Learning to Ride!!!

I commute to office on my two-wheeler. But its a nightmare when I still remember those days when I started learning to ride one. For riding one, the basic lesson is to learn to ride a bicycle, which was the worst part for me. From early childhood itself, I dreaded riding a bicycle. Guess I had fallen once and developed a phobia to it. However hard my parents tried, I would not sit on a bicycle. During our vacations, when we came down to Kerala, I was amazed to see all my cousins (including girls) riding the bicycle and enjoying a ride. Honestly I wished to ride one effortlessly, but was scared.


Years passed, and I reached my high school. Raji (my cousin sister) and I stayed together. She had a bicycle, which she rode like an expert. For one of those vacations, my brother was also with us. He was adamant that I was to learn to ride the bicycle and I had to agree. We had a rubber estate behind our house. There was a narrow path along it for the people to cross through. He would make me sit on the cycle and give it a hard push. I would not dare to move and sit on it like a statue. The cycle goes someway and finally slids and falls, I also go along. I would make no efforts to save myself. It was so ridiculous that my aunt makes fun of me on that fall now also. That option didn't work out. What happened was that I had a few scars here and there.


In school, when I saw my friends coming to school on their cycles, I also had a desire to ride one. Finally I decided to learn. Every evening after reaching home, I would take Raji's cycle and try to ride it. I would balance it bit by bit within our compound itself and ride. Injuries were a part and parcel of that. Atlast I could balance myself on the cycle and ride straight, but not the curves and turns.

Now though I ride my kinetic well, riding a bicycle is not my cup of coffee. I still find it difficult and I don't attempt those stunts nowadays.