Somewhere buried deep in family albums of gazillions of pictures, there is one of me in my teens, dragging a bike out of the lake, looking like a drowned rat. My mother still enjoys recalling how bikes and I don’t mix. It’s like the error 404 or the blue screen of death when I get on a bike.

Unfortunately, dragging my bike out of the lake was not my first misadventure with this contraption. At eleven or twelve, my cousins invited me to go trail riding with them, and they loaned me a BMX. I followed along, wobbling on the seat, barely able to keep the handlebars steady when the front wheel hit a rock, and I lost control, fell over in the ditch. The bike flew, doing a complete 360 before landing on my head.

In my late twenties, some of my friends couldn’t believe I still couldn’t ride a bike, so they took it upon themselves to teach me. Bless their hearts! They held the bike and ran next to it as I peddled, but as soon as they let go, the balance they provided was gone, and the bike started to swerve and crashed into a boulder. I love my friends, I genuinely do, and I can’t blame them for laughing their asses off as the bike and I went splat against that rock. I got away with scraped knees and elbows, and proclaimed that bikes weren’t for me!

Now, in my late forties, my stubborn side wants me to give it another go if only to say “I did it!” Honestly, is riding a bike that important a skill? Nah. I can do without. It’s my stubbornness egging me on here. Or perhaps my pride. Whichever, I think I need to consider this carefully before I do anything stupid like ride a bike again, and this time end up with broken bones.