. The tires are skinny tires - made for road biking, so you don't even have to turn - you just lean. Using the methods I learned in spin class, I went extremely fast - so fast that when I hit the brakes, it scared me a little - like I was going to go over the handlebars (they were good brakes.) I got back to where Steve was standing, and he said "OK, now try to unclip fast." I tried, and me and the bike ended up on the ground, my feet still attached to the pedals.

I scraped my knee pretty good (I was wearing pants, so that was OK), but I think Steve hurt more than I hurt myself. It hurt his feelings that he knew this would happen, but that I didn't listen to him. But I know in my mind that even if he told me a million times, I had to try it for myself. Like a kid, some lessons you just have to learn by falling down.

Off came the clip shoes (I have pedals that work with both SPD and street shoes), and on went the street shoes. I spent the next half hour just getting used to the bike.

It's going to take a while to learn how to ride a bike again - so I guess it's really not like "riding a bike." And this speaks volumes for Steve's character (and love for me) - to see me go down and let me do it, even though he knew it would hurt both of us.

The scraped knee was the only injury. I'll practice for a while before putting the SPD shoes back on again....