When my boyfriend moved to Brooklyn from San Francisco last fall, he left behind a two-person tent, several skateboards, a racing bike, a city bike and a motorcycle. He is outdoorsy and I am not, and his first New York winter was wretched. In California, he planned vacations around 150-mile rides, and weekends began with a jaunt to Ocean Beach with a loop back through Golden Gate Park. It’s all he talked about in February. And again in March. There were also lots of reminders how, after a year of dating long-distance, he moved East because I laughed in his face at the prospect of moving West. As grand gestures went, I was in the red.

Late last month, when the Citi Bike sharing program arrived in New York, all he wanted to do was ride on blue bikes with me in the sun, and I couldn’t muster a convincing objection. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know how to ride one. He volunteered to teach me (just as valiant beaus before him have tried), but the way I see it, no adult should have to supplicate herself to such a trust exercise. It’s humiliating. I am a 33-year-old woman, and he is not my dad.

It was during a jog around Brooklyn Bridge Park that I noticed an adults-only bike-riding class. (I like to run by the water because cardio is important and because I like to plan escape routes in the event of an apocalypse.) I signed up online, and a week later, at 10 a.m. on a Saturday, I found myself waiting with 20 other grown-ups for a two-hour session taught by an instructor and three volunteers.

Image Credit... Illustration by Melinda Josie

The class was noticeably Central Casting. Together we could have composed a convincing airport tableau, a community-college course or a depiction of an outer borough for a Spider-Man movie. The ages varied, there were two sets of couples and all but three students were people of color. There was even a Mets fan.