Ryan has been getting really good at riding his bike. He is known and somewhat famous around this area as a very good biker. Ryan really gets a lot of attention when he is on the bike. I can’t really show you just how fast he is on the bike but when you see it in person it really is quite funny. Whenever he is on his bike I am running (not jogging, but running at top speed!) to catch him.
Ryan did have a pretty close call to a major wipe out the other day. We had gone on a bike ride, which was great, but when I wasn’t looking Ryan decided to just ‘go for it’ and let loose down a MAJOR hill. We aren’t talking a slight decline – think of dad’s hill but half as long but the same incline. Anyway, this hill doesn’t end nicely. It has cement road barriers spaced every 3 feet, and if you happened to be lucky enough to make it through the barrier, you would end up on a street followed by another hill that continues for a long time (which continues to go through more streets). None of the streets are particularly busy but nonetheless, certainly not a hill I would let a two year old bike down with NO BREAKS!
Anyway, Grace and I took our eyes off of Ryan for 1 second and “boom!” he just bolts down the hill. Luckily daddy saw Ryan out of the corner of his eye and was already on his bike. At top speed daddy caught up to Ryan as he was going down the hill, but what can you do? I thought to grab him but that wouldn’t have worked. I sort of pushed Ryan to the side (which was grassy) and at this point Ryan realized that he was in trouble and you could see it in his eyes. He made it to the grassy area and the moment he made it on the grass, the speed difference made him flip over and he landed on his back with a THUD! (thank god he was wearing a helmet). Ryan was not hurt but was really freaked out and started crying! Since that incident whenever we pass by that hill, he looks at me with a grin and points to the hill and says “Daddy, down the hill?” That crazy bugger!!
Here is a video of us on our first family bike ride. The video gets a bit bumpy but you might forgive me a bit more if I tell you that I, too, was on my bike when I filmed this.
