Sunday, April 5, 2009

New bicyclist alert

A bicyclist has joined the family. Genevieve rode without training wheels for over a minute at a time, negotiating both left and right hand turns, slowing and braking at will. Well, almost at will -- the braking/stopping is not reliably smooth, but in a pinch she will bail out or fall over.

This is not a shocking development. She was on the verge successful sustained riding last fall before the cold weather halted children's biking. Her bicycling development mirrors her some of her personality: diligent, determined, and a little impatient to master something that she felt was almost in her grasp. She doesn't immediately look for sympathy or attention when she falls, but seems to run an internal diagnostic before announcing her status. Like many things in her life, it came somewhat easily to her, and now she's ready to use it to jump into other things.

For me, it was a lot of fun both in watching her accomplishment and in working well with her to provide a little bit of coaching. I treated practicing how to stop as a game while providing some insight as to why it was so important, and mostly cheered her on and fixed dropped chains (finally got the wheel backed out enough to keep the chain taut).

Just a dad getting to do something that dads are good at. Doesn't get much better than that.

1 comment:

  1. Congratulations to both of you. As I recall (it was a long time ago) when my eldest finally learned to ride -- at age 8 -- we'd pray that she wouldn't fall, because we knew that she would avoid bike riding like the plague for at least a week afterwards. She was SO cautious, which I guess made me happy through her teens and now into early adulthood. (But she won't wear a helmet now -- aargh!)

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