G has finally mastered braking with her pedals. It was awesome, for about 30 seconds, then it became awful as she would pedal 2 strokes, insist we all stop, pedal 2 strokes, insist we all stop, and then finally toppled over at .2 mph. Then she hated using the brakes all over again. I briefly grappled with explaining to her in simple terms she could understand that riding is all about flow, and flow is dynamic and must be felt not defined, so she must stop doing whatever does not need doing when she is doing it. I quickly gave up and just told her to flow, you don’t get it now but if we keep doing this you will.
She knows how to climb, descend, steer, brake, and be terrified of cars. And after a recent ride, she has learned how to suffer. We had a busy day of pool sessions and trips to the store where I bought her a bag of balloons and we spent the afternoon pumping them up. Literally, pumping them up – G brought in one of the pumps from the garage and waited impatiently as we put each balloon on the nozzle for her to pump. By 8pm and a mile of riding to the park and playing park games, she had the worst bonk in history. She walked up the street while I towed her bike and she wailed Moooooooooommmmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyy! The Tour De France has been lost with more dignity.
She is ready to get rid of the training wheels. From behind she looks like a pretzel humping the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Her balance is perfect, but skewed fundamentally due to the training wheels. There will be a brief stretch of ugliness. But it will be really ugly. 661 does not make armor so small. I think I will wait til it is cool enough to put her in long sleeves and long pants, and get her when she is wide awake and happy to rebound, and then chase her around a smooth basketball court at one of the parks instead of the street, maybe one of those soccer fields groomed so low and hard and awful for Ultimate will finally give back and be a good learning surface for G.
The plan til Fall is to get her strong, confident, and willing to bounce back. I wonder if its me or G pushing for this, but when its time to step up anything less settles into a ceiling. We both know it. A cache of confidence will be good for her.
When her legs are long enough for her feet to touch the ground flatly on each side of the bike, while she is sitting on the seat, she will be ok without training wheels….at least her mother was at about the same age, but on a smaller bike.