In a parking lot near the Fedder Building off East Main Street, I steady myself on a bicycle with the pedals removed. My helmet latch clicks into place. My feet find the flat pavement.
Then I push off. For a few seconds — and for the first time in my life — I’m gliding.
“The only thing that keeps that bicycle upright is your momentum,” says Reconnect Rochester cycling manager Jesse Peers, who’s giving me a riding lesson. He tells me to “Fred Flintstone it” in order to get some speed and adds, “it’s one of those low-risk, low-reward, high-risk, high-reward kind of things.”
For many years, not knowing how to ride a bike has been a source of both shame (how could this happen?) and fear (of getting hurt or failing in general). But now, it’s also given me an extraordinary opportunity in my mid-30s.
Frankly, there’s never been a better time to do it. Rochester boasts nearly 300 miles of bike paths, including 60 miles of on-street bike lanes. Cycling has obvious health benefits, both physical and mental, and can help reduce motor-vehicle emissions.
Some of these factors pushed Peers to get involved with Reconnect Rochester in 2013. Then, at age 31, he hadn’t ridden a bike since he was a teenager. But his friend taught a class on street riding, so he checked it out.
The class changed his life.
“My parents will tell you: I’m a risk-averse introvert. I don’t do things that require confrontation,” Peers says. “If I can do it, I do believe anybody can do it, but it takes a little bit of work on your part.”
His car died a few months later. He’s been a bike commuter ever since.
That anecdote is inspirational for me. But first, the parking lot doles out its first urban-riding crucible: I run over broken glass. After Peers investigates the back tire hiss and the small hole, he grabs a spare bike from home (one with pedals), and I’m back to gliding and picking up speed.
Then, alarmed by the wind and a slight wobble, I squeeze the handle brakes and stop abruptly. Peers reassures me.
“It does help to look forward and not down,” Peers says. “The faster you’re willing to go, you’ll get the hang of it eventually.”
Before we even began the lesson, he stressed that finding my balance would be just the beginning. It did not mean that I was ready to ride in traffic.
“I’d recommend taking a couple months of riding around on your own, perhaps along the paths in Genesee Valley Park or beside the river or canal trails,” he wrote to me in an email ahead of the session. He repeated it in person.
But that’s for the future. First, I have to keep gliding.
I push off with both feet, gathering speed and feeling confident in my form. And then, something transcendent happens. My feet find the pedals. I begin moving in rhythm.
I’m riding a bike!
Tracey Austin, bike educator and alternative transportation specialist at the University of Rochester, loves to witness the moment when everything clicks for new riders.
“I can romanticize it because it is magical,” she says. “They get this sense of freedom and capability that they didn’t have a moment before. It’s like the whole world opens to them.”
Austin teaches children and adults. Both, she says, can have “nervous excitement or even terror in their eyes” at the beginning of lessons. But seeing it replaced with a sense of wonder, no matter how long that takes, is why she remains a bike educator.
She mentions teaching a 65-year-old woman — who had never learned due to religious restrictions — over the course of two full summers.
“Biking was not seen as something that females were to do, and so she had not only these mental blocks on her capacity to be able to ride a bike, but also kind of a moral block,” Austin says. “We had to break down a lot of barriers in order for her to feel that she was allowed to have that freedom.”
After about an hour of gliding and pedaling, I sense my own world expanding, too. I think of my young daughter and what she must be experiencing on her new balance bike in our neighborhood. I feel close to her.
But as Peers notes, that newfound freedom and power does not mean I’m ready to become a bike commuter just yet. In fact, even cyclists who learned to ride as kids are likely not ready.
That’s part of what Peers teaches in Reconnect Rochester’s on-bike “smart cycling” classes. The goal is to empower people to ride defensively in traffic with the knowledge that will keep them safe.
“There’s never going to be a protected bike lane from your doorstep to the doorstep of your destination. You are going to have to mix with traffic some of the time,” Peers says. “That’s something that has to be learned.”
The free program is offered on July 19, August 9 and September 27.
More information on cycling education available at reconnectrochester.org.
Patrick Hosken is CITY’s arts reporter. He can be reached at patrick@rochester-citynews.com.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2024.
