Originally Posted by
livedarklions
I'm excellent on bikes, and mediocre at best on kick scooters. They are manifestly NOT the same balancing skill. It's absurd. It's a completely different position with an entirely different center of gravity and a completely different propulsion system.
The balancing part on the bicycle is actually quite easy -if the bike is going, it pretty much is going to balance itself. The trick for an adult is to get it going first, which is easier on a slope, get the feel for the balance, and then learn to pedal to keep it going. Scooting is just basically walking. An adult has had enough practice at that that there's really no reason to stick at that stage for any length of time.
Yes, you really should have read the thread first. If OP had listened to you, it would have screwed it all up.
The physics and intuition behind staying upright and turning are identical between a scooter and bicycle. You cannot refute this. The positions are different, but less so if you stand on the bicycle, which I would argue is an essential skill to biking.
The main reason why I suggested the scooter, though, was because the OP stated that the bike wasn’t his. A scooter would be a relatively cheap investment if he wanted to try practicing his skills on his own time. A scooter is lower maintenance and is easier to bail out on. I’m not going to pretend that there is a direct transition from a scooter to a bike, but if you can’t see the extremely obvious similarities between the handling of a scooter and a bike, I can’t really help with that.