Learning To Ride A Bike

DD's best friend, Mia started it. Mia is an accomplished rider. The other day DD went to Mia's house and they had a lot of fun on Mia's new bicycle. Mia pedalled while DD was content to be a pillion rider. Together they rounded the neighbourhood, pushed the bike up a slope and then rode down the slope at mega speed.

So that was how DD finally relented to DH's wish to buy her a new bicycle. Last year DH wanted to give her a bike as a birthday present but she refused. She was just too scared to learn to ride a bike.

But I guess peer pressure changed all that...

I asked Mia's mom where she bought the bike. She gave a vague direction and I'm not good at directions anyway so the only two phrases that stuck in my mind was 'Sungai Buloh' and 'on the way to Paya Jaras'. Since DH had already enquired at nearby shops and found the price to be exorbitant, we decided to give Sg Buloh a try.

So we found ourselves scouring Sg Buloh last Saturday, with those two phrases and Mia as our sole guides. Mia was a confident guide, telling us to 'go straight', 'turn left', and 'turn right', peppered with comments like 'I remember this graveyard', 'I remember this school', 'I remember this hospital'.

And that was how we reached a dead end. Mia urged DH to turn back, telling us that her mom too had reached the dead end and then turned back. Needless to say, our confidence is our little guide began to wane. But she remained very optimistic, telling us to "go straight", "turn left" and finally "dekat sangat dah.. sikit lagi... sikittt je lagi." But as we reached the rows of shoplots, she too lost her confidence and muttered "Mia tak ingatlah".

DH stopped by the roadside and asked a guy for directions. As it turned out, the shop was about 2 km away from where we were. Once we reached the correct rows of shoplots, Mia got excited and exclaimed "haa kat situ, kat situ! Lepas kedai motor".

The salesman remembered Mia and decided to give us a good price, in fact even better than the price that Mia's mom got. He gave Mia a bicycle bell, as a gift for recommending a new customer. DD wanted a pink bike, the same colour as Mia's. We got the bike fitted with a pillion rider carrier and a water bottle carrier (I thought these things are standard features, but I was wrong). We also bought a safety kit for DD containing 2 knee pads, 2 elbow pads, and 2 gloves. Of course they had to be pink in colour. We wanted to get her a helment too but they were too flimsy.

We reached home at around 2pm, and the two girls immediately tried out the bike under the supervision of my maid. I joined them later on. It was not easy to teach DD because the road in front of my house was quite steep. And the glaring afternoon sun was of no help either. So the session was a fruitless one, ending with DD crying out of frustration and in pain from falling too many times.

After Asar, the four of us (DD, Mia, DH and I) went to the badminton court. There, DH taught DD to ride her bike. Before long, DH could let go of the bike and let DD ride without any helping hand. But DD was still fledgling. She struggled with controlling the handles. Once she almost squeezed herself and her bike between 2 poles that were about 1 ft apart. Another time, she had a head on collission with a pole. But as she practised, she became better at controlling the handles and the speed.

DH and I were so proud that she learnt to ride the bike within a day. As I recall, it took me a few sessions to learn. DH meanwhile, never had a bike in the family because my MIL didn't allow her children to learn to ride bikes.

Later on at home, she complained of pain from the scratches that she sustained. I turned into a lecture mode and told her, "What doesn't kill you will only make you stronger".

The next morning, we went to MPH. There was a campaign on story writing, where shoppers could contribute a line each to a story, continuing where a previous writer left off. The campaign just started that morning, because there was just a line in the open note book. The line goes, "Today is my good day because...". DD wrote "I learnt to ride a bike". And I continued with, "As my mother said, "The pain will go away, but the skill that you learnt will stay with you forever".

Yes, the skill will stay with her forever, insyaAllah.