Mary rides her bike!

It was about time Mary learned to ride a bike.  Last fall Greg had taken off her training wheels, but it didn't go well. Ugh. Teaching a kid to ride a bike can be so painful.  (Even a coordinated kid like Mary.) So he put those training wheels right back on.

This time Greg was more methodical.  He decided to try this method recommended by REI "experts."  It was magic!

This is what happened from my perspective.  Greg took Mary to the school parking lot.  Twenty minutes later they came home and she was riding her bike!  (As seen HERE and HERE.)

This is more or less what happened from Greg's perspective. He took Mary to the school parking lot.  He took off her pedals and lowered her seat and taught her to coast and steer.  He encouraged her to coast farther each time.  Then he put her pedals back on.  He told her to start out coasting like she had been before, then put her feet on the pedals and go for it.  And Viola! she was riding a bike.

There she is!  First time riding a bike!

Yay, Mary!

Awesome!  Then Greg brought Mary home and she showed off for Mom.

Here she comes!

There she goes!

And there she goes again!

Greg took Mary on a three-mile bike ride just days later!


P.S.  We cannot recommend this method enough.  (If you have talked to me or Greg recently you know that--it's practically all we can talk about.)  In fact, Mary's friend Brooke was coming over for a play date and Greg convinced her dad to take the training wheels and pedals off her bike.  Brooke coasted up and down our sidewalk for a while and then convinced Greg to put pedals back on her bike.  When her dad pulled up to pick her up, there was his daughter riding her bike up and down the sidewalk like it was nothing!  What a surprise.  A few days later Brooke went with her dad on the three-mile bike ride.  This is legit, people!

P.P.S.  Yes, that's the for sale sign in front of our house.  For clarification, we "sold" our house back at the beginning of April.  But we aren't closing until the end of July, and our agent thinks it's bad luck to take the sign down (or post a "sold" or "pending" sign) until we've closed.  So if you drive by day after day you could get the impression that we have the house that will never sell when, in fact, we were lucky to have it sell quite quickly (and get the late closing we needed).