I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it’s pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that’d be rather time consuming.

Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can’t ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.

edit: the high number of replies mentioning “swimming” made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.

  • doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Canoeing is definitely a big thing in the US. At least in the east, I suspect it’s much less common in the Midwest and desert states. I think that tourists are disproportionately likely to be canoeing for the first time, though.

    That said, if you can’t figure out the physics of a canoe within the first couple strokes then maybe boating as a while just isn’t your thing

    • Faresh@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      That said, if you can’t figure out the physics of a canoe within the first couple strokes then maybe boating as a while just isn’t your thing

      I have no difficulty with the “basic” canoes, but I struggle with the long and thin ones, where I can’t even keep myself upright for longer than 30 seconds, before capsizing, having tried a few times. Is boating not my thing?