You may recall I maneuvered a few people into a little bet to help raise money for Camp Quest, in which they had to pay a few little forfeits if they ‘won’. Here’s Greta, JT, and Jen in a state of bewilderment: didn’t they win? So why are they facing this humiliation?
Bwahahahahaha!
Truly, the E in ECO really does stand for evil (the laugh needs work though…)
I’m fascinated by the fact that Jen had never learned to ride a bike. Was she raised by Incas?
You weren’t allowed any personal bloodletting? Not even a little?
Atheism sure is going soft.
Glen Davidson
I WANTS ME SOME TENTACLE BEARD!
OT, I’m just a non-commenting lurker normally, PZ, but I haven’t seen any mention of your new blog’s banner immobility. Nothing but Croco-duck every time. Any chance you’ll be changing it to cycle through all those other cool banners as on the original blogsite? You may have guessed; my personal fave is the tentacle beard.
I think Jen did great learning to bike. It can be a challenging task for someone just learning.
I also cringed with the leg waxing. How could they put up such a bet??
We will be fixing up the rotating banners.
Unfortunately, classes start on Wednesday. My sanity is about to implode.
Hahahaha! Great videos! Do you know how long it took for Jen to be able to ride? Seemed like it took a little while.
Yay bicycles. I note that got more camera time.
Here’s the real question. Will she keep riding?
Actually it only took about 15 minutes, which amazes even me because I have mightily failed learning how to ride a bike in the fast. I think I was encouraged to learn faster because a Midwestern thunder storm was about to pour on all of us, and Ashley was yelling at me that her camera wasn’t water proof, haha.
…and I never actually learned how to turn, so I doubt I’ll keep riding.
I had to relearn riding a bike as an older adult; I literally hadn’t ridden one for about 20 years. My teenage son helped and had a great time doing so. I cleaned up my old road bike, found some friends to ride with and now it’s one of my favorite things to do. Keep it up, Jen and be happy of yourself. Thumbs up for Rock and Roll!
Awesome. I seen the Dillahunty in drag episode too. After you get over the laughter it was actually a excellent episode about the LGBT movement.
You’ve got to keep riding, Jen. It’s wonderful. I used to right like a maniac when I was a kid, but I’ve never enjoyed anything more than a quiet, leisurely bike ride through a nice neighborhood or park. It’s wonderfully relaxing.
Keep going! :)
You never forget how to ride a bike. You also never forget how to fall off a bike when you haven’t ridden one for a while.
:-(
Thumbs up for Jen!
So there needs to be another bet to learn turning!
I am proud of her, after all there are people who never learn to ride! I kept riding into my late thirties, sold the bike for pennies on the dollar to move to texas. That was a foolish mistake!
Anyway, I’ll bet some of those years I put in excess of 10,000 miles on that bike! Now I’m old and fat, haven’t been on one since!
Here you go Jen:
http://www.stabilizerwheels.com/
You don’t need to. Ride the bike to uni, get off, and then turn it around for when you need to go home.
Otherwise: What Therrin said. We forked over to upgrade you flight, we might as well fork over to pimp your bike, too.
Bikes 102: Fix puncture in front tyre.
Bikes 103: Fix puncture in back tyre. (Involves derailleur gears, oil, swarfega, swearing.)
I have to give Jen a lot of props for this. When I was a little kid I tried to learn how to ride a bike and failed miserably. I had a series of ear infections that probably damaged my balance. It also didn’t help matters that my dad’s idea of how to get someone to learn how to ride a bike was to set them in front of a large hill and push them down on the bike. Yeah…
It was cool to see TMBG getting some love with Birdhouse in your Soul in the karaoke segment, but I’m glad it was mercifully short; the audio quality was horrendous in that bit.
I’ll have to do some bike riding again sometime. It’s been years. The only problem is, I’m not entirely comfortable riding in my local area (lots of narrow streets with blind corners), so I have to load the bike into the car and drive somewhere… which feels kind of self-defeating.
Kagato, so what about the narrow streets with blind corners? If cars can go there, certainly you can ride a bicycle there too. Just use your driving experience.
Look over your shoulder before making a turn, signal direction, yield to traffic from the right, etc.
As a skeptic who owns a bicycle store I love to see people using best practices in my field. Jen was doing exactly the right thing when she was pushing herself along with her feet on the ground. The first thing someone has to do to ride a bike is to train their inner ear to balance them on two wheels instead of two feet. Paddling along with the saddle low enough to put both feet flat on the ground allows you to get up enough speed to then pick up your feet. Every time you pick up your feet and coast the inner ear learns a little bit more about how to balance. Once your inner ear is trained the rest of it, shifting, braking etc. is pretty easy to learn because you can be taught how to do those things by simple explanation.
The reason Jen didn’t master steering is because you don’t actually steer a bike in the manner you would a car. Except at very slow speeds direction control is done by shifting one’s weight rather than consciously turning the handlebars. It’s useful to think of your arms as stabilizers or dampers rather than controllers. After only 15 minutes of practice Jen’s inner ear was sufficiently trained to balance but not yet trained enough to allow for steering weight shifts to occur.
Jen: if your still following this thread, if you got to the point where straight line balance occurred in only 15 minutes it wouldn’t take very long at all to master steering. Adding stabilizers will only hinder the process of learning and while my shop sells them and adult trikes we try to only do so to people who have actual balance problems.
[proselytizing]There are many reasons to learn to ride a bike, the most obvious, and I’d hazard the most common in North American is for entertainment. But I’d like to point out that using a bike for basic transportation is a cheap, efficient, healthful and environmentally sound(ish) way to move around. I ride to work mostly out of habit, but I persisted until it became a habit for two reasons. First because it cost me so much less than the alternatives, and second because by doing so I didn’t have to make time in my day in order to get exercise, it was simple inherent in my daily life.[/proselytizing]
Kagato: narrow streets with blind corners also reduces the speed of car traffic, it might not be as dangerous as you think. Of course, without seeing exactly what you’re talking about though I can’t really say just what the actual risk is. If you’re really interested I’d suggest contacting a cycling advocacy group in your area and talking to them about route finding and possible mentoring services. Many of these groups offer to pair up folks with experienced riders. It’s a good way to tackle problem of the perceived dangers of cycling verses the actual dangers and to teach the skills needed to cycle safely in traffic.
Well damn a bear, now I really AM the only adult woman who doesn’t know how to ride a bike I guess.
That was fun. Just gotta say, as a Canadian I laughed every time they said PZ. P ZEE just sounds hilarious. In my head it’s P ZED.
It’s not my ability to navigate traffic safely that’s of concern; it’s trusting that the other drivers on the road aren’t complete idiots.
And it’s not so bad that I’d never do it, or that I really think I’d be at significant risk. I’m just not comfortable doing it, and it’s therefore not a very pleasant ride.
There are some nice parks nearby, I just have to get out of my rabbit-warren residential area and cross two main roads to get there. I have a young daughter who is just learning to ride, so fairly soon we’ll be able to go out and ride together; that will make taking a special trip to do so worth it.
coelecanth:
As a kid, I failed miserably at being taught to ride. But a neighbour’s kid had an old bike which was far too small for me, which I enjoyed scooting around with my feet on the ground, and in the course of a day I kinda accidentally taught myself to ride. I remember feeling absurdly pleased with myself.
Moggie: Yup, you did it exactly right, too bad you didn’t patent the idea. These days we sell things called balance bikes. They’re tiny bikes with no drive train sized so that kids can put their feet flat on the ground. I tell folks that they’re the lazy parent’s way to teach children to ride. You give your sprout one and let them go to it. A few weeks later you’ll be looking out the window and see them cruise by, feet in the air, balancing and steering no problem. If they’ve had a trike before to learn pedalling the only thing left is teaching ’em how to brake. Well, that and to not run over the cat or their sister. Chasing after them holding the seat and bandaging the inevitable skinned knees used to be a parental right of passage, not anymore. Ah well, my wife and I left our 4 year old’s favourite blanky in a hotel room yesterday and housekeeping didn’t find it. So I guess we’ll always have the crushing of their sense of the permanence of cherished objects as a parental milestone. :)
Something that backfires horribly, when you try riding a three-wheeled bike.
I went over a bump in the bike path (I think), and ploughed directly into the side of a car. Pretty lucky I wasn’t a bit earlier – then the car’d have ploughed into me.
Excellent info indeed. I’ve been waiting for this update