Ha, you make a good point ... let this one be the "break-in" model... if it gets scratched up when I fall over, I'll cry less? about the chipped paint anyway....
Learning to ride for the first time as an adult is difficult. Especially as an overweight(++) adult. It's embarrassing enough to admit you don't know how, that you never learned. And then when my friends have offered to let me use their bikes over the years, I always knew I couldn't, but they didn't know that, or didn't say that. There was definitely an added barrier to learning to ride. All these years my husband has been begging me to learn, but didn't really get why I couldn't. Now that I've accomplished it, and did all the work to get here, I really feel pretty awesome. Even if I'm still trying to learn how to turn, stay balanced, etc. It is very much like being a grown-up kid again. Only for the first time.