Lesson learned this past weekend: Don’t buy a ten-year-old boy a new bike on Friday night if it’s going to rain all day Saturday. Not much sadder than a kid sitting on his bike on the porch with his helmet on, waiting for the skies to clear. Luckily, there were a few breaks and he got to at least coast down the driveway a little bit.
Sunday, his dad took him down to the park and he got to segue from coasting into trying to pedal. (We live on a corner and both roads are very steep, paved hills, so not a bike-friendly neighborhood. And at camp, he has his ATV. But it’s time the kid learns to ride a bicycle.)
This caused my husband to get up the ambition to dig out the his and hers mountain bikes we bought seventeen years ago so we could bicycle together. They’ve been in the basement for sixteen years, so you can guess how that went. Much to my dismay, they weathered the abandonment well and, with a hose and some chain oil, are ready to rock and roll. And there seems to be some expectation that I’m going to ride mine.
Yeah, I didn’t ride it when I was almost twenty years younger, hadn’t had two kids, and could still buy my clothing size at the trendy boutique stores in the mall. Now? I laughed. Hard.
How was your weekend?
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It’s that time of year. We (and by we I mean my husband and the local bikeshop) have been doing bike tuneups, getting kids moved up to proper sized bikes after they grew like weeds, and acquiring a baby trailer to pull the newcomer in. We don’t live in a very bike-friendly neighborhood either, but the whole town is, so it’s time we got set up for all of us to ride together. Meanwhile, the husband takes the kids down to the park to practice so they’ll be able to handle the steep hills we live on.
Given the crazy parking situation on weekends around here, it just makes sense to be able to pedal to and from our local destinations.
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SK had a bike several years ago, but it was hard to ride at camp (dirt, rocky roads) with the training wheels on it and hard to ride it at home because our driveway’s at steep as the roads. But other kids at camp ride their bikes and he doesn’t have one, so it was time.
Yesterday he got it. He’s a bit wobbly and lacks some confidence, but he’s a bike rider!