I Want To Ride My Bicycle

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Something is broken on my blogger, causing me to actually have to type in the HTML command for all my line breaks. I am not a happy camper.

So of course the one thing that Morgan specifically asked for her birthday was sold out. So of course it now costs three times as much on Amazon...ARRRGGGHHH!

In related news....

Scene: Morgan riding her bike while I push Zoe in the stroller up to Walgreens.
Mommy: You are way too big for that bike now.
Morgan: I know. I need a new bike very soon.
Mommy: Well, maybe Daddy will have to take care of that.
Morgan: He should take care of it for my birthday.

Too smart for her own good.

Incidentally, part of the problem was that Scott had lowered the seat so Zoe could sit on it in the driveway, so it wasn't as bad as a I thought.

On Saturday, Scott hunted around for a new bike. Came away with a very cool, very girlie Schwinn cruiser, but left it in the care of Performance Bike to put training wheels on it.

On Sunday, I went to pick up the bike and was notified that no training wheels will actually fit this bike. After talking with the guy, he and I agreed that it would be best not to have training wheels anyway, as it would prolong her learning to ride without. She did, after all, teach herself to pogo stick this winter. How much harder could it be to ride a bike?

I suggested to Scott that we let someone else teach her how to ride it (kind of like my friend taught me how to drive, so my dad wouldn't yell at me and my mom wouldn't gasp and brace herself against the dash every five seconds, pumping her imaginary brake). His response was that his dad taught him, so he would teach her. With that kind of "can-do" attitude, I give it 10 minutes before one or both of them is in tears.

It may surprise you to know that I never had training wheels. Me. Well, there was a bike with training wheels in the family. (It was green. It had normal sized tires, but they weren't rubber. They were the same composition as Big Wheel tricycle tires that ended up cracking open so they had duct tape wrapped around them. Duct tape.) But that is not how I learned.

After we had moved to "the country" when I was in third grade, I had no use for a bike. We had a very long driveway, but it was gravel. And we lived on a state route with semi-trucks passing by every 2 minutes, thus I wouldn't have been allowed to ride on the road. So a lot of time passed sans bike.

Suddenly one day...and at first I told Scott junior high, but now I'm thinking maybe it was a little earlier - perhaps fifth grade...Dad came home with a bike. Can't remember where said bike came from, but it could have possibly been a trash picker moment for him. It was also green but had a big black banana seat. It was the 80's, people. What can I say?

Anyway...this is a time in my parent's life when they had yet to accumulate mounds of old furniture and exercise equipment in their basement and we had a relatively large (but industrial) area to play in. And since the chimney went up the center, it was perfectly set up for roller derby.

Charlie and BJ (his best friend) would get on their Huffy bikes and Tina (my best friend) and I would put on roller skates (mine had metal wheels until I grew into Tina's old pair). John would be on his little black trike and we would race in circles as fast as we could.

1. There was a narrow spot in this track where the furnace took up more than half the space, so absolutely only one person could fit through at a time at the record-breaking speeds we were traveling. That's not saying we didn't try many times.

2. At almost the exact same spot, Dad chose to place a gi-normous box of extra heating duct work. I mean this box was almost as tall as I was at the time. Because you don't get rid of extra duct work, you keep it in case you decide to put an addition on your house twenty years later.

Guess where I learned to ride my bike? I got myself into a pretty good rhythm but would occasionally get going a little too fast and since I had no idea how to use the brakes, I would let myself crash into the duct work box instead. Hey, at least I wasn't crashing into the furnace.

The moral of this story, I did not break any bones learning to ride my bike, and I pretty much suck at everything...so I have high hopes for our first born.

P.S. Uncle Matt or Uncle Justin should totally be on standby the next time they are home.