Does anyone here have trouble riding a two wheeled bike?

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I never had very good equilibrium to begin with but I'm told that due to the type of deafness I have-which is related to nerve damage and whatnot- it would be nigh on impossible for me to learn how to ride a standard two wheeled bike without stabilizers.

This makes me a little sad as it's one of those simple things that many people take for granted. I've only ever ridden a two wheeled bike way back before I was diagnosed as deaf and at an age when stabilizers looked 'cute' rather than 'disturbing'.

I'm twenty years old now and it's been around 10-12 years since I last wobbled around my neighbourhood.

As I hail from a county that has a disturbingly high number of drunk-driving related accidents a year, I am very reluctant to learn how to drive. Also, I'm concerned about increasing my carbon footprint by using a gas-guzzling veichle as well as fuel costs, insurance, maintenance and all that jazz.

So, in a bid to find a healtier, eco-friendly solution, I've come once more to the issue o perhaps learning how to ride a bike.

Of course, from experience, the combination of myself and a two-wheeler usually winds up in an oh-so-graceful fall to the pavement, skinned knees and my cousin's cruel laughter.
The only solution I can see to the problem-which is mainly to do with balance- is to get a three wheeler bike or TRICYCLE.

Only down side is that they are freakishly expensive, usually starting at around €600, which is about six times more than I can afford right now. So, I am considering the two wheeled option.

I post this topic to ask if anyone has any tips on regaining balance and co-ordination and also to see if there are any other deaf people out there who can either ride a regular bike with ease or also has trouble with it.

Also, a few recommendations on places that sell tricycles dirt cheap would be awesome too!

To the balance: If you can walk, you can ride a bike. In fact the bike keeps most of it's balance by itself, based on physical principles (angular momentum). Nearly nobody can stand upright with a bike that's not moving, but it becomes easy as soon as it has some speed. Try it, I'm quite sure you'll have much less difficulties then you think.
So the difficult part is starting & stopping. This problem can be solved with a good bike partly and adjusting saddle hight and handle in a way, that your feet can reach ground very easy.

btw: €600 is a rather normal price even for a two wheeler. If you can't afford that, try to get a second hand one. A good second hand is far better than a cheap new one.

Pilot, thank you for that informative post as regards to two wheeled bikes. I never realised it could possibly be reated to saddle height or that the bike itself holds some balance. Perhaps the next time I am down in my cousin's house I could test this theory on her mountain bike.

As far as 3-wheeler bikes go, I saw the perfect one on Amazon.com. It's $348.66 after shippiing, but in euros, it's a very affordable €221.99 so I'm going to consider getting it for Christmas instead of a Wii if the 2 wheel bike doesn't work out.

I'm not exactly optimistic, though. Even with my cousins pushing me along, the last time I tried to ride a 2 wheeler I had them release me once I felt confident enough to pedal up some speed only to wind up falling sideways and skidding into a tree.

I still have two very noticable scars on both my knees. XD

It's the procession of the gyroscopic motion of the wheels that keep a bike naturally upright when the wheels are spinning. The faster the wheels spin, the quicker the procession is. Other than that it's just a matter of balance. Keep your feet on the pedals, don't sway your legs to try to gain balance. If you're riding at slow speed and trying to maintain balance, either speed up or stop. You can use the brakes to wash off some speed while turning but never brake hard while leaning or have the handlebars turned.

Starting off you can have the seat height so you can reach the ground with your feet. Normally that is too low, your leg extension should be straight when the pedal is at the bottom of the crank, so increase the seat height gradually until you are comfortable at starting and stopping. With practice you will get used to getting off the seat when you are stopped.

I don't know about deaf people riding on a public road if you're not confident. Depends on your level of deafness I guess. I think that audio is very important to be aware of your surroundings when you are a beginner, regardless of whether you are on a 2 or 3 wheeled vehicle.

I have a cheap bike and a good bike. The cheap bike is my runabout that I park publically so it is less likely to get stolen. So don't put all your funds into a good bike if you're just starting off and going to be parking in public places. You can always buy a better bike in the future.

P.S. I recommend you get the Wii

Yes, saddle height is the best trick. set it so low, that your feet are flat on the ground. so you can even push the bike forward with you feet, without using the pedals at all. Then nothing can go wrong. Get some feeling for the bike and step by step increase height and start using the pedals.

Mountainbikes & racingbikes are fun to have, but more difficult to drive. Especially mountainbikes haver a different frame geometry that makes them react very fast on handle movements. My boss used my mountainbike once (Dutch, Amsterdam, where everybody is comfortable with bikes) and immediately disliked it's handling
A touring bike will most likely be better. They're made for comfortable riding.

I have a hearing loss and wear hearing aids. I've had a 24 inch BMX bike (same bike since my teens), and do have a pair of training wheels that fit it. I've used the bike that way a number of times, especially years ago in my college days and do not care what pepole think. If they raise any questions, I just tell them I was advised by my audiologist to get the training wheels and show them my hearing aids. It's a lie, of course, but a story that most unfamiliar with disabilities would buy. In my case, I find that the training wheels provide more stability going uphill as I'm very out of shape and short winded due to other health problems. BTW, my parents let me keep my training wheels on my bike as a child all the way to fourth grade!
http://www.mary-janeshoes.com/phpbb/dow ... &mode=view

Up until the age of ten I couldn't ride a bicycle, but I had this obsession for motorbikes.

My parents got me a 50CC Yamaha motorbike and I was really worried about getting on it.
Even though I was dying to get on it.

I eventually did with the help of my dad, and now I have my motorbike license and I do freestyle motocross.

I agree on the height of the seat, if you adjust that to your preferred height, it's not as bad.
Just work up the courage over sometime and you'll get it and become professional

it took me longer than most to learn to ride a bike, but now i ride better than most. once you get the hang of it, it's easy to get good at it. as said before, the bikes balance themselves when you get up to speed, but the problem is that when you're learning you don't want to go fast because it's scary at low speeds. now you don't have to go zooming down the street at full speed, but you need to be going faster than a crawl.

is it an inner ear problem that caused your deftness? i don't know much about that, i can see how it would affect your ability to ride a bike, but i don't know anyone with that, let alone anyone like that who rides a bike, so i couldn't tell you how hard/possible it is. i'm sure you could figure something out if you spent enough time practising.

I know that there have been some studies showing that regular practice of Tai Chi can improve balance and reduce falls in the elderly and in people with meniere's disease (which involves the inner ear and balance). I can't guarantee that all people with damage to the inner ear will improve their balance, or that you will be able to ride a bike if you learn Tai Chi, but that is a possibility you might be interested in pursuing. Any type of slow balance exercises will probably help some.

So why don't we have bikes with a fly-wheel in the diamond of the frame? If that were spun up to speed before the bike was moving, it would stabilize it. I guess that if it were spinning too fast, it would make the bike hard to turn, but seems like something that might help. I had an Evel Kneivel motorcycle daredevil toy, and it had a built in gyro-flywheel so it could jump and land upright. It might be pretty cool on a bicycle - it could have a small electric motor to get it up to speed, and electronic controls to slow it when the bike gets up to speed.

Only after having a few.

Don't give up with the two wheelers, and don't be afraid of them. It takes time and patience for some people to learn, but so did walking, you just don't remember it.
When I see my sister's infant wobbling and wobbling and then boom, on the floor, it makes me realize that we all take walking for granted, yet at one time we all wobbled and fell, over and over again until we learned.

I now use my bike to go virtually everywhere, and it's a Godsend: no gas to pay, no insurance and no car payments. Of course, I live in California, it's a total car culture here, but who cares, I look a lot better than any of those out-of-shape fatties driving their new Mercedes.

The benefits of riding a bike are endless. I know you'd feel more comfortable with a three wheeler, but unless it looks really cool, you're better off trying the two wheelers. Plus, it would be a learning experience, which is always good (multiply those neurons!).

Listen, you're only twenty years old, give it another shot, and, if after REALLY trying, it doesn't work out, then go for the three wheeler.

By the way, I got my bike, a gorgeous silver and black ten speed mountain Schwinn, for $170 US at Target (a discount but still cool shop), so it doesn't have to be that expensive.

In any case, I sincerely wish you the best of luck!

M ydaughter is 14, and is having alot of trouble learning to ride a bike. She started out very determined, has trouble with balncing too, and gets very discouraged very quickly. We've had this bike for two years now, and I don't know if she will ever be able to do it.

I never could learn to ride a bike either. I would fall over even with training wheels! Once into a patch of cactus -- OUCH!

A word of caution about three-wheelers/adult trikes (I rode one until my knees got too bad):

Be very careful to go slowly around corners. If you go too fast, you'll tip over.

I always had problems with the cotter pin in the back axle breaking. This was a HUGE problem when I had a trike with coaster brakes, because when that cotter pin goes, your brakes go. Make sure you get one with hand brakes. I think that trikes are designed with senior citizens in mind and are not meant to be ridden at a decent speed.

Of course, the plus side of riding a trike is that you have that huge basket in back for hauling groceries.

I was in Target yesterday and saw something in the exercise section called a wobble board. It is a disc about 2 feet across. On the underside of the disc, a half of a 4 inch hard ball has been secured to the center. A person stands on the board and balances themselves, and if they lose balance, it just tilts a few inches to one side - not usually catastrophic, just shift weight and get back on the center. For some of the exercises, a person does not try to stay perched in the center, but rolls around on the outer edges.

A scan of the medical literature shows it has been used for improving balance, for rehabilitation of leg injuries, and as a warm-up exercise to help reduce injuries in various sports.

Here is a you-tube video of a fancy wobble board that has sensors embedded, and is interfaced to a video game to teach balance and coordination. Since it is a 'rehabilitation tool' it probably costs several thousand dollars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4fLjrhrvAQ


Some other vids:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM0qXTDBn-I (overview of wobble boards)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWzDJ3LhMZk (simplified board - moves in one dimension only)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgr20TCbkiE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kel2gnWXidI


The store I was in had two different models, one was around $20, the other was a bit more. Here is a link to a Do-It-Yourself project (the underside mechanism looks higher and more difficult to use than the ones I saw - maybe more fall potential. But then again, if the pipe flange were shorter, less tilt would be possible.

http://www.todayfitness.net/budgetbody/ ... eboard.htm

OK, went out and splurged $20 on a wobble board, and have been using the past few days. It is very good for not only balance, but also posture, abdominal breathing, and for activating and strengthening the muscles in the ankle and lower calf.