It is like riding a bicycle
Tom Pinney
I always love hearing someone describe doing something they haven’t done in a long time by saying “it’s like riding a bicycle.” You never actually forget how to ride a bicycle once you’ve learned it.
I found out how true that was when I bought a bike to ride around campus while I was still in college. I hadn’t ridden one in years, but I still remembered how to do it.
And I was pretty good at it, too. I still remembered the hand signals, riding with one hand on the bar while giving myself a refreshing sip of water, proper care and maintenance …
I had the same experience when I started driving a stick shift again. After my first car, a Mazda mini-pickup named Adelaide (yes, I name my cars) died in the summer of 2013, I drove almost exclusively automatic transmission cars for a few years, until the beginning of 2016.
Windy, named for the tornado that destroyed Nevaeh, was exactly the car I wanted to have. I chose her not only for the price, but for the fact that she was a stick shift with relatively few miles.
Literally. She’s a 2006 model year, and I bought her with 78,000 miles on the odometer.
It’s at this point where I once again express my deepest gratitude to everyone who donated money for me to get Windy after I lost Nevaeh in the storm.
I loved driving with Adelaide. Sure, her gears could be a little finicky, and it seemed like I almost always lost the rhythm a bit when I shifted from fourth into fifth gear, but I just loved everything about driving a stick.
With Windy, I found quickly that driving a stick is a lot like riding a bicycle, too. The second I got into the car for the test drive, everything came back to me.
When my dad taught me to drive a stick shift, we went to a parking lot of an abandoned grocery store in Pickerington, Ohio in the summer of 2009. He chose it because there were a lot of slopes and speed bumps that would help me to learn every little intricacy about driving Adelaide.
The first lesson: he told me to put the car in gear and let go of the clutch.
CLUNK.
My first thought: I KILLED MY TRUCK. THIS IS MY FIRST CAR AND I KILLED IT. WHAT KIND OF CRUEL TRICK IS THIS?!
And my dad said, “Now that you know what that feels like, you’ll never do it again. Now, push the clutch and brake in and start your car.”
So I did, and she started back up. True to form, I haven’t killed the engine too many times after that. Of course, now I’m not even focusing on not killing the engine because everything about driving a stick is second nature.
Anyway, I’m driving Adelaide down a couple of side streets in the northern part of Kansas City, making perfect stops, shifting while turning, and doing that really fun trick that I like to show people where I stay perfectly still on an incline but my foot isn’t on the brake. That was another trick my dad showed me the first time we went driving in Adelaide, and when I did it successfully, I giggled because it was the coolest thing in the world to me at that moment (and it still is).
It’s important to note, however, that not everything is “like riding a bicycle.” For instance, riding a motorcycle is not like riding a bicycle. That one’s kind of obvious, though, because you don’t pedal a motorcycle, there’s a lot more speed and balance involved … I’m sorry, you knew this bad joke had to come about sometime.
Seriously, though. Working out, for example, is not like riding a bicycle. You don’t want to not work out for even a few months and then think you can just jump on the treadmill and knock out 10 miles. That’s a great way to end up in the hospital, which, if that’s your goal, hey, I’m not here to judge. But you could just as easily eat tainted meat to end up in the hospital, and for that one, you don’t have to try to run 10 miles (hashtag fat kid status).
Singing is not like riding a bicycle. If you don’t practice it, even just singing in the car, you’re going to lose it. And that’s the worst one to lose, because you don’t only lose the ability to find the pitch, you lose your clarity and your sense of rhythm.
An opera singer who stops singing for a few years then tries to jump right back in becomes Jeremiah the Bullfrog – not a great singer, but at least you know he shares the wine.
If you used to juggle broadswords but you stopped for about a decade and want to try and pick it up again, maybe start out with balls and candlesticks before moving up the ranks. Although, if you used to juggle broadswords and still have all of your limbs,… I mean, bravo.
Dancing is not like riding a bicycle. When I was first learning to dance in several ballroom styles, I was a younger, fitter man with a passion for sweeping women off their feet with my dancing skills.
In an artsy high school, that’s how you did it. Even the football players could two-step and fox trot by prom.
Now, I have to remind myself of the rhythms and steps in order to remember the waltz. Once I got them down, I remembered some of what I had learned, but it definitely took awhile.
I guess the main point here is, don’t treat everything like riding a bicycle. There are some things that, if you don’t practice them for awhile, you’ll lose the skill.
Like burping the alphabet. That’s a great way to ruin a good shirt.
Tom Pinney is a news reporter for the Maryville Daily Forum.
