“When you have reached the point in bicycling where you can balance the machine tolerably fairly and propel it and steer it, then comes your next task–how to mount it. You do it in this way: you hop along behind it on your right foot, resting the other on the mounting-peg, and grasping the tiller with your hands. At the word, you rise on the peg, stiffen your left leg, hang your other one around in the air in a general in indefinite way, lean your stomach against the rear of the saddle, and then fall off, maybe on one side, maybe on the other; but you fall off.
You get up and do it again; and once more; and then several times.”
(Mark Twain: Taming the Bicycle)