I took all the kiddos out for a bike ride a little while back; our first group ride of the nice-weather season. It was rather comical. Each child seemed a little hunched over, knees pushing a little too high for their bicycle. Frank on his tricycle, Kate on her super-small two-wheeler with training wheels and all the way up the line. We went home and tried out the fairly simple immediate solution for their growth spurts. They all bumped up a bicycle (Ria is using mine for now). Great fit! Only one problem; Bernie's old bike doesn't have training wheels. Hmmm. Things dragged on in an indeterminate state for a time because I forgot to ask John to look for training wheels for the bike in question.
Last night we all went on a ride (the older kids all on larger bicycles), but with Frank and Kate still at odds between the very small tricycle and the little bike with training wheels (they ran most of the way). On the way home an odd piece of information I picked up on a blog quite awhile back [link here] suddenly came back to me. I asked John about it and we decided to give it a try.
We went home and he took the PEDALS off her bike and lowered the seat (during which time I forgot all about it and went inside to work on the computer). John called me out maybe 15 or 20 minutes later to come see something. Kate was already riding around on the bike with the pedals back on! It had only taken her a few minutes of gliding around without pedals to get her sense of balance and ask for the pedals to go back on! (Now, I should probably mention that the "real" way looks "real" interesting right now - but it's quite an exciting step!). Thanks Scott!
Sure wish I had heard of that solution when I was a kid! I'm quite uncoordinated in general (never could manage to turn a somersault) and didn't ride a bike until I was 7 or 8 years old!
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