Vivian’s First Bike Ride
(san’s training wheels)
Friday, Feb. 6th 2009
I came home from work and Vivian showed me that she had taught herself how to ride her bike without training wheels. She had been coasting and decided she would try to pedal. She showed me that she could pedal up and down the driveway. The temperature was warm and we rode up and down the drive a bunch of times. Vivian asked if we could go on a bike ride Saturday.
Saturday, Feb 7th 2009
I have no idea what I was getting myself into when she was asking to ride the next morning.
Vivian wanted to ride around a little bit. I made her wear shoes and a helmet. She didn’t want to wear her gloves. She talked me into going to Sooner Park. Sooner Park is 2 miles. I figured we would probably get there and we would have to call Kelly to come rescue us.
We got about a block from the house and she was unstable enough that I made us turn around and get bandages. I didn’t want to be a long way from home with nothing to put on a skinned knee. We rode to Sooner Park. Everything went mostly okay until we got to the park. She wasn’t very good at stopping. Several times going downhill while trying to stop, she got a scrape from the pedal on her calf. She has a scab and 3 good bruises to show for it. Each time she cried but shook it off and we kept going. She didn’t want to play at the park but wanted to ride some more. I asked her if she wanted to go to Will Rogers, her kindergarten school, which was down the bike path. Off we went further from home.
She didn’t want to play much and asked me several times about some other trails we had been on before (in the trailer). I said we could go to them but we would have to walk along a busy rode. So, off we went down Frank Phillips. The side walk was too rough to ride so she walked most of the way to the next part of trails by Atwoods. From Atwoods we went to the Soccer fields. And from there we started South on the trail toward the High School.
We had to stop quite often for drinks and rest. Of course Vivian had a sore butt. But we both had sore hands. I didn’t think we were going far and didn’t wear gloves. Vivian didn’t wear hers’ either. Vivian would say that she was hurting but wanted to keep going. I finally said that we would have Mom pick us up at Jo Allyn Lowe duck pond.
I helped Vivian up Weselyn hill. I rode ahead and came back down to walk her bike up. Heading down the hills Vivian missed a turn and ran off the path into the weeds. The bike seat caught her in the hip fairly hard. She cried a bit but got right back on and kept going. That incident left good bruise.
Miles: 10.56
Time: 2:19:36
Avg Speed: 4.5 mph
Max speed: ~15mph
Kelly needed to go to Tulsa. We dropped her off at one store and went to a bike store. I told Vivian if she started riding I would buy her a real bike. We did by her a new bike.
Saturday, Feb 7th 2009
One more day of good weather! With the new bike we had to ride. We were able to ride to Hoover school and back. Vivian is doing a great job.
Miles: 3.23
Time: 32:48
Avg Speed: 5.9 mph
