I’ve never been able to wheelie, and I’ve never been able to ride hands-free with any confidence for any length of time either. These are the metrics I will always use to measure myself as a cyclist. I am my own harshest critic.
I should be at peace with my cycling resumé. I can ride road, cyclocross, gravel and mountain bikes to a competent level over acceptable distances, and I have raced each of them. Thanks mostly to being shrewd with the events I choose to enter, I have even stood on a podium once or twice.
But I’m still no good at bikes, because I still can’t wheelie or ride no hands.
I’ve been lucky enough to travel the world with my bike, and have ridden places that would make for a bucket list a few pages long. I have ridden countless sportives, Etapes, Gran Fondos and Tour de France stage events to have had enough of doing them, and struck out on my own to cross countries, circumnavigate others and grunt to the highest points in many. If this sounds like a humblebrag, I still remember the first time I sat in a mess on a kerb a mile from my home not knowing what The Bonk was, and I can remember the last time it happened too. I’ve also sat on the kitchen floor eating cheese like it was an apple while spooning peanut butter out the jar with my fingers when I’ve just about wobbled home. I’ve slept on a park bench. Cried. Crashed enough times, broken a few bones, made myself ill, got better, got ill again. I’ve sat on wheels and made sure people have got home by hanging off mine, done my time working on the chaingang.
But I’m still not a proper cyclist, because I still can’t wheelie or ride no hands.
As well as competed in a lot of races. I’ve helped put them on too. I’ve got up before the crack of dawn to put arrows up and stand in a field, sometimes in the baking sun, other times ankle deep in mud. My cycling palmares is a life well spent, but all of it is for nothing, because wheelies and riding no hands continue to evade me. The yoof in the hoodie that cruises past on the creaking pile of crap mountainbike with a back wheel so buckled the rear brake has been unhooked, casually sitting up and texting his girlfriend? I’m quietly seethingly, deeply jealous of him.
While I’m not a fan of the showing off wheelie the BMXer that wheelies up to a ledge and manuals along it before popping off, all the while with their jeans hanging off their arse and a loose shoelace, if I could do that just once I’d happily coast straight into my grave immediately afterwards. I would love to be able to wheelie for long enough for it to be a genuinely useful skill when I’m riding my bike, and be a precursor to the still elusive bunny hop. I would love to be able to ride hands-free with enough skill and longevity to unwrap and eat a snack bar or slip on a rain jacket with a recalcitrant flappy arm. Both have these have eluded me across the two thirds of my life I’ve spent rolling around on a bike. I could practice, I should practice, but I am an old dog, and I’d rather just be riding my bike.
I’ve never been able to wheelie. I’ve never been able to ride hands free with any conviction for any length of time. I’m quite shit at bikes.
18 thoughts on “I cannot wheelie. I cannot ride with no hands. I am s**t at bikes.”
Same thing here. The older I get, the more I am afraid of riding hands-free.
And on this new bike, which is wickedly effective in corners but albo verges on being unstable on straights, it just scares me.
Does that make me a coward or am I just getting old?
With modern bikes the front assembly is so much lighter and more likely to rotate if it hits a minor imperfection in the road.
There are so many potholes, cracks etc these days. I have nearly crashed a few times after hitting potholes with both hands on the handlebars. It isn’t worth taking the risk.
My skills on the bike are sh1t too but that hasn’t stopped me cycling nearly 185,000 miles in the last 20 years. My balance in the last 7years now Ive had a cancer iron blockage removed is quite good (well for me at least) but I think I am too old to learn new tricks.
Ditto here. I think I’d be more willing to give it a go if I wasn’t clipped in and had flat pedals.
Try a wheelie with no hands, apparently it is easier!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Db804Pxty3y/
I can do no hands, eat, rain jacket on/off but the wheelie evades me. It’s sad and I feel like I’m a bit shit at bikes because of it.
Chapeau for finding the Hans Rey pic, the chimp looks properly appreciative of his skills.
I used to be able to ride no hands on my Peugeot racers in the late 80s and early 90s, I could cycle all the way home from Camberley McDonald’s to my home in mill lane, yateley, without touching the bars once, thumbs in my rear jeans pockets, after a close, post and very post midnight, only with no other vehicles about.
But when I got run over in 92, clock house, Farnborough, and went MTB, the front end was just a bit too nervous, and then the late 90s Raleigh 650 ti was even more, but of course that meant it was a very responsive xc racer.
I could ride my surly ogre no hands, much more stable platform, and I have gone as far as sitting back, but wouldn’t want the foolishness of hurting myself if I got it wrong.
Moved to Brum in the late 90s, obtained the getting to work bike, marin pine mountain 91, and because I was very much urban, for the first time ever really, lady pool rd, top end of Moseley, I would ride down the hill to canon hill park, drop the seat all the way down and worked on trying to develop my bike skills. The wheelie being the one most wanted. I did alright, easy to pull, but keeping it going for distance was the one thing I never got, handful of seconds at most, never went over the back badly, just the fear would get too much. For some reason I found the endo easier to do and hold, still not for long mind, and could do a good 180 endo. My bunny hopping developed nicely too.
There are rigs that allow you to practice finding the balance point while stationary, LBS had one on their Halloween open evening one year. I refused to embarrass myself in public.
Found this.
BALANCE Manual Machine
Their bike stands are very good. Highly recommend,
I can’t wheelie and only recently have managed to cycle no handed – and only on my Tern GSD, not my road bike. And even then, I can’t do anything like undo a top or open some food whilst cycling no handed.
Never mind wheelies or no hands, I haven’t even managed to find reverse gear on mine!
I have laughed off many wheelie requests; I feel no need to – on my recumbent (IIRC someone has).
But… I’m not entirely free of the feeling I *ought* to be able to on at least one bike…
I’ve gone the other way. I could never really wheelie or bunnyhop properly, but I was idiotically proud (still am, obvs) of my ability to casually roll a cigarette riding no-hands whilst filtering Fleet Street traffic during a brief bike-courier era of my life.
I opened a cereal bar the other day while riding gently downhill along a wide, empty, country road, and nearly crapped myself with fear. The thought of trying to get a jacket on or off – with this shoulder! – I couldn’t countenance. Luckily I don’t smoke any more.
I can ride no hands and once rode three kilometres from Parliament Square to Blackfriars Bridge without touching the bars just to prove I could to a certain doubting spouse, but apart from vainly posing for pictures like this one (for the benefit of a certain PBU who’s seen fit previously to compare me to an elephant on a unicycle yes, it’s a small bike (I ride everything from 54 to 58) and yes my BMI is 26.5) I don’t bother. I’m never on a ride when it’s necessary and it’s always safer just to stop for a few seconds to take jackets etc on and off.
@Rendel Harris
I wouldn’t worry too much about that, a family member once said I looked like a circus bear when riding my Brompton.
You can’t pull a wheelie?
Riding hands free evades you?
They signal a largely misspent youth and aren’t anything to be proud of…much!
Can’t do any of those things either. But hey, like you, I can ride a double century and leave for work the day after without feeling like someone threw me under a bus. That’s got to count for something.
I can wheelie for a few seconds sometimes. I have mudguards on most of my bikes, though, and I think the rear would hit if I tried to ride one.
I can ride for miles and miles with my hands off the bars except on my Brompton, but I still get nervous if I try to take a layer off, picturing myself getting stuck with both hands behind my back. I do it sometimes, but I usually stop.
I’ve never seen the point of being able to do a wheelie. But riding no hands may be necessary for fastening your jersey in order to display the sponsor’s logo during your finish-line celebration.
I have a driving licence and regularly get behind the steering wheel of my very expensive drive ornament but I can’t drive a rally car down a narrow forest track at 90mph, neither can I drive a Formular 1 car at 200mph around a race track! Does that mean I’m not a driver? I could go on stating various examples. Of course someone is a cyclist even though they can’t wheelie or ride no handed.
I haven’t really done wheelies since the 80s when I was a kid on a Raleigh Burner, other than lifting the front wheel a bit to get up a kerb, or in response to a bunch of kids I pass shouting “do a wheelie” (given what some kids shout at cyclists, I usually oblige with an attempt).
Never been any good at riding with no hands though, meaning I rarely eat whilst moving – most of the time it’s a brief stop to open a gel, bar, chew etc.