Four-wheeler abolishment

I learned how to ride a bike in a similar fashion to many. Four wheels. Then an abrupt transition into the two-wheeler. Some will defend that it’s the best way to learn balance — I’m starting to disagree.

It’s like saying a heartbreak will be less painful if it followed a great love story. Smooth, effortless, instinctive, minimized risk of falling too hard [out of it]. It doesn’t translate into a pain-free transition to a different reality. A transition where a beautiful, supportive piece is suddenly taken away, leaving you alone, forced to force your anatomy to learn the magic of balance and bracing for multiple collapses on the cold, hard cement.

I truly am starting to believe that the easiest learning strategy would never involve a primary phase of delusional effortlessness.

We should all have begun by facing the highest chances of collapse, right from the get-go. We should have been taught, straight-up, that the cuts and bruises on our skin, and sprained and broken bones would be a rite of passage on learning how to dominate a true, authentic bike. We should have been prepared for the day we would reminisce on them with a heavy sense of nostalgia that would subconsciously make us search for a motive to hurt — just to grip the past once more. Then, we should have been told that, especially in those moments, we must remember the infallible steps to its remedy:

Getting on the bike we so ambitiously dreamt of handling, resting our feet on the pedals, and allowing ourselves to just go, further and further — into what could be the best ride of our lives.