How to ride a bike
My bicycle-riding skills are poor (not much better than my driving). I really got to grips with riding a bike when I was nineteen, and it took me a good couple of hours. It was an exhilarating experience, having struggle with it for an entire morning, to finally come to grips with this basic and useful skill. What learning to ride a bicycle taught me was how to hold my balance, which is essential to mastering bike-riding. At first, I struggled, like most people do, with keeping my balance while propelling myself forward, since I would always lose it as I could not manage to keep my balance while moving at the same time. After numerous attempts, I realised that the key was to pedal on both feet continuously so that there would be no break in my forward motion where I might lose my balance and fall. After some practice, I was (finally) able to ride a bike, somewhat jerkily at first, but it gradually got more fluent as I became more confident in finding my balance and pedalling in one move ( practice makes perfect).
The famous saying ‘ in order to keep your balance, you need to keep moving’ is a well-known dictum ( invented by Einstein) that is widely used and appreciated in the world. This preaches the well-established idea that maintaining momentum is key to healthy living and achieving success, since being active instils positivity which can often catalyse success. A similar concept which I learnt while running cross-country at school was that I should always keep running, however slowly, and avoid walking during a long-run, since simply staying in a running posture (i.e. not falling into walking mode) could help maintain one’s momentum which might be instrumental to one’s completing the race. The metaphor of riding a bicycle adds to all this, since the key part of riding a bike, as described above, is finding one’s feet (literally) on the pedals without losing balance. Once one is in motion, one can effectively sail (or ride) plainly, since very little force (i.e. effort) is needed to sustain one’s forward motion. The initial step, which requires the biggest input, is not only the most important but also the most hazardous, since messing it up like misstepping the pedal(s) or mistiming one’s move can almost certainly make one fall, which is what bike-learners struggle with at first (certainly in my case, as mentioned above). Once one gets going, however, the rest follows as one merely needs to keep one’s balance and let the wheels run. I have mentioned before how, in the process of getting into ‘ flow’ ( one’s optimal cognitive state of energy and efficiency), making a good start is crucial, and I have defended the routine of starting any task slowly, and the slower, the better. Tackling a task slowly can make one adapt to the task at hand effectively, as it allows one to sink into the tedious task which can be achieved if one gives oneself time and space. This is all analogous to learning to ride a bicycle, since when one is finding one’s balance at the beginning, one is not yet in motion and must hence get into a riding position slowly and cautiously. Obviously, one must not move so slowly (or remain static) that one never gets going, but one must not rush into riding motion either which can easily make one stall. A combination of force (i.e. effort), timing of one’s pedalling, and the balancing of one’s body are all essential to getting into motion, after which it becomes a matter of maintaining one’s motion and steering if need be ( accelerating or not). The key to getting started, therefore, is good co-ordination, which can be either physical (riding a bicycle/ driving a car) or mental. Subtle.
發表者：keithtselinguist
I am a professional linguist and I do research in theoretical linguistics, mainly formal syntax and historical/comparative linguistics. I am also a simultaneous translator/interpreter and a language teacher, and my language specialisations include Indo-European, Latin, Greek, Romance (especially Spanish) and East Asian, namely Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese). I am also interested in history and politics, especially the development of western political philosophy, which is the result of my education in the humanities (literature, history, philosophy, philology) at the University of Oxford (Balliol College). My favourite sport is football (soccer) and I am a long-term die-hard supporter of ACFiorentina in Italy: Batistuta, Baggio, Rui Costa, Toldo from the 1990s/2000s will always be in my heart, as they were my childhood heroes. For more information about me, please visit my website: https://www.keithtselinguist.com. 組合與位置，構造和意思 Numbers and words. #keithtselinguist #humanlinguist 檢視「keithtselinguist」的全部文章
Originally published at http://keithtselinguist.wordpress.com on May 9, 2023.
