Wheels Of Freedom

Ada got her “big kid bike” with training wheels in the summer of 2020. Her two best friends both got bikes around the same time, and we went cycling several times a week together.

We’re lucky enough to have an old rail line bedside us that got paved over to become a wonderfully safe, traffic free and gloriously smooth and relatively flat pedestrian and bike path. All our kids learned to cycle on this, with the freedom to cycle far ahead of the parents. They knew even back then to stop far from the crossroads and wait for us to catch up. As they got faster and faster, we trained them to stop partway at key spots to let us keep within a comfortable distance. 

It wasn’t long before they were all cycling about 16 blocks up the walkway several times a week. As the walkway is at an angle to the streets, that works out to about 1.5 kilometres up and other back. The trip home was a breeze, as it was a gentle slope downhill all the way. 

Some time in August or September I think, Ada’s bike suddenly “lost” it’s training wheels. There was a few days of crying that she couldn’t do it, or was afraid she’d fall off, and then, without warning, one day she was off! Again, that wonderfully flat and safe walkway was so helpful. She never took anything close to a bad fall that I can recall, but did injure herself quite badly, though only scrapes and bruises, on a friends scooter, travelling much slower.

It wasn’t long before she was going faster and further than ever, and I was really struggling to keep up on foot. We cycled all the way up the walkway to the next big shopping street, 30 blocks away, or 3.5 kilometres, several times before she was even six. 

I learned to cycle when I was 12.