Introduce your kids to bicycles early

Many parents are afraid to introduce their children to bicycles. This is quite understandable. There is indeed danger in riding bicycles. Because for one, riding a two-wheeled vehicle is already a circus act in and of itself - be it a bicycle or a motorcycle.

But here's the thing. It will only be dangerous if the rider is irresponsible, uneducated and if kids are left unsupervised during training. Again, it's better to introduce your kids to bikes early. Make sure to provide ample supervision when you do. The exhilaration of  taking that bike for a spin around the village, and the wind brushing through your face and hair will be priceless.

I also have a daughter who really wants to ride bicycles. Recently, I bought her a hybrid bike, a configuration that's weird to some of you - part BMX, part mountain bike. It has no training wheels (balancers to some of you). So yeah, you can feel free to ask me "Why did you do that?". Honestly, I dunno. I should have bought her balancers, but I didn't. Regardless, training how to ride bicycles require patience. My daughter was very eager and was quite happy when she got the bicycle. But the opposite is true when she started sitting on the saddle. She's terrified because she still do not know how to balance. My wife and I keep turns training her to ride the bicycle and here's the tricky part - different people will have different learning curves. Some people may learn to balance in a few minutes or hours. Some people will take days or longer to learn how to balance. So definitely, if you're like me who's teaching someone to ride a bike, be patient.

On second thought, perhaps I'll just buy those balancers ^_^.

-----

In another note and since it's a Thursday, here's my first throwback post ever. I promised in an older post that I will share with the lot of you pics from my childhood, taking bikes for a spin.

A Big "Hello"

Hello to you fellow newbie MTBer!

I started this blog to serve as a point of reference, a bookmark of sorts, and as a journal of my MTB journey.

First, a little about me. I am 34 years old and living in the southern part of sunny Philippines. I first started biking (formally "cycling" according to other pundits to distinguish it from bikers who ride motorcycles) when I was around 2 or 3 years old. I can still remember riding a steel trike with white and blue paints. I'm not so sure if I still have an old picture (perhaps I'll ask my mom when I visit!) but when I find one, I'll post it up in here.

I started "real" cycling when I was in primary school, probably Grade 5 or Grade 6. My dad, who was a municipal cop (municipal police chief), would bring the whole family over for the weekend to the municipality where he was assigned. It was a laid back, rural, coastal town. Every morning we'd get fish by the shore which is just behind the town hall, way past the jail block. No worries, the inmates are kind and were obviously victims of circumstance than anything else.

Back to cycling. I learned to ride the bicycle "for real" here in this town. It was where I learned to balance on my own, and properly pedal. I can still remember that the bicycle I practiced with was an alloy-framed BMX bicycle that I used to frequently borrow from one of the cops on duty. The town hall's wide lawn, and sleepy, wide roads allowed me to practice riding the bicycle in relative safety and it's far from the highway. I would circle the town hall's front yard which was lined with five fully grown Narra trees, so tall that the two-story town hall dwarfed in comparison to them. Their leaves and branches are so wide that the sun's rays never get to shine underneath them.

Fast forward to the present. I picked up cycling again after more than 20 years. I decided to ride the bicycle again for exercise and to rekindle the old feeling of going around that humble town hall during my childhood.

As to what I have now? It's something that deserves another post so stay tuned.