Category Archives: Biking

The intermittent rain and thunderstorms made things tricky both in the garden and on the bike over the weekend.

Poor Matthew took Friday off work, hoping for two full back-to-back garden days to get caught up.  Instead, he got a few hours on Friday morning and a few hours on Saturday morning.  On his way home from the garden on Friday, he swung by The Hub to pick up our Burley Piccolo!

The Piccolo mounts onto Burley’s proprietary rear rack.  I was anxious to get the rack on my new bike so it would be ready for Saturday’s CyclingSavvy class.  Of course, I made the mistake of assuming that the rack would be “easy” to install.  It ended up taking at least an hour and required using our small, manual metal saw to cut the rack stays to the appropriate length.  We had to wait on installing the second rack on Matthew’s bike — it will need some kind of extender to reach the bottom mounting point on his hybrid.

Saturday morning dawned overcast, but my bike was ready, and it looked like we might be able to squeeze in “Train Your Bike” (the parking lot, bike handling skills session of CyclingSavvy) before the next wave of rain hit.

The first rain drops began to fall as we started the second-to-last drill.  We wrapped things up, mindful of the slippery pavement.  We stashed all of the bikes under an awning or in Karen’s van and dashed into Kaldi’s just before it started pouring.  After lunch, I accepted Karen’s gracious offer to give me a lift, though I felt like a bit of a wimp for not just biking in the rain.  (My decision was fueled by the fact that, for whatever reason due to sleep debt and an unexpectedly challenging yoga class on Friday afternoon, my energy level was pretty low — I had felt every bit of the 6.5 miles on the way to the class location.  That, and wanting to baby my new bike — yes, it will get wet (and scratched) eventually, but it’s nice to enjoy it shiny and new for just a bit longer.)

Instead of just stabling my bike and heading inside for a nap after returning home, I embarked on a garage-cleaning project, which expanded to include some basement cleaning.  Both spaces look much better now!

We kicked off Mother’s Day with the Piccolo’s maiden voyage.  G was excited upon seeing the new bike, and then, once sitting on it, immediately uncertain (called that one #mamaknows).  He spent the first two blocks saying he didn’t like it and thought he was going to fall off (he wasn’t).

Then it changed to “I’m doing it” . . .

And finally, “I like this new bike.”  Success!

For this first Piccolo outing, we stuck to the small streets right around our place.  Given G’s initial reaction, I thought we’d go two blocks and head right back home, but we added a few more after he got into it.

I spent the rest of the morning getting stuff done around the house while Matthew tackled bread baking — so nice to have five beautiful loaves in the freezer!

We closed the weekend with a much-anticipated date night to see the student showcase at Bumbershoot Aerial Arts.

I was hoping we could make it a date night by bike, but the weather had other plans.  The forecast was for a high chance of thunderstorms all evening, and the skies opened up just as we were ready to head to Lucky Buddha for dinner, so we took the car (of course, by the time we arrived, it had stopped raining).

We dined on noodle salad, steamed buns, and pho at Lucky Buddha, continued on to I Scream Cakes for dessert, and then hit the main event at the Bumbershoot gym.  I enjoyed watching fellow students perform and thinking about perhaps being at that level eventually.  When we left, it was dry as a bone outside, and it would have made for a lovely, if late, bike ride home.  Fickle weather!

 

A month ago, I shared a picture of G [finally] riding his new bike, with a promise of a full story later.  Bike month seems an appropriate time to make good on that promise.

Our first outing on the new bike went fairly well, but after that we reached a stalemate.  It was all we could do to convince G to even get on the bike.  I turned to the interwebs for some advice, and ended up at a Sheldon Brown page, which had this advice on running with a child:

The parent should hold the child by the shoulders and run along behind. It is important that the parent not hold the handlebars-the child cannot learn the feel of balancing if the parent is taking control of the bike. If the parent holds onto the saddle or any other part of the bike, the child will not necessarily realize if they are leaning a bit to one side or the other, because the parent will be correcting for them.

Instead, hold the child by the shoulders, so that as they lean to the side, they will feel the side pressure, and can learn to reduce it by turning into the lean. This should be done in a wide flat space, such as an empty parking lot. The parent should not make any attempt to steer the child, just let the bike go where it will.

I thought I’d been doing good by holding on to the back of his seat rather than the handlebars, but the above advice made a lot of sense, and I was itching to try it, so after nap time that day, I told Gabriel that I had a new idea for helping him ride his bike.  Unfortunately, I had a less-than-willing subject.

Once outside, G was more interested in his sandbox than the bike.  When I finally coaxed him onto the bike, he lasted all of 1/4 of a block before declaring that he was finished.  Sigh!

Our next attempt ended in us conceding to training wheels (which I’d REALLY hoped to avoid).  I  followed the Sheldon Brown advice for proper training wheel use, and adjusted the training wheels to leave some wobble.  At first, we left too much wobble [for G’s comfort].  We adjusted the training wheels closer to the ground, leaving just a tiny bit of wobble, but by that point he was pretty much done for the day.

The Saturday of Easter weekend, we towed G’s bike to the local school playground, which features a big open paved space.  After some time playing on the equipment, we proposed the idea of a bike ride.  No joy.

Then Matthew suggested that G’s new bike was feeling lonely because he wasn’t riding it.  One of us (don’t remember who) had the idea to ask Gabriel if he wanted to name the bike.  He settled on “Lightning” (an imminently practical name, as it has lightning bolts on it), and we started talking about how Lightning wanted to go for a ride.  We finally succeeded in engaging Gabriel (and Lightning) in a game of follow-the-leader.

For now, [empty] parking lots, or other big, flat, empty paved spaces, are going to be our best riding locations.  Sidewalks just have too many distractions, and present too many obstacles — bumps, frequent intersections and alleys, etc.  It does mean we’ll have to continue towing G’s bike to said locations — not hard, per se, but we do need to protect Big Blue.  I’m pretty sure the towing was what caused this damage to Big Blue’s frame.

Xtracycle is selling touch-up paint, but we were planning to pair the order with the Hooptie to save on shipping, and the Hooptie is now out of stock until July.  Anyway, eventually we’ll get this fixed, and then we plan to use some kind of padding to protect it.  (A bikey friend suggested part of an old rubber bead bicycle tire wrapped around this part of the frame.)

Between life, allergies, and illness, we haven’t actually gotten Lightning out again (so it’s been over a month — boo!).  I did replace the worn-out handlebar grips with a new, bright red pair (G’s color request).  I was still debating other “decorating” options — decals, stencils and paint, etc. — and now G is saying he’ll wait to ride in until said decorations are in place.  Argh!

I’m trying to remind myself that this is a learning process, just like anything else.  When in the throws of it, potty learning felt similarly frustrating and never-ending, but it was just a stage that’s now past and that I don’t even think about any more.  Eventually, G will be able to ride a bicycle without training wheels — pushing too much now is only frustrating all of us (and perhaps making G more resistant).

We’re also in the process of getting a tag-a-long bike (a Burley Piccolo), and I’m hoping riding that will make him more comfortable on his own bike (that is, if he deigns to even get on the Piccolo — at least it’s already a nice color . . . ).