Welp, I moved to Richmond Va. from Culpeper and told my mother "It's flatter here. A person could ride bikes." (I was 31.) That Christmas, there was a bicycle under the tree - a ladies' Schwinn 5-speed that was great for tooling around.
When I'd tooled around for one season I invested in a $400 hybrid from a bike shop, and still was just tooling around. There was this guy I was silently smitten with; he'd guided me through teaching the INtro Guitar elective at school and we'd even gone to a concert together, so I summoned up all my nerve and then some and called to see if he'd let me take him out to dinner as a thank you... his obviously no-longer-ex girlfriend answered his phone.
I decided that was the week to get out and meet new people, and every saturday, even in February, the bike club has its Breakfast Club ride. I didn't think about what kind of people ride in February, and fortunately there's a group of militant tortoises there who didn't mind an extra and gave me lots of encouragement & tips. One thing led to another... that hybrid has over 20,000 miles on it now.