I had three great rides this weekend: 1) Halfmoon Bay (in California) down to the Tunitas Creek climb 2) A loop around San Luis Obispo 3) the absolute best-of-all: a ride with my brother and his 5.8-year-old son on the Santa Clara bike path. It was flat and was probably about 6 miles total. (We rode by the Great America roller coasters.) Here is why it was the best ride: My nephew had learned to ride the day before. He spent Friday morning learning to negotiate a complicated loop near his house, and every once in a while had spontaneous pure-joy outbursts like, "It's great to ride without training wheels!" "This is the best!" and "I love donuts!"
After all that training, we raised the bar by going out on the public use trail. He got really good at holding his course and stayed to right and learned to pass people on the left (using his bell) and he had the best time. There is nothing better than riding with a kid on a steep learning curve and having a blast discovering the exploring you can do in a bike. And Rivendell-connection: Many years ago, they reviewed some learning bikes that teach kids balance on wide tire bikes without training wheels and without pedals. The idea is that the kid learns to get the feel for the balancing process on a moving bike so that they experience the gyroscope effect but don't have their balance-feeling process interrupted by the training wheels. My nephew's experience: he had had some training wheel experience with its typical ineffectiveness. He then started to ride one of these learning bikes described above. After using the learning bike for a little while, one day (last Thursday specifically) he picked up a regular bike with pedals when no one was looking and decided to see if he could get the balance on that. He started doing it in the drive way, wobbly figuring it out himself, but certainly getting it up to speed and pedaling it on his own. My brother was in the kitchen cleaning up, looked outside and noticed what his son was doing. He excitedly grabbed the camera nearby, ran outside, and started filming. A day and a half later, my nephew was ready for the trail. One thing I love about all of this was that there was no coaxing or frustrating teaching from adults who want it so bad for their kid. Maybe they were lucky; maybe he's gifted, but I'm pretty sure the learning bike did the job for which it was designed. Thanks for reading. I had to share and since the learning bike was in the RR, I found a loophole to share with this list! -Jim W. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bu...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
