Late-Life intro to bikes? (Fear of bikes...)

K

Kurt in CT

Active Member
In short, I love my ebike and ride alone all the time. But I have a healthy, reasonably coordinated 64 yr old wife that won't ride. Why? Fear I think. She grew up in NYC, and the only bike experiences she had were negative ones. She won't articulate them much, but I think it involves her father forcing her to learn on a bike way too large for at the time... when she was little girl. Anyway, now I cannot get her on a bike. If you're reading this you know how great this hobby/form of transportation is. Any ideas on introducing and getting her back on the horse? PS, I'm thinking that it would be a lot better if I didn't do it, and a third-party was involved.
 
That's a tough one. I have a 74 year old friend who wants to ride, but he has gone blind in one eye and is possibly getting a bit feeble. I'd like to encourage him, but there is some danger involved in this and I'd hate to see him get hurt.

I have ridden bikes all my life and currently ride for transportation in a pretty congested city. There are close calls with vehicles probably once per month and I don't consider myself a big risk taker.

Your third party idea sounds reasonable, but I wouldn't push her too hard or fast.

At 60, I don't consider myself frail yet, but I know the day is coming, so I take good care of myself and don't try any of the stunts I would pull even 20 years ago.
 
Kurt in CT said:
In short, I love my ebike and ride alone all the time. But I have a healthy, reasonably coordinated 64 yr old wife that won't ride. Why? Fear I think. She grew up in NYC, and the only bike experiences she had were negative ones. She won't articulate them much, but I think it involves her father forcing her to learn on a bike way too large for at the time... when she was little girl. Anyway, now I cannot get her on a bike. If you're reading this you know how great this hobby/form of transportation is. Any ideas on introducing and getting her back on the horse? PS, I'm thinking that it would be a lot better if I didn't do it, and a third-party was involved.
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Maybe some scenic bike taxi rides? Probably have those in Central Park? So it sounds like she knows how to ride. My area has several outfits that do guided historical or scenic tours on regular bikes. They provide bikes if you don't have one but they are not electric. Maybe you could rent some rider-friendly electrics? There is one Pedego dealer in my area that has a lake-front location that rents for a bike trail circumnavigation of the lake. Perhaps something like that to get her out in a scenic area with very little car interaction?
 
We do not know your wife. I'll ad this but it may have nothing to do with our situation. I can get my wife to do things away from people she knows far quicker than I can at home. She worries way to much what the people she knows will think. I try and respect that. I built myself an ebike and love riding it around. I'll build another and we will take them someone else and I'm sure she will ride with me.

Sounds like your wife is not very secure on a bike and perhaps she does not want to look clumsy around friends and neighbors.
 
Betting the bike (or trike?), as a solution to something she'd really like to do, might produce positive results. A ride on an awesome (not too busy?) trail through the woods during the peak of color change would be the first thing that comes to mind. Pre-ride it so you know she's not going to be over extended (make sure it's reasonably level, and paved!). In other words, set her up on a course with very little chance of failure (guaranteed by you!), and build on that. Then, all you need from her is an open mind on the topic.
 
I like the trike suggestion. Also, trying a cruiser style with pedals forward and feet can easily touch the ground. Maybe one of the smaller folding bikes with the smaller wheel diameter.
 
Get her a trike. Doesn't have to be a tadpole, traditional looking is fine. Check https://www.electrictrike.com/products/sun-traditional-electric-tricycle. Don't get fooled by the price, optional aluminum-case battery, 3-speed IGH and shipping will get you into 2,000 range. Still, affordable. I think they have a rear disc brake standard now.

Older people often have balance and reaction issues. Slow reaction = they want to go slow, but 2-wheel bike becomes unstable at slow speed - a vicious cycle. With trike she could go as slow as she wants and stop any time without taking her feet off the pedals. A word of caution - don't put your feet on the ground until it completely stops - you will see why. Also, go slow on curves, don't lean. Just relax and sit straight.

Trike in the link is not a top notch, but it has 2 features that seniors often find attractive: foot-forward position and low step-through. In the video Court explains about limiting top speed and other things.
 
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My wife had a 3 speed Sun trike (non-electric) before she got her Blix ebike. The Sun trike was a very nice well built trike and I sometimes I wish I had added a kit to it instead of selling it.

The one thing I will say about a trike is that I suspect you will ride it mostly using the throttle rather than pedal assist, especially if you have the single speed version. If so, that will impact the range you can expect.

Even with the 3 speed axle, my wife's Sun trike was quite a lot of work to ride, especially on hills. So she never rode on very long or difficult rides. Even though my wife has some balance and stamina issues, she adapted to the two wheel Blix ebike better than I expected. I have asked if she would like to trade for an electric trike, but for now she prefers the 2 wheel Blix.
 
Kurt, I have a similar story. My wife had a Giant cross type bike that she said she liked a lot, but she never rode it much back in the days when I rode a Cannondale touring bike most of the time. Fine on the flats, but we have a lot of hills around here. I got her up around Lake Placid a few times and onto a couple of bike paths, but she really didn't warm to it. Once I got interested in ebikes, she tried a Pedego City Commuter and liked it enough that we bought it for her. I figured yippee, I had a riding partner for at least some of the time when I wasn't out gathering up bigger miles.

Never happened. I now know that we bought her too much bike as far as weight and inertia from the bigger tires is concerned. She dumped it twice (Slow speed and stopping) over a couple of months and it has sat in the basement ever since, two years old now with 195 miles on it, I believe. She is just intimidated by the weight and mass of it and nothing is going to change that. Even when she was out basically enjoying the ride she is always super hesitant about the thing and talks fondly about her old Giant, due mainly to the lesser mass.

In the spring I have every intention of buying her a Faraday Courtland low step, which I think is going to be the answer. We saw a gorgeous one in the local bike shop and it caught her attention immediately. Much lighter (about 40 pounds), visually very appealing, and just so much easier to handle. Is it the most sophisticated ebike in the world? No, but it is a hell of a nice package and I am guessing that with the lighter weight and the ebike attributes, it will make her happy. She is never going to be a five day a week rider, but if we can get out on the paths or the Saratoga Battlefield Road seven or eight times a summer, it will be worth every cent, since I do enjoy riding with her.

And someone is going to end up with a super low mileage City Commuter!
 
On non-electric Sun 24 trike people sometimes replace the chagrining with 25T, to climb hills better. With e-kit this this won't be a big issue, but the battery range goes down.

Fear after trying to ride a bike too big (from childhood times) sounds more like a balance/confidence issue. 24" folder could help with this, and they are cheap. They come in step-through configuration too, Blix Vika and Amego Freedom were reviewed here recently.
 
Although somewhat different than your scenario, my wife and I have experienced many of the issues already discussed here. Perhaps some of the things we did will be of some help. Skip to the 4th paragraph to avoid the introduction.

My wife is 66 and although she has been riding her Trek Shift 3 MTB with me for years, she is having trouble adjusting to her new Pedego Platinum Interceptor. Like others have mentioned, she has some balance issues and the new ebike weighs almost twice as much as her Trek. She is also short and at 5' 2", has some trouble handling the heavier bike. It took quite a bit of coaxing to even get her on it.

We talked about getting a trike when we first started shopping for ebikes. We can't ride from home and since we travel a lot, the difficulty involved with transporting a trike made us dismiss the idea. We considered a kit to convert her Trek which would solve the weight issue. I was concerned though about her step through Trek, with light weight frame and rim brakes, being safe enough for her. I was also concerned about reliability since we often ride in some fairly remote locations. Failures caused by my installation or manufacturers issues could leave us stranded somewhere without the ability to get parts. In the end we settled on Pedego for their outstanding customer support. Their Interceptor was also one of the few that would accommodate her short stature.

Anyway, here is what we did to get her successfully in the saddle of her ebike:

It goes without saying that a step through frame is a must for someone, male or female, with balance issues learning to ride a heavy bike.

We took the bikes to a large, deserted, paved parking lot of a store that went out of business. This eliminated her fear of embarrassment in front of friends & neighbors and gave her a wide open space with no narrow trail or sidewalk to negotiate.

Contrary to proper bicycle adjustment, I set the seat post as low as possible so she could sit with both feet on the ground.

Communication is important so I gave her a walkie talkie on a lanyard to wear. That way, I could talk to her and give advice & encouragement without yelling.

Getting the heavier ebike started was a problem for her. Even with pedal assist, she had trouble getting the bike moving using the pedals. I showed her how to use the throttle to get going without pedaling. She quickly learned that trick and the problem disappeared.

Once she mastered starting & stopping and got the feel of the handlebar controls, we marked out a course on the pavement of the parking lot. This way she could learn to negotiate a path without fear of running into something.

All this seems like overkill for someone who was already riding a conventional bike. Going back to basics however was the key in getting her comfortable on the new ebike. She doesn't ride as often as I do but when she does, she thoroughly enjoys the experience.
 
It took me 2 years age 7 and 8, to learn how to ride a bike without training wheels. Lots of skinned kneed and elbows. I was terribly afraid of gravel on the road for years.
I never learned to throw a ball. It took me a year to learn now to march correctly in the band, putting down the foot on the beat instead of picking it up. People don't tell you the simplest things "it is so obvious". I had 3 summers of swim lessons and needed remedial swim training at Army summer camp age 19 to swim the length of the pool.
So I can sympathize with your wife. Maybe she is a slow physical learner like me? Try a tandem, you do the steering, if you really want to be with her on outings.
 
2015 statistics for cyclists, 818 were killed, and 45,000 injured. 29% of the injuries were from being hit by cars. Average age of person killed was 45. NHTSA facts. So caution is required, but only riding on trails would reduce the chance of injury by 30%. Maybe your wife doesn't have an engineering background like I do, and numbers won't help. But over 2 people a day are being killed, and over 123 a day are injured. Still pretty good odds of being okay considering 321 million population in 2015.
 
Court actually made a video on "How to ride a bike", so if your wife isn't scared because of cars/traffic, and its just a personal confidence thing, then this might be a good place to start.


And as others have mentioned, a trike or even recumbent ebike might be something to consider. You also might want to stick to bike paths until she has more confidence to ride in bike lanes or in lanes with cars.
 
I'm going to interpret things a little differently than some others, and conclude that the issue isn't that your wife needs to learn to ride a bike, it's that she does know (or at least once knew, which implies she could pick it up again a lot easier than someone completely new to it), but is just uncomfortable due to circumstances with that "oversized bike" of her youth. If this is the case, maybe a better solution is a step-thru bike. I figured out (after three tries/bikes!) that this was the key to making my wife more comfortable: not having that bar, creating a fear that she wouldn't be able to get off if it started to fall over (or whatever). Maybe that sounds irrational to some, but I'll be honest, I had the same fear when I learned to ride a motorcycle as an adult (actually it was more than just a fear, I did drop the cycle on the ground at least once at a stop light, they are heavy!)

The trike may or may not be a good idea -- only you know your wife. But just reading literally your post, in which you indicate that she did ride once, but is not willing to talk much about why she stopped, and also that you have reason to think it would go better with a third party helping her to try it again ... with that context I see a possibility that some women (and men) might be annoyed with/insulted by the suggestion of a trike, she might regard it almost the same as if you suggested training wheels. Similarly with asking her to watch a video titled "Learn How to Ride a Bicycle in 5 Minutes." Just a "be sure of yourself before you open your mouth" caution that we men often forget when it comes to our wives :)
 
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