Boy Racer

Connor was keeping up with his big sister and her friends when they went biking, even when he was just running along on his toddler bike last year. He could race along in the middle of them all up the gentle slope of the nearby Greenway. 

Of course, at first, he couldn’t go all the way up the 1.5 kilometres, and we did make the mistake of stopping early for him and breaking off to go get a cookie in Starbucks. That became all he wanted to do, resulting in a few tantrums. 

But pretty soon, and with a bit of bribery, he was doing the full distance, and with less complaining than his big sister some days. He’d zip up the former railway line, and on his way home, he’d lift both legs off the ground and cruise quickly down the hill. He could easily stay ahead of the rest, never took a fall, and always stopped well away from the roads. 

This spring he graduated to a pedal bike. The fact that there was a noticeable hole in his old bike’s tire letting the rubber inner tube poke through was a bit of an encouragement. At first he was just running like he did with his toddler bike, but getting frustrated with bumping his ankles off the pedals. Then he progressed to cruising downhill toward home again as he got more comfortable, testing out the pedals while safely rolling freely. 

And then one day, just like his sister did, he was off! He never used training wheels, going straight from the toddler bike to the pedals. He started cycling at less than three and a half years old! 

Connor loves to cycle. Ada loves it too, but only if friends are going, and often has to be coaxed into joining. Connor will run to get his bike helmet at the merest hint of cycling. He zooms up and back, and can even do the longer rides without issue or complaint. 

Next spring we’ll get him a big bike like his sister. 

And then walking along behind won’t be good enough. 

I’ll have to get a bike too.

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.