It's never too late...

That's the mantra I kept telling myself when I decided, at the ripe old age of 30 and a quarter, that I would learn how to ride a bike.

For years, I had been OK with the fact that I was in the minority when it came to adults and bicycle riding.  My mother, when my brother and I were both young, decided that she wasn't going to teach us how to ride a bike after she had witnessed a particularly gruesome accident involving the death of a little boy.  However, when I told her that I was planning to learn how to ride a bike, she scoffed and said, "YOU don't know how to ride a bike?"  "No, Mom.  You never taught us, remember?"  "Well, John knows how to ride a bike."  "No, Mom.  He doesn't.  Remember?  You never taught us because of the accident?"  Then she gets all serious and says, "Right, right.  Horrible accident.  Scared the shit out me.  No way was I going to put you two in harm's way."

So, why am I going through all the trouble to learn how to ride a bike now?  Simply because I inherited a nice, cute, little bicycle.  Well, I didn't INHERIT it, per se, it was part of the house that we had inhabited when we moved to St. Louis.  It had just been sitting in the backyard and parts of it were rusty.  I asked Bill what he was going to do with it and he told me that he would probably sell it on Craigslist.  I looked at the bike, with its teal coloring and tan padded butt seat (and the cute little bell on it) and thought, heck, I want that bike.  So, I said, kind of offhandedly, "No, I want it.  I'll learn how to ride it."

So, after a few repairs, we went to a large parking lot and rode around a bit, with Desmond on Billy's back, and Billy holding on to the seat and handlebars.  After I got over the way it felt in my in betweens (how do y'all do it for so long???) and learned how to really push off to get going, I started coasting, albeit it stopping jerkily through a much-too-liberal use of the brakes.  The best part was when I was going down the long stretch of the parking lot and stopped unjerkily and Billy says, "I totally wasn't holding the bike.  You did that on your own!"  Wow.  It was exhilarating.

About to sit on a bike for the very first time.

So, I'm well on my way to becoming a bona fide bike rider approximately 25 years later than I could have been.  But you know what?  I'm not embarrassed, I'm not sad.  I hope that Desmond, when he starts learning how to ride a bike, will realize that his dear own Mami learned how to ride when she was much, much older and didn't have all those little pliable bones and fat pads (OK, maybe still the fat pads) to help her out.  I also hope that he realizes that it's never too late to do something you've always wanted to do (well, in my case, something I NEVER wanted to do until much recently).  I want him to realize that no matter how old you are and no matter how much you think that you can't do it, you can do anything you set your mind to (except if he wants to be a male stripper or play pro American football).