A Bike Ride With My Daughter

Saturday morning I had a wonderful opportunity to go for a bike ride with my daughter (youngest). It was a wonderful learning experience for her and I'm extremely proud of how she did.

You see, she has been working at a bicycle shop for nearly a year now, and late last summer she bought herself a very nice mountain bike. The interesting part of it was that she has never really been much into riding bicycles and really wasn't much past just barely knowing how to ride.
-- I tried to do the good dad thing and taught her how to ride when she was around 6 years old, but she just never got into it. --
So last year, we took several nice easy rides so she could get used to riding a bike. Nice smooth trails (like glorified like dirt roads without the cars), nothing even remotely close to difficult. Then on last Labor day we went with the guys that run the bike shop and their families up to some relatively easy trails up in the mountains. The girl tried really, really hard, but to me it just did not seem like it would ever come to her.
Well, over the course of the winter, when she wasn't busy with some other thing, she would go to spin classes to help strengthen her legs and conditioning, but she didn't go often enough to realistically expect much gain from it. But as the saying goes, "every little bit helps." And it did.

On Saturday morning when we went out, we went to a park here in town with trails around and through it. I mulled over what trails would be good for her planned out the best route for her to ride and enjoy success. The planning paid dividends along with the time she spent conditioning.
I'm not saying I expect that she'll go out and win any races this year, but the quantum leap of how Saturday was compared to last labor day... inconceivable (and yes the word means what I think it means). The girl did remarkably well and her papa is extremely proud of her.
She fell a couple times and endured some scrapes and some bruises, but at the end of the ride she was saying that she wanted to come back to the park and do it again so she could work on doing better. That is an overcoming spirit and it is a wonderful thing to see in your children.

I'm not sure when the next time will be that we can get out to ride together again, but I am very much looking forward to whenever it is. Hopefully it will be soon.