Not much talk about how to use your bike's gears, so I figured I'd write this up. If you can't figure out how to use the gears on your bike, trust me, you aren't alone, and it's not your fault!
Riding slowly on a flat, low-traffic bike path or sidewalk, shift the gears and notice how the low numbers on each side correspond to making the bike easier to pedal. High numbers make it more difficult. (caveat: your bike may not have numbered shifters, but hopefully you'll notice the pattern) Stop occasionally and take a look at where the chain is on the drivetrain. What you'll notice is that larger front chainrings and smaller rear sprockets make the bike harder to pedal; smaller front chainrings and larger rear sprockets make it easier. Get used to which shifter controls the front vs. the back, and which direction of movement does what. The last basic thing you need to know is you can't shift gears if you aren't turning the crank (pedals). The shifters may move an index or two, but the chain won't move. This will actually make pedalling harder and it's bad for the drivetrain.
Technique: I like to keep the chain on the same front chainring for most of my riding, usually the middle one (I have three). Then I adjust only the right shifter to make tiny changes. If I get so low on the right shifter that I can't go any lower, I must be going up a serious hill so it's time to shift down on the left, to the smallest chainring. After you're up the hill, shift back to the middle. The opposite happens when going downhill: I shift into the biggest front chainring temporarily, then go back down after I've started to slow down and pedaling gets too difficult.
And now for my rant, the real reason for my post (but by itself it's too complainypants-y):
IMO bike gearing is not for everyone. I say this as both a former bike mechanic and a web usability designer. Having gears in the front and in the back which move in opposite ways gets confusing unless you have a good engineering-type intuitive mind with a grasp of simple machines. Even though we tell people not to cross-chain, this is nonintuitive; many bikes I used to work on would come to me with the chain on the smallest chainring and smallest sprocket. This is really bad for the chain, but it's a natural thing to do. If you don't believe me, take a look at random bikes you see locked up on the street. A surprising number are kept with the chain crossed in this configuration. I have a small collection of good bike mechanic stories about how poorly lay people understand bikes with multi-gear drivetrains.
It will be easier to learn how to ride a bike if you ride one that has only a double chainring crank (two front rings instead of three). These are also easier to keep adjusted. There are also single-speed bikes which are super-easy to use. I think the ultimate in bicycle usability is a belt drive with internal gear hub: no chain to clean, only one set of gears, only a single adjustment to make on the drivetrain, and you can change gears even while stopped! The tradeoff of these designs is you don't get as much of a gearing range, but if you only bike rather short distances without lots of hills and aren't interested in going super-fast, they work just fine. Belt drives and IGHs with more than 3 gears are newer and more expensive; they'll cost a lot more than a typical Mustachian bike. But if you're truly lost on a typical bike and that's causing you not to ride, there's a financial justification to be made for these models.
