Comment by einpoklum

Here's the way I learened to ride a bike when I got to Amsterdam:

Someone gave me their old second-hand bike as a gift. But - I needed to get that bike back to where I was staying; and you can't bring bikes up onto the tram. So I could either walk for maybe an hour, or ride the bike home. One might still be tempted to walk, but here, another feature of Amsterdam came into play: It was raining, and looking like the rain would get heavier.

I fell off of that bike a dozen times if I did once. But - I just got up and tried again, right away, since there was really no other option, not even getting tired and taking a break. But once I got the hang of falling off of the bike a little more gracefully, I could actually apply trial-and-error to the riding part without worrying about the fall. Within... 15 minutes I was riding the thing.