“Hey,” one boss said to another after my ill-advised confession. “Did you know our transportation reporter can’t ride a bike?”

He knew then, of course, and now you do, too. I cannot ride a bike.

For years, this has been a source of slight embarrassment. Over the last several weeks, as I began covering the city’s transportation system full time, it has become a career issue.

New York has grown into a cycling hub, cresting this year with the expected start of a landmark bike-share program, which was scheduled to begin in July before being delayed. After childhood false starts, adolescent indifference and a lengthy effort to conceal my deficiency as an adult, the time had come for me to catch up, and not just because the phrase “like riding a bike” had long struck me as a cruel dig.