After reading all of your posts and then reading the post on steering with your hips, I was all fired up to go out and try it. I took my mountain bike to the middle school parking lot again, and tried applying what I'd learned here on my bike there. And IT WORKED!!! I tried steering with my hips and it seems so simple that I can't believe I was struggling so hard before. Wow, what an epiphany! I rode around and around the parking lot trying all kinds of different things as my confidence grew. I shifted gears, took one hand off the handlebars, reached for an imaginary water bottle, stood up on the pedals, tried pedaling out of the saddle, made big and little circles, figure eights, last minute changes of direction, holding a line and on and on. I rode for an hour and it was so much fun.

And it's so funny because steering with your hips is very similar to what you do when you ride a horse. I used to ride and compete a lot up until about three years ago so the concept of steering with your hips made total sense to me. Subtly shifting your weight onto and off of your seat bones is foundational to good riding and making that connection to riding a bike made all the difference in the world. Thank you Kalidurga for showing me that link. It was awesome!

And thank you all for the kind words and great advice.

Tomorrow I'm going to go on a real ride...maybe the bike path or ???

Yee Haw!