BODY WATCH : Learning to Ride a Bike Brings a New Balance to Life

“Go, Curly, go!” shouts Arthur, huffing and puffing as he runs to keep up with me. I furiously pedal for my life.

“OK, I’m barely touching you now,” he pants. “I’m going to let go . . . you’re on your own!”

Suddenly I no longer feel the slight steadying pressure of his hand. He’s still running beside me, but he’s waving his arms up and down excitedly.

“I’m doing it, I’m doing it!” I cry. For the first time in my life I am riding a bike, alone, unaided and sans training wheels, thank you very much.

Two seconds later, a fence gets in my way.

I clutch at it desperately as I lose my balance and the bike crashes to the ground. But I don’t care. I am ecstatic. I’ve learned to ride a bike.

The same scene replays itself day after day throughout the world. Child wants to learn to ride a bike. Mom, Dad, sister or brother offers to teach child, and runs up and down like a maniac with said child.

In this case, the “child” is a tad old, and the person running alongside isn’t my dad. It’s my husband.

There’s no big secret behind my then-inability to ride. When I was a child--the youngest on the block--all the other kids’ bikes were too big for me. So I learned to roller-skate instead. By the time I realized I was a loser for not being able to get on a bicycle, it was too late. But the fact is, as you get older, learning to ride a bike, as with everything else, just gets harder and harder.

At 15, I was ashamed to try to get on a two-wheeler. By 20, I was bigger and even more embarrassed. At 29, my life changed.

I was having lunch with my friend Teresa, who asked if I wanted to go bike riding that weekend. I looked around and lowered my voice. “I can’t ride,” I muttered.

“Oh, I couldn’t ride either,” she said nonchalantly, adding that her husband had taught her.

My jaw dropped. I wasn’t alone.

I looked at Teresa, half admiringly, half enviously. Here she was, older than I and not nearly as much of a fitness freak, and she could ride up and down the California coast on her bike.

I started brooding.

“You never taught me how to ride a bike,” I said to my husband accusingly. “I live in California and you haven’t taught me. How could you?”

Poor Arthur. He lived with this litany for about six months, until my birthday came around.

I got home from work, opened the door and there it was: a blue bicycle with a pink ribbon. It was some kind of mountain contraption with about 20 gears that I still don’t know what to do with. Wrapped around the handle bars were a blue helmet and red gloves. It was beautiful. It was formidable. I tried balancing on it, but couldn’t. (Later on, I was told balancing a still bike is nearly impossible, but how was I to know?)

It took me three months to get up my nerve and actually try to ride. One Saturday we went to the huge DMV parking lot in Santa Monica. No one was there except for an older woman learning to drive.

As I struggled to maintain my balance, Arthur running beside me, the older woman went around in slow circles with someone directing her from the passenger seat. I tried making eye contact in an attempt at mutual support, but she wouldn’t look at me.

“Relax, relax!” screamed Arthur. “You look like a board, you look like you’re going to have a heart attack. Loosen your arms, you’re just sitting there, you have to balance, you have to pedal, I can’t push you!”

I was terrified. What if I fell?

I finally got my balance around the same time the driving student started putting her car in reverse. I crashed the first of many times into a fence. She just put her foot on the brake.

But no silly crash was going to stop me now.

I scrambled to my feet, waved Arthur away, pushed off and managed to wobble for about five feet before losing my balance.

“Did you see that, did you see that?” I cried in delight. I pushed again, managing to go a little bit further every time.

“Relax, relax, balance, balance,” I told myself as I zigzagged precariously. About five minutes later it started to feel good.

I was really getting into it when I saw the lot’s other user approaching in her car. She didn’t know how to drive, I thought uneasily. What if she ran me over? She must have been about 30 feet away. Too close. I panicked and fell hard on my knee.

It hurt, and for a moment I felt 5 years old again, coming home in tears with skinned knees after school. I got up shakily and saw that I was, indeed, bleeding.

“You want to stop?” Arthur asked.

No way. I might have lost the battle, but I sure wasn’t going to loose the war.

I flexed my knee, pushed hard and pedaled, wobbling at first then steadier and steadier until I reached the other side.

“Yes!” I shouted, glaring at the driver who was still struggling with her car.

The next Sunday, we went riding again and, yes, it’s true: You can teach an old dog new tricks.