Today we went to the elementary school parking lot to practice bike riding. I even took my bike though it hasn't been used in so long I couldn't get the tires to hold air.
Jesse was off and "running" right away. He has a little bike with training wheels. I moved them up a little bit and he was still going strong. He's not ready to have them off yet (we tried that once) but is having a lot of fun and getting better.
Eric is using a bigger bike with training wheels. He is still very hesitant and leans a lot but we did figure out some positioning issues that helped him out a little bit. After spending some time with that (and Eric getting frustrated more than once) we took a break and played a rousing game of Uno in the back of the Jeep.
After that I decided to move them to the grassy knoll. There is a baseball field at the school and a sloping, grassy area right beside it. I started them out on a gentle slope first and made them do that three times before moving up to the "bunny" slope. This actually seemed to work very well. It allowed them to have some momentum and focus more on just balancing and steering. Eric had been deathly afraid to ride without his training wheels on the level ground. They are not the highest quality and started to bend from riding down the hills. He barely noticed this at first and when he did, I assured him that he had been riding that way for several times and would be fine. In fact, when he wasn't looking, I bent them up more so he wasn't using them at all! (Funny, we were just talking on the way there, about Dumbo and how he didn't really need the "magic feather" to fly and that sooner or later Eric would learn the same thing about his training wheels.)
They both had a great time and there was only one minor crash. Below are two videos showing them riding down the hill. Unfortunately there is a delay when I started to record (using a cell phone) so it comes in when they are half way down the hill, but you'll still get the idea. Jesse was still using the training wheels but was going quite fast and was doing well at balancing. Eric was not using his at all by this time. They are both proud (as am I) and we came home and celebrated by having ice cream sundaes!
