Confessions of a novice cyclist

Cycling through a forest on the beautiful Curonian Spit in Lithuania... or rather, Sharon Fowler taking a bike for a walk on a cycle path up a Lithuanian hill. Photo by Kel Fowler.

I never had my own bicycle as a child. I had a tricycle, but somewhere between then and borrowing my sister's bike when in my mid-20s, I missed a step. Or cycle as it were.

I have vague memories of cycling with more proficient mortals (mainly boys or sisters) in the forests of Clyde, when we stayed with friends at their crib, ate rabbits and explored the nearby forest.

It was there I may have learned to ride.

I have further memories of taking an old, faithful bicycle out of my Granddad Lippert's Dunedin shed as a youngster, and doing the stuff in the streets of St Kilda.

I also borrowed a bike for three months while living in England as a 13-year-old. I rode to school, double-decker buses lumbering beside me. It is a wonder I am still alive.

"I didn't have a bike."

"I didn't have brothers."

These have been some of my cries as I've reacquainted myself with cycling over the past two years.

I now live in Lithuania, where my husband Kel and I serve as volunteers in this post-Soviet nation.

The Blue Lagoon Presbyterian Church in Northeast Valley, Dunedin, sent us here to help, including with local orphanage children.

All that to say, I can't afford the latest model of bike, or a bike at all.

However, two years ago, just as I was starting to join my husband in thinking a bicycle might be a good idea, we were given two.

Mine is a DBS. I don't know what that means, but include it in case it is relevant to someone. It is purple, much more relevant to me, and has a basket attached to its front.

A 61-year-old American friend asked recently how many gears my bike has. Five, I replied, thinking that this was a lot. She calmly mentioned that hers had 20 but she didn't need them all.

As a novice cyclist, I hadn't realised such machines existed. My husband later explained that a "10-speed" actually meant, 10 different speeds available.

Most of my life, I'd thought 10-speeds were just something other children received at Christmas. I never asked for a bike as a child and can't remember wanting one.

I received roller-skates, another trendy item at the time, but fell over regularly and didn't really ever master skating.

Now I have a bicycle of my own, aged late 30-something - its owner, not the bike. I set out to master it and quickly found that perhaps it more mastered me.

Getting on the bicycle was the first challenge. I would swing my right leg over the seat, hoist my bum on to the saddle, then somehow slither off as I tried to start riding. Often I would hit my crotch on the top bar.

I had insisted on a woman's model after memories of those bars on boys' bikes, however I'm not sure it has made a difference.

Somehow, my body and my bike often seem to meet in places they shouldn't. And that hurts.

Getting off was similar. I couldn't quite co-ordinate the slowing down, stopping and then disembarking. My routine was more like, rush rush, skid to a halt, fall off. Ouch with the crotch again.

It helped enormously when Kel, my chief tutor, explained that I should go down my gears before trying to stop. Every time.

This doesn't help in my frequent emergencies, when I have to stop for a car, or lights, or child, or just because.

However, once I worked out that down actually meant going from 5 towards 1, it helped. A hint for fellow novices: if you drive a car, then bicycle gears are similar in rank. At least on my bike.

So, the first and second gears are for starting off, for hills, for hard bits. And the highest gear is for when you are coasting along and shouldn't need to stop, navigate sharp curves or conquer steep hills.

Living in Lithuania, the land of the flat, hills aren't a problem. However they have been for me, being initially a less-fit and uninitiated rider.

What to Otago folk or experienced cyclists would be mere mounds, for me have been mountains only climbed with the help of my feet.

My feet on the track, rather than the bike pedals.