Learning to ride

When teaching someone else a new task, there are standard methods and then there are the more, shall we say, strange methods. My dad started off with the standard method of teaching me to ride a bike: Get me started on training wheels then take the wheels off and let me ride a little while he holds the bike. When he felt I was going well, he would let go without me knowing. Standard, age old method. He did this for my brother and it worked great. Yes, my brother did go half way down the block and land in a bush but it was a soft bush and he was uninjured.

Enter the strange method.

After I passed my first ride as a very surprised solo rider, my dad decided to make a small obstacle course. Large objects where dragged from the garage to the street where I was going to weave in and out of them refining my control. Guaranteeing that I, unlike my brother, would never crash into a bush. I trusted my dad so I mounted my bike and headed toward the first object, a large metal garbage can. Getting around the first object was easy. Turning tightly enough to make it between the garbage can and the second item, a metal step ladder, was a little bit beyond my current riding skill. I don’t remember what the other objects were because I never made it that far having crashed into the ladder. Scraped up and slightly injured, I headed inside with my dad.

I don’t remember completing my training, but know for a fact that dad never set up another obstacle course. I also haven’t crashed in to anything on a bike since, so maybe this was a lesson I couldn’t have done without.

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