Eddie on Two Wheels

We gave Eddie a green Kazam balance bike for his second birthday.  My hope was for him to learn to balance before learning how to use pedals so we could avoid training wheels all together.  It almost worked--in fact, I gave him the bike a few weeks before his birthday when he figured out how to pedal on the trike at daycare.  It didn't take him long to favor the balance bike at home because he could go around and around in circles on the court with the older neighbor kids who were on regular bikes of their own.

March 2012:


In the spring of this year, though, he went back to favoring our trike.  Our trike, literally: it was my and Edward's trike when we were kids and it was probably from a generation before that, too, since my dad pulled it out of a free trash pickup heap in our neighborhood when I was a baby.  It was old and tired then, so my dad repainted it.  We intended to give it a third paint job before Eddie got a hold of it, but he was faster than we were!  So all we had time for was replacing the rear wheels.

Just over the last couple of months he got interested in the balance bike again.  This time he figured out how to put both feet up on the footrest and cruise around.  You'll see on the Kazam website that the footrest is there specifically so the child's center of gravity will be the same as on a standard bike, letting them learn how to properly balance.  Neat!

Our neighbors saw Eddie doing so well on the balance bike that they pulled out their old pedal bike for him to try.  He was sooooooooooo excited to try using the pedal bike, sans training wheels.  It only took a couple of days before he figured it out and actually pedaled, rather than using it like a balance bike.

Whenever we go to Gualala for the weekend, I always bring a trike or bike of some sort.  This time I only brought the pedal bike, knowing that he'd figure it out if he really wanted to.  And boy howdy, did he!

October 20, 2012:


October 21, 2012:


October 22, 2012:


And now he spends every waking moment at home on the bike with the neighbors.  They have a few traffic cones we set in the court to alert bikers and motorists of the kids and it seems to work well.  Eddie's come inside with owies on his face (crashing into Callen's handlebars), knees and hands (falling down), and toes (not using the pedal brakes while shoeless).  But no broken bones, yet!  And yesterday he figured out how to go REALLY fast and then go up/down the bump on the corner of the driveway.  He calls it his "dirt bike."  I'm pretty sure this is a bad sign of things to come...

Today we took him on his first "real" bike ride, on the street.  We biked from Chestnut Park to Slide Hill Park, which is about 1.2 miles.  He did a pretty good job for his first try.  Given that he doesn't know his right and left perfectly, it was basically him following Dave and me constantly reminding him to stay away from the while line at the edge of the bike lane.  Biking home, however, he had to be in the trailer since we were heading into the sun and I knew it'd be too hard for him to see, not to mention that the cars would have trouble seeing such a small person.  Perhaps he needs a flag on his bike since he's so small?