Tonight I took Drew over to the empty parking lot near our house to work on riding a bike. My Dad worked with him a few weeks ago when he was in town, so I was curious to see if could pick up wear he left off. At first, it was quite dreadful. He wanted to practice in the grassy area where my dad had worked with him. After a few tries, I told him it would be smoother over on the concrete. So we moved over to the hard top and I was actually pretty nervous. I thought for sure he’d end up falling over and skinning up his knees and that he’d want to quit immediately. To my delight, that didn’t happen. After a few tries and talking about how to keep his balance, he was off to the races. I actually got scared the first time he took off across the parking lot, thinking I didn’t know if he’d be able to stop or not. I envisioned him running into the tree or the bench that he was headed straight for! Luckily, he just put his legs down and let the bike fly from underneath him. Not the best choice, but still better than running into something. After that we worked on coasting, braking, and turning.
Truthfully, I was scared to death when I took him out there. I didn’t know what I was going to do if he couldn’t pick up where he left off with my dad. My dad is an avid cycler, who’s taken lots of classes on mountain biking, etc. which I think helped him show Drew some different ways of working on balance. When Drew took off and went more than a couple feet, I was so excited. I had to refrain from jumping up and down like some star-crazed cheerleader at a football game. Instead, I just hollared and tried to keep him thinking about what he was doing. We worked on it for about an hour and he got better and better each time. So exciting!