Cycling students are all smiles, standing alongside Bicycle Riding School instructor Susan McLucas — Photos courtesy of Susan McLucas

By Harry Kane

They say that once you learn how to ride a bicycle, you never forget, but sometimes it’s good to get a refresher.

The Bicycle Riding School has offered lessons for kids and adults in Somerville for 40 years. Susan McLucas is the owner of the school who, along with seven other instructors, has been teaching people of all ages how to ride at local schoolyards.

“We are known for the teaching of beginners, and that’s most of our work,” McLucas says. These days, the school teaches mostly kids, but when McLucas started, she only taught adults.

Her red barn, located at 14 William Street near Davis Square, houses a selection of bicycles to choose from that are suitable for all ages. After meeting at the barn, the students travel to a nearby parking lot to learn how to ride a bike.

It’s a process that requires learning how to balance, steer, and pedal. But there’s much more to it, explained Somerville’s Bicycle Whisperer.

The school has a virtually 100 percent success rate. She says maybe 5-10 people over her 40-year career couldn’t ride a bicycle after being instructed. Approximately 6000 students have learned to ride at her school.

“We have quite a few people, maybe a quarter of our people are taking refresher lessons,” she said. McLucas asks them if they want to take the pedals off and be treated like a complete beginner or see if they remember enough to ride. She puts the seat down much lower than people think it should be, so they can put their feet flat on the ground.

Many of the adults go on the bike path and can later sign up for a road riding session to learn how to ride safely on the streets.

“I encourage people to pretend that they are beginners, and we can be happily surprised when they do reasonably well,” she said. “There aren’t many things like bicycle riding that you can learn in a few hours.”

For most people coming in for a refresher, it may be for just one session, but for beginners, it can take two or three sessions to learn.

Instructor Susan McLucas looks on as a young biking student takes to the road.

McLucas, now 76 years old, started her journey teaching bicycling back in 1985 at an adult education center. Once she created a website, she started hosting her own classes.

“I never thought it would become such a big thing.”

She put a 4×6 card in the window of the bicycle shop, and that got her a handful of clients every year. Since then, her school has only grown.

McLucas recalls a six-person class she taught years ago with an 82-year-old student who hadn’t been on a bike since he was 12 years old. “Sure enough, he was the first one in his class of six beginners to get his balance,” she said.

A private lesson is $100, if you can afford it, but you are allowed to pay as little as $30, no questions asked, McLucas says. A group lesson costs $50 per student, but that is negotiable as well (sliding scale down to $10). People take an average of three lessons, which can be on any day of the week.

“I tell them the principle behind balancing, which is that you turn the wheel whichever way you are leaning. If you start to lean to the left, you turn left, and that gets the bike back under you, and if you do it just the right amount, you can keep going.”

She lowers the seats so that if the riders begin to fall, they can put their feet on the ground to prevent falling. Students wear knee and elbow pads, helmets, and gloves for protection.

“We do everything we can to make it easy and not scary and comfortable,” she says.

McLucas says that if you are worried about riding around on the streets of Somerville, bicyclists should stop by for a road riding lesson. Aaron Charlwood teaches road riding lessons.

It’s important to remember that it is not a bravery test, she explained. If a newbie is riding with others and doesn’t feel comfortable, then it’s okay to say no and not follow their lead.

McLucas says she’s way past retirement age but doesn’t want to quit because she’s still having lots of fun teaching.

“But at some point, I’ll have to, because there’s a limit to how much a person can run around in a parking lot pushing a person,” she said.

Whether for exercise or commuting, bicycling has become important for many, especially in Somerville.

“I would encourage everybody to ride a bike,” she says. “We have too many cars clogging up our cities … everybody would be healthier if they ride a bike.”

Visit their website for more information: https://www.bicycleridingschool.org