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First Ride

Sunday 1 January 2012 | general

The Girl’s first cycling experiences were as a passenger, a constantly-exhorting weight I pulled around in a trailer more or less at the speed she liked. “Faster, Tata!” would soon morph into, “Not so fast, Tata!” While I love her boundlessly, she was sometimes quite an irritating passenger.

DSC_5957

Today, the Girl and I took our first father/daughter bike ride: a respectable distance of 2.1 kilometers (1.3 miles) in a nearby park. It took us 28 minutes, meaning we were riding roughly 4.3 km/h (2.7mph). There were a number of reasons for this rather slow tempo, all related to her lack of cycling experience.

  1. Having training wheels makes her dependent on them for balance. Thus, when one loosens a bit and is thus not providing perfect support, L panics.
  2. L is terrified of going downhill. When she gets going too fast, she panics and, instead of putting on brakes, plants both feet firmly — albeit very temporarily — on the ground. The pedals bite her ankles, she almost looses her balance and falls forwards, and the whole thing becomes a gigantic trauma. “You need to use your bakes” I said continuously today.
  3. The Girl doesn’t have the best concept of two-way traffic. Even when she sees someone coming from the opposite direction, she seems oblivious.
  4. She hasn’t mastered braking, so it’s always all or nothing. There is no such thing as coasting on the brakes.
  5. L’s bike is too small for her. Her knees almost touch the handlebars, and her legs are never more than 3/4 extended.
  6. When all of this combines into one experience, it is disaster writ large.

Still, a relatively successful first day out. We’ll start working on our first father/daughter century ride when we get her a new bike this spring.

Cyclist

2 Comments

  1. Nana

    As with everything else, it won’t be long before she will be wanting to race you!

  2. gls

    Oh, she’s already trying to race me. I let her win the first one; the second one, I rode beside her for a moment, then said, “Watch this” — and you can guess what I did. From behind me: “Tata! Tata! Wait! That doesn’t count!”