I was just "flipping" through some photos I took. Nobody'll confuse my work with that of Henri-Cartier Bresson, but I have a couple of pictures I like. Here's one I took a couple of weeks ago when I was riding on the Rockaway Boardwalk:
It was interesting to see the two boys with their mother. A woman I knew--a former co-worker--who used to live out that way sometimes rode with her daughters along that boardwalk. I accompanied them a couple of times; I enjoyed the company of the mother and her daughters. And, they turned out to be better cyclists than I'd anticipated.
I can recall a few other times when I've seen mothers riding with daughters, or with their husbands and kids. However, I don't think I've ever seen a woman cycling with her boys, but not her husband or daughters, if she had them. On the other hand, when I've seen boys on tricycles or bicycles with training wheels, the adult who was watching over them was a female--usually the mother, from what I could tell. I've seen fathers or other adult males riding with young boys, but never accompanying or supervising them as the woman in the photo did.
As I remember, my mother and grandmother took me to the park or watched over me as I toddered along the sidewalks in our neighborhood. Those memories are sunny. That's most likely because we went out only on nice days.
But neither they nor my father, or any other relatives, rode with me--at least as best as I can recall. To be fair, almost no adults rode bikes in those days, at least in the US. And, as I now realize, my parents may not have had enough money to buy bikes for themselves. After all, the bikes I rode as a kid were gifts or hand-me-downs. Worst of all, they were very busy, and thus very tired, so much of the time.
How involved were your family members in your childhood and adolescent cycling experiences?
No adult ever rode with me or supervised me, to the extent that I even learned to ride a bike on my own. That is probably why I never learned how to do a number of things properly, such as mount and dismount by stepping on the pedal first and then hoisting myself onto the saddle... or using gear shifters. The first multiple-speed bike I was given was assembled so poorly, that the gear shifters were impossible to turn. I had no idea that this was the problem and just figured that I wasn't able to use them. As a result, I left the gears alone and rode that bike as a single speed - just like my kid's bike, which had been an actual single speed. When I remember all this, it amazes me - Did my parents really not think it was necessary to teach me? I guess not!
ReplyDeleteVelouria: I wonder how many more people learned to ride bikes without parental supervision, and how that affected their (our) experiences as cyclists.
ReplyDeleteWhat you say about shifting your bike reminds me of a joke we had in the first shop in which I worked: We used to say that some people seemed to think "derailleur" was a French word for "Don't Touch." They bought their bikes because those bikes had ten speeds, but they thought they could use only one of them. Or they thought that their transmissions were automatic.
No training, no encouragement!When I finally persuaded a friend to let me try riding his bike it did not seem too difficult so I tried to show my prowess to my father in the forlorn hope that I too would get some wheels. I swept into the driveway as he watched, if there had not been two choices of which side of a triangular rose bed to take my indecision might not have put me into the centre of it. He walked away unimpressed...
ReplyDeleteColine--Your father sounds like a jaded man. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteCame back from WW2 with half a leg missing. Only after his death did my sister find out from a friend of his from that time how lively he had been before the damage was done...
DeleteThen again I could never have been the child he wanted, if he wanted one at all!
Coline--"I never could have been the child he wanted". Oh, I have often felt that way. My father has actually been very good to me since my gender transition. But before that, especially in my youth, our relationship was often difficult because I did not follow courses of study, or career or life paths, he wanted for me.
ReplyDelete