Never learned how
 

I'm truly a beginner to riding a bike. I never learned as a child and now at the age of 62 I want to learn. Any recommendations as to what type of bike I should try on? Sounds ridiculous but do I need training wheels?

I don't believe you need training wheels. A beach cruiser would be fine to start on, so you don't have to think about gears for a while. There seem to be two mainstream approaches to teaching kids, either of which is worth trying. First is to find a grassy hill in a park with moderate slope, and practice coasting down it without pedaling. In fact, just coasting for a couple of feet and getting used to the brakes would be a darn good start. The other is a "balance bike" which has wheels but no pedals and you push yourself around with your feet. Pedals are easy to remove temporarily, and you can do that if you have a hand brake. Lowering the saddle below what would be considered reasonable for a skilled cyclist would probably be beneficial in either case so you can put your feet down readily.

Get the hang of balancing and steering, then give pedaling a try. Going two feet is better than going zero feet, so you should accept progress at whatever rate it comes.

If you have a friend who is into cycling, you can get some help with things like basic maintenance, tire care, and so forth.

Best of luck! What a great adventure!

Oddly enough, you're reinventing the wheel with this thread. There was a very similar situation very recently, and the OP was actually helped to learn how to ride in this thread:

https://www.bikeforums.net/general-c...truggling.html

Check it out! He actually learned how to ride. You'll probably find more help there in the General Cycling forum. People in this Advocacy and Safety forum will probably just start arguing about something totally irrelevant to your situation.

Oh, and I should definitely add that I will be rooting for you and want to know how you're progressing! That other thread I linked made a lot of people happy, I think you might want to add a post to it to see if the same people would have advice tailored for you. Your situation is a little different in that you're a bit older, but I don't think that should make any major difference.

Something I was wondering about the other day: would a kick scooter provide any useful pre-training like or before the balance bike stage? It would seem like the steering-balancing interaction would be the same, though with different timing - if anything the scooters are sometimes twitchier, but there's much less "invested" since it's so each to get off one.

Thinking back I don't think we collected my dad's kick scooter from grandparents until after I was riding a bike, and have no other memory of having ridden one first.

You are not alone friend! I have many friends who are fully grown adults and they still do not know how to ride a bike.

Yes, this is a great way to learn.

I guess at age 62 it's probably out of the question to have one of your parents to hold the seat and run along side you as you pedal...

My little girl is 7 and still on training wheels. We haven't had a lot of time to work on her learning how to balance, but I'm definitely going to remove the training wheels and then the pedals and allow her to push with her feet and learn to balance that way. She already knows how to pedal, but she can't balance yet.