Look ma, no training wheels

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This past weekend I decided to see how Nate would do if I took off the training wheels on a pedal bike and let him give it a shot.

You see, he’s been riding a balance bike since last October and even though I admit to the typical parental bias, I really do think he has good balance for a kid his age. Of course, I could just be pushing him on all balance related things, which is forcing him to get more “practice” time than most kids his age accumulate. Either way, we found out one thing this weekend. The kid can ride a two wheeler without training wheels and he’s only 2½.

On Sunday Nate rode his bike through our neighborhood to Steve’s house and then made several loops through the north end of the neighborhood putting on more than 2+ miles of biking under his belt. We ate lunch at a park near my work on Tuesday so we could film him riding and share with the family back east. This is some of that footage:

Video of Nate riding a two wheeled bicycle without training wheels
Download (nate-biking.mp4)

The balance bike concept is pretty neat. He likes to rip it up in our back yard with the obstacles, aka jumps that I’m in the process of building for him. Since our backyard is not much more than a bunch of dirt anyway, I figured why not. The more bike handling skill he accumulates the better. I can’t wait to take him out on some mountain biking trails with me some day. Perhaps when he’s three.

Video of Nate riding a balance bike over some ramps in our backyard.

Download (nate-balance-bike.mp4)