A chef used lockdown to learn how to ride a bike at the age of 37, despite teaching her own children how to cycle.
Janice Casey Bracken was tired of being saddled at home while friends and family went off for a cycle, so she decided to use her free time during lockdown to ride a bike for the first time in her life.
The chef at Dunbrody House Hotel in Wexford and head tutor at the ICA’s cookery school in An Grianan, Termonfeckin, Co Louth, says that a new bicycle is now on her Christmas list.
“I have two sisters who know how to cycle but I was a wild child so I think my parents thought it would be too dangerous if I went on a bike. You wouldn’t dare me to do anything because I would no problem so they were trying to protect me,” she said.
“We used to go on our holidays to the Aran Islands when I was little and I’d sit on the crossbars of my dad’s bike.”
Time passed for the Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary chef and she married Brendan and had two children, who she ironically taught to cycle herself.
“Hannah is now 14 and Cormac is 10 but Santy bought them bikes when they were three or four years old and I went out with them to teach them how to cycle. They hadn’t a clue that I didn’t know myself how to ride a bike,” she laughed.
“Work colleagues used to bring me in bikes but I had developed a wall of fear at that time. Sure I’d fall over even walking beside a bike. I had no balance
“Lockdown happened and I had time on my hands. I also wanted to cycle before I hit 40 which also spurred me into it.
“So about five weeks ago, I went outside with my son and tried. My neighbours thought it was so funny, seeing my crash into wheelie bins every few minutes.
“Cormac cycled alongside me and encouraged me to carry on, telling me now to look down but to look ahead.
“Eventually I cycled 10m before falling and after that it all came together and I cycled down to my sister Sandra’s house in the same estate. She had the camera and all the neighbours out
“Five weeks on and I’m cycling the blue way here beside us. I’m getting there. I’m using my sister’s bike at the minute so a new one is on my Christmas list.
“I’d just like to say to anyone out there who can’t cycle - On yer bike!”
