Learning how to ride a bike as an adult can be a bit scary and much more difficult than for a child. But it isn’t rocket science! You can do it 👍

REI has an excellent guide on learning how to ride as an adult:

https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/how-to-learn-to-ride-a-bike-as-an-adult.html

As an experienced street and mountain rider, I read it and it makes perfect sense. Follow their advice but also:

• Bring a first aid kit (for the large variety of bandages) and a great big tube of Neosporin/triple antibiotic ointment. There’s a chance you’ll get a scrape on your first try. It shouldn’t be anything serious (barely any pain sort of scrape) but you don’t want an infection 👍
• Don’t try to pedal right away! Just push with your feet on the ground and get used to balancing when coasting. Also remember: There’s a threshold where you’re going fast enough to easily balance or too slow where it’s easy to fall to one side (instead of falling though, you’re an adult and will simply place your foot down after stopping by holding the brake, right? 🤣).

Once you get used to pedaling to keep yourself going it’ll be like a switch: Before that moment you didn’t know how to ride a bike and now you do! I’m certain it’s a great feeling because I still remember it when I learned to ride as a kid! It’ll likely become a “core memory” 😁

Don’t stop there though! Practice balancing on your bike while moving slower and slower. Get the hang of a rapid foot-down (or dismount, haha). Eventually you can get good enough to literally stand on your bike while not moving at all and that impresses other people vastly more than any other bike trick I’ve ever performed, haha. Even super experienced, professional riders will be like, “WTF! How do you even do that‽” Hahaha

Anyone can do it it just takes lots of practice and if you try it every single time you stop it’ll eventually come naturally. Of course, you’ll look super goofy/clumsy the first hundred times (haha) but eventually you’ll have a biking superpower 😁👍

Edit: Once you’ve decided that biking is for you take some time to learn how to do basic bike maintenance. Even if your tires are fine deflate one and take it off then put it back on. You don’t want to be figuring out how to do that in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road (and always travel with an extra tube… That’s what tiny under-the-seat bags are for!).

Nobody likes having to change out a tube in the middle of a trail/out on the road but is inevitable if you bike a lot. Also, if you smash your wheel hard enough it can get bent enough that you can’t ride. No big deal though! Just bend it back! I used to encounter so many people on trails carrying their bikes with bent tires and I was like, “oh! Let me fix that for you…” <WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!> against a log/curb and it would be straight enough to ride on again 😁👍

Where do you live?

Check with the local library. Tehre may be local options you are unaware of. In my area the police auction off items they have retrieved, it’s possible to get a bike that way.

If you’re learning to ride as an adult, it’s a good idea to ride on soft ground because you are going to fall. Get a helmet and good gloves.

I feel like getting a feel for walking and financially getting to a place where you can familiarize yourself with public transport can make the transition easier.

You can also pay attention to the road signs while walking, they are quite intuitive and they can help boost your survival rate once you get to drive an actual bike.