The bikes are getting out more and more in this nice weather. Okay, the weather isn’t the best yet (at least not in Ottawa) but it’s not snowing and it’s not minus something so I’m calling it nice.
The youngest, the 6 year old, is a natural rider. She still has training wheels but maintains good control, pays attention, has the strength to pedal harder.
The eldest, who is 8, isn’t a strong bike rider. Up until last summer he had training wheels still, which didn’t seem to bother him, but it appears this spring he has a newfound determination to ditch the training wheels. We’ve started by removing the pedals so he could learn to balance better. I’m suspecting that by the end of the summer he will have it. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, I think I made him feel better, when it was bothering him watching younger kids and peers biking solo, that I was older when I first learned to ride as well, and that it wasn’t natural in the least for me.
In fact, I was 8 when I really first set my mind to doing it as well. We had two bikes that were older, with metal baskets on the front. They were identical and for a while served as the bike for whoever was old enough to ride it. At the time, my older sister rode one, and I was finally tall enough (barely) to hop on the second.
I was outside with all of my siblings (two sisters and a brother) and my mom who was helping me conquer my fears of getting on the bike. I hopped on, barely balanced, and started to pedal up our gravel laneway that lead from the house to our small barn.
Now, what’s important to note is that you have to picture it like a T. As I would approach the barn area to turn around, there were two ditches on either side of the laneway. Full of water. It must have been spring time. These ditches weren’t small. This was a full fledged deep ditch full of water.
As I was driving, wobbly but in the middle of the laneway, I was starting to turn towards one of the ditches. Have you ever watched Bob’s Burgers? Have you see the episode where Tina learns to drive in a parking lot and there is one care and she literally drives into that one car? Even though she has time to turn and the empty parking lot is huge? That was me with my bike.
It was almost out of body. I couldn’t bring myself to stop, heavens knows why, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to turn, so instead, in a fit of panic, I continued towards the ditch only to wipe out at the edge and fly, head first, into the dirty, muddy, gross ditch water.
I was drenched from head to toe. There was laughter, and it wasn’t on my part. But eventually I recovered, learned to ride better and that was that.
My suspicion is that learning to ride will go fairly smoothly for my kids. Neither will train near a ditch, so that will be one up from me.
Do you remember learning to ride a bike? Was it easier for you than your kids or am I the only person who could mess this up? 😉
hehe…great story. We have found Pedalheads camps amazing – A had her training wheels off in one week! We will see how E does this summer. She is much more cautious 🙂
I should think about pedalheads!