Bicycle Riding School

I've just hired a new teacher for the Bicycle Riding School, Sebastian Banker. I think he'll be really good and he'll make it so that people won't have to wait so long for appointments here. He's liking the work, being sensitive to the different needs of our students and people like him.

I really need another bike riding teacher! People are having to book way out in the future, especially if they need weekends. It's a really fun job and pays decent money. I will happily train the right person in our method that virtually guarantees success. If you are interested or can think of someone who might be, reach out to me at [email protected] or 617-776-6524.

I hope I can find one more bicycle riding teacher to train up to help me here in the Bicycle Riding School. Either during this upcoming season, or the next, I will be retiring. I am 75 after all. I want to be sure that this place can go on helping people ride, enjoy the experience, feel empowered and get out of cars. If you or someone you know might enjoy the job, and doesn't mind that it goes away during the winter, have them get in touch with me at [email protected] or 617-501-9125.

The Somerville Bike Kitchen is a wonderful place where people can learn about their bikes and fix them. Check out their winter plans.

I will give a talk for the Somerville Bicycle Committee's monthly series at Aeronaut Brewery, this Wednesday, Dec 20 at 6pm. Aeronaut is at 14 Tyler St, tucked away behind Somerville Ave, not too far from Union Sq. I will show slides and talk about "Teaching People to Ride at the Bicycle Riding School - young, old, athletic and fearful." It should be fun.

I need a new bicycle riding teacher. If anyone is interested or can think of anyone who might be, please be in touch. They need to be physically fit, organized, patient and love bicycling and teaching. In the busy season, the job can make some medium serious money. It won't be too many years before I retire and I hope to have the school in good hands. Knowing bicycle mechanics and loving ET are a plus. [email protected], 617-776-6524.

This is about a fun kid I taught to ride last year.
Bobby and the Second Foot
Six-year-old Bobby’s mother told me that he loved Shakespeare.
He was a little hesitant to ride and, when I got him on a bike and asked him to push off and try to hold his feet up just a little, he just sat there on the bike, not moving. I gave him a very gentle nudge and he acted like I was pushing him of a steep cliff. So I asked him if he’d like me to hold the back of his shirt. He agreed immediately and started moving, ever so gingerly, on the bike. Luckily, we were on a flat lot so it wasn’t as scary as if it had been a gentle hill.
I said to him “To bike or not to bike, that is the question.” He looked confused.
I pushed him around for a bit, asking him to sit down and to try to hold his feet up a little. That was getting us nowhere; he was just walking along with the bike under him. So I said, “See if you can take longer steps” and, when he went 3 feet I said “Wee! Wonderful!” He smiled a bit, for the first time.
I kept telling him to turn the bars whichever way he was leaning. He was not moving those bars! I started saying “Come to me, go away. Now come to me again.” He was starting to turn the bars just a little bit. I showed him how much I wanted him to turn the bars while we were standing still – a lot more than he had been doing, and asked him to turn the bars for me, while we weren’t moving. He did and I said “That’s great! Now see if you can do that while we are moving.” I could barely hear him answer “I’ll try.”
We went back to the “Come to me, go away” routine and he did start to turn the bars a little bit. But every time I asked if I could let go of his shirt, the answer was an emphatic “No!” By the end of the first lesson, he was maybe going 6 feet at a stretch with his feet off the ground. I was holding his shirt, but not holding him up. I was just ready to catch him, if he started to fall.
By the second lesson he was turning more and getting longer stretches of balance, maybe 10 feet sometimes.
By the end of the third lesson, he had gone 60’ with his feet up five times. So I offered him pedals. He didn’t want them so we kept balancing. By this time I wasn’t holding his shirt anymore, just pushing him.
For the first half of the fourth lesson I was gently pushing for pedals. I assured him that, once he had his foot on the pedal, he could always easily take it off, if he needed to put it down to catch himself, and I showed him how soft the padded pedals were. I told him that sometimes, if I lost my pillow, I would get some padded pedals from the barn to sleep on. He looked skeptical. Almost half way through the fourth lesson, I got him to agree to put the pedals on. I told him he wasn’t going to have to use both of them. I just wanted him to put his foot on one and go around that way for a while. He really liked that. He finally actually put one foot on the pedal and I pushed him around like that for the rest of the lesson.
He was really good at balancing by now and keeping that first foot on the pedal. I started talking to the second foot. “Oh second foot, you’re a good foot. I know you can do it. Just go up half way to the pedal and ride around that way for a bit.” The second foot wasn’t buying it. I said “Second foot, you’re not going to let that first foot have all the fun, are you? Come on. You won’t have to pedal. Just rest yourself on that second pedal. It’s a good foot rest. I know you can do it.”
Bobby shot back “My second foot says that the first foot is being mean to him. He’s saying that he can’t do it.” I said “See if you can talk your first foot into giving the second foot a break.” That wasn’t working. The first foot was enjoying his being the brave one, ahead of the timid second foot.
Now Bobby started coaching his second foot. “Second foot, you’re just as good as the first foot. Don’t let him give you that! If you’re not ready, just go up half-way, just for a second.” I joined in “Bobby’s right. You look like a brave foot. You don’t have to go all the way up to the pedal right away. Just go up a little bit toward it.” The second foot was unmoved.
So I stopped and held the handlebars and asked Bobby to put one foot on the bottom pedal. I rocked the bars gently back and forth as if he were going along, balancing. Then I asked him to put his second foot up on the second pedal. He did it with no trouble. Then I said “Now put it up in slow motion, as If it’s a little worried. If you put it up gently enough, it won’t even notice that it’s going up.” We did that a few times, standing there, with me holding the bars so the bike stayed up. Then I started pushing him around again. The first foot was on the pedal as solidly as could be but the second foot was not raising up at all. Bobby said “The first foot is still making fun of the second foot. That makes him feel bad and like he can’t do it.”
I asked “What do you think your second foot needs to feel confident enough to go up to the pedal. If I go back to holding your shirt, do you think that might help?” Bobby answered “Maybe.” So I went back on shirt duty over the objections of my poor, aching back. I said “Once you get your foot up, be sure not to pedal! Just ride there with these nice foot rests.” His second foot started raising up a bit, not half way to the pedal, but up. I cheered “You’re doing it! Brave little foot, you’re doing it!” Bobby smiled a tiny smile.
Finally, he got the second foot on the second pedal and a little tear ran down his cheek. I pretended not to notice, but it broke my heart.
By the end of that 4th lesson, he had both feet on the pedals for a few seconds at a time.
At the next lesson, it took 20 minutes to get the second foot up again, with Bobby coaching it “You can do it. Remember last time?” But, by half way through the lesson, both feet were staying up reliably. Now the quest was to get him to pedal. Bobby must have been thinking “Gee, you give an inch and the teacher wants a mile! Now she wants me to pedal! I knew I shouldn’t have put that second foot up!” He did not pedal that day but both feet were firmly on the pedals. He was smiling, proud of himself.
At the sixth lesson, we did more balancing with the feet on. I asked things like “Do you think those feet might want to go around a bit?” But those feet were still. About half way through the next lesson I said “Let’s not really pedal. Just try moving your feet ever so slowly. I won’t even be able to tell if they’re moving, they’ll be going so slowly.” That worked and those little feet started moving ever so slowly, then a little faster. Finally he was pedaling hard enough that I could stop pushing him.
It took a couple more lessons for him to be able to push off hard enough to start himself. He could even use his brakes to stop himself. At the eighth lesson, we declared victory and he was a proud bike rider.
To bike or not to bike? Bobby’s answer was to bike!

I had a real fun student in February. Jeremiah is a sweet, slightly shy 5 year old. When he arrived at the bike school, he seemed a little concerned. I asked him if he was good at opening really big, heavy garage doors and he said no, he wasn’t. I said “You look like you would be good at that, to me” and handed him the rope. He pulled, gently at first but then hard enough to open the door to the bike barn with 30 bikes inside. “Wow!” he said. We picked a bike for him, the next to the smallest one, got pads and a helmet and, as we were going toward the car, I asked him if he liked baby aliens. He said “Yes” so I offered him the chance to take Baby ET in the car with him over to the school yard. By the time we arrived, they were best friends. Jeremiah said that Baby ET wanted to ride with him on the bike, right from the start, so that was decided.

As we put him on the bike, Baby ET said “Hello, earthling” to Jeremiah and his parents. I explained that we all look kind of alike to him and he just calls us all “earthling.” His parents tried introducing themselves to him by name but, sure enough, ET always came back with the same answer, “Nice to meet you, earthling.” Now Jeremiah was helping ET talk.

During his first lesson, at his first break, Jeremiah told ET a story about a little alien who got lost and ended up on earth and wandered all around and finally found a happy home in a bicycle riding school. He told him the story while cradling his head between his hands and rocking it back and forth, ending the story with “I love you, ET.”

Baby ET doesn’t have the strongest neck and it gives him a sleepy look. During his second lesson Jeremiah decided that ET wanted to sleep. He liked the rocking motion and it made sleeping easier for him. Jeremiah speculated that maybe he hadn’t gotten a great sleep the night before. I told him that sometimes he gets lonesome in the car, all by himself. Now that he has people all around, he feels comfortable enough to go to sleep.

I learned from Jeremiah that aliens like very loud lullabies. There were big plows and other equipment moving around the lot where we were riding. They were picking up steel plates, trying to clear the snow away. They made back-up beeping noises, loud motors roared and metal plates scraped on the ground. ET just thought it was soothing background noise and he got sleepier and sleepier, until finally it was hard to get him to wake up. But Jeremiah assured me that he didn’t want to wake up, so I shouldn’t worry about it. Luckily, he liked hearing stories in his sleep and he even talked in his sleep, so he was still good company.

Jeremiah was getting to be a really good rider. If he got a little boost to get going, he could ride for 600’ or more at a time. He could stop and go more or less where he intended to go. When I suggested that we might be done with bike school, he looked really disappointed. He said he wanted to keep coming to bike lessons forever, and I had to admit I felt pretty much the same way. I said “You all will decide what to do but, in case you decide to come back, ET and I will both be delighted to see you again.”

I'm so happy that WBZ radio's Matt Shearer decided he wanted to talk up our school a bit and put these two little bits up Feb 10 and 11. https://www.bicycleridingschool.org/press-coverage.html

Press Coverage Over the past 30+ years, Susan McLucas and her other teachers have been quietly teaching people to ride bicycles, but occasionally the press takes an interest.

We are very busy these days, partly because we have been mostly teaching individuals but now we have set up our first group classes. The kids classes are on Saturdays at 10 and start July 24. The adult classes start August 1. These classes are fun and also an efficient way to teach a lot of people to ride bikes.