Moving to Japan is a lot like trying to learn how to cycle with no hands

I can cycle, I love cycling, me and Manwell enjoy our carefree spins by the river but I’ve always felt that my cycling skills left something to be desired (NB it was not my fault that the truck hit me). Its not the basics of manoeuvring and dealing with traffic that bother me, it’s the little things that give a cyclist some flair – I’m fine with speeding round corners and dodging pedestrians but the thing that has always proved too difficult is cycling without my hands on the handlebars.

I’m presuming that you know that it is supposed to be very hard to learn to cycle as an adult if you never cycled as a child – its cause kids’ centres of gravity aren’t fixed (they’re growing) and cycling requires you to shift your centre of gravity so when adults try they have a much harder habit to break. So I thought I was too old to learn to cycle without hands cause you have to shift position but I was wrong. The friendly river bike path to the beach is where I taught myself – it was easy to pick up and fun – one 15 minute trip to the beach and I was flying round an uphill corner with no hands.

But then I realised that everything you do in cycling has to be relearned without hands – turning, going over rough patches, going over the breaks in the footpath. Everything is similar but harder and slightly off kilter hence my Japan analogy– but I can do it now – I can cycle with no hands.