Good evening friends,
Just recently, my parents surprised me by ordering me a brand new yellow Huffy bike and I am genuinely so excited! As ashamed as I am to admit this, I have never learned how to ride a bike throughout my lengthy 15 years on this planet! My short-lived tricycling-and-about-to-be-bicycling career only lasted from around 2008 to 2011, as I never got on a bike after that (for no known reason to this day). And even throughout those years, I barely rode a bike as it was. Most of my cousins and friends are able to ride a bike and I’ve always envied that. How amazing it must feel to just pedal forward with no care for the world while having a nice, cool breeze blow through your hair amidst this. “There’s some sense of freedom to the activity,” one of my cousins comments. I know I can start learning how to drive pretty soon and that should top biking any day according to several folks, but biking has always been a priority over the overrated driving for me.
[Starting it young and fresh in the game. Check out how trendy my plastic ride was.] →
Word goes around that it is more difficult to learn to ride a bike when you’re older as you think about it more. While when you’re younger, you just do it. You may fall and get a lil’ boo-boo, but after that, you’re all set and good. So many times, I wanted to quit, thinking ‘ah, I’ll never learn how to ride this thing.’ But people have also said once you learn how to ride a bike, you’ll never forget it.
SO I decided, ‘Let’s just get hurt once and get it over with! C’mon Elyssa! You can do it!’ I took this new challenge on me to learn how to balance on this machinery over the past weekend. Did I succeed? Heck no. Mostly because I was too scared of all the possibilities of falling down that I probably spent 40 minutes out of the hour just getting on and off and on and off the bike.
← [Ah, moving on to a real tricycle. My face evidently displays that sense of freedom I mentioned earlier.]
But I plan on successfully riding a bike all on my own within this week or at most by spring break. No one’s really forcing me to do it – but I just feel that if I can get on this bike and ride it, even for just 2 minutes (by myself and without my dad walking beside me), I will make little-me super proud. I will achieve my ultimate 8-year old dream. That, and learning how to juggle and dive but one at a time, Elyssa. Slow your roll – (Which I do too much of on a bike…)
Anyway, after telling you my shameful little secret and concluding that I still can’t ride a bike as of now, you may be wondering, what was the point of this post? Well, I just want to encourage you…
Go do something you’ve always wanted to do, no matter how old you were when that lil’ dream was born. You’ll make your younger self super uber proud. (I know 8-year old me’s probably going like “Wow! Who’s that super cool girl falling off the bike??”)
[Would you look at that? The last recorded data of me on a bike (or tricycle technically).] →
Maybe you’ve always wanted to learn how to do that Hoedown Throwdown from the Hannah Montana movie.. or learn how to juggle a soccer ball with your knees.. or play the guitar (which by the way, was also another one of my ultimate dreams from back in 2nd grade and in which I learned how to play just the past summer!!!)
Do it. If not now, then when? I know life gets in the way, with homework, work in general, house chores, so many to-do’s.. but we’ve only got one life. And my plan is to do as much things that I possibly can do as I can! Plus, a few spared minutes couldn’t hurt, right?
Speaking of which, I got to go work on my science project now, because like I said earlier, “if not now, then when?”
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[Me cheesin’ on my new bike yesterday. (Notice how my feet are placed cautiously on the ground as I’m too scared to place my steady and balanced state in the hands of two wheels.)]
Goodbye! Feel free to leave a comment below about your goals – and keep me updated!
P.s. I’ll keep you updated on my biking process! ;) Hopefully, the next time I post, you’ll be reading words directly from a bicycling-blogger. Woohoo!