“Have you ever gone on a bike date?” I ask him.

“Not on a tandem,” he replies thoughtfully, “although when I lived in San Francisco, I used to ride a girl’s BMX with my bike-gang posse.” I nod to indicate how cool (though redundant) I think bike-gang posse dates sound.

“So if I were riding around on the front and said, ‘Hey, baby—hop on!’ would you do it?” I ask.

“Not if you approached me like that. I’d think it was cheesy,” says Oliver “But if you were like, ‘Hey, you need some exercise,’ I might. It seems healthy, it gets the heart going, and if it’s a tandem it can get your heart going in other ways. It just depends on who has the better ass—or who has the ass fetish.”

Despite being against cheesiness, Oliver hops on the back of my electric-blue bike, with purple flowers adorning the handlebars, and rides around in circles with me.

“When I came up to you, I thought this was a low-budget porn shoot, actually,” he confesses. “Your outfit, it’s very exaggerated—like Minnie Mouse.”

I suppose he’s referring to my fuchsia polka-dot headband. Whatever it is, I don’t think Oliver and I will be cycling together again.

Next I ride to a parking lot where old-school roller skaters are hanging around all Boogie Nights–Saturday Night Fever–style. Suddenly, my bike won’t pedal properly, so I stop to inspect the chain, when Blain, 29, a real-estate broker with two broken fingers, approaches me.

His friend Chris, 25, a paralegal, joins him. Blain gallantly offers to fix my bike, while I chat up Chris, explaining that I’m trying to use a tandem as a pickup device.

“Well, then I think it was good that it broke,” Chris says. “That’s what you should tell your readers to do. Get a bike that breaks—then the dudes are like, ‘Oh shit, let me fix your chain for you!’ ”

Not a bad point—it’s worked for countless other damsels in distress.

Blain concurs: “You made it easy for me to talk to you. But,” he says, throwing me a curveball, “you look borderline sketchy and crazy; you shouldn’t be riding while wearing that. Don’t you think high heels are a little bit tricky on a bike?”

Another dig at my outfit? Hot pink really seems to rankle people, and they’re platforms, thankyouverymuch.

Still, I’ve clearly left tire tracks on his heart, because he asks for my phone number. See, it really is as easy as riding a bicycle!

E-mail her at julia@timeoutny.com.

See previous Julia Allison on dating