I am not completely sure where do I get the courage to tell the world a complete shocking fact about myself, but I guess when it became a wonderful learning opportunity for me it felt almost selfish to not share the recently acquired knowledge with others even when in the process I make a total fool of myself.

But here I go, world, as unbelievable as it is…I never learned to ride a bike.

I know, it seems like a joke that now at my recently adopted age of 43 I don’t know to do the thing that most kids learn by the time they turn…5? 8?. I never went through that rite of passage, I guess, and it is shameful and it is high up in my bucket list priorities to address.

Now that the fact is out in the open I am going to share why this became relevant during a recent short vacation. While we were spending some time in Madrid, our avid bikers friends suggested we rented electric scooters to move throughout the city. It was a beautiful crisp Autumn day, the kind that surprises you with bright sun rays and a timid cold breeze that only catches us in the shade. It seemed like a perfect plan. The only problem was that learning to ride a bike not only provides us with wonderful visions of leisure strolls through the countryside with a wicker basket hanging from the handle bars full of fresh flowers or a more modern vision of bike rentals in busy cities. Riding a back actually provides us with a very important skill that I am guessing five year-old kids might take for granted: balance.