Success

I don't have any pictures or video yet, but there are a whole lot of witnesses. On Wednesday night I put the cranks, pedals and chain on Niv's bike. I didn't get to take him outside on it until Saturday, although he rode around our house a bunch, mostly unsuccessfully into walls. Once we got outside he figured out how to ride in the first hundred feet of sidewalk, well before we arrived at the park.

If you're just tuning in, the full explanation is that Niv has been riding a regular 12 inch bike that I turned into a balance bike. He's been asking for his pedals for a while and I finally got the time to put them on. And now he's still three months from his third birthday and rides without training wheels. He never rode with training wheels.

It got me thinking, why is being able to ride a bike such a right of passage? Freedom? Dexterity? Independence? Another way to have fun? Anything else? Then it got me thinking about why I ride so much. Maybe all of the above?

I don't think it was any natural ability that got him riding, but the exposure to bicycles everywhere helped. The balance bike is also a far better way to teach a kid to ride than training wheels. Training wheels train you to be lazy.