Simple Pleasures, Big Treasures: Test Drive

Today, I took the girls to Canton and we went for a test drive. Time to get some new wheels.....for them!

The twins have outgrown their tricycles and honestly haven't shown much interest in them all summer. Gotta practice that bike riding, so I decided we'd go shopping for big girl bikes as an early birthday present so they could have several months of use before it gets too cold.

Growing up in the country, riding bikes was the ONLY way to get places when you were a kid. Before we were able to ride solo on the country roads, we had to learn to ride bikes in our gravel driveway. We'd ride up and down, throwing stones, turning around near the silo by the barn. Once we got brave enough we'd ride down to the road....and occasionally if no one caught us, we'd ride about 40 yards down the road and turn around in the barn driveway near the hayshed and high-tail-it back to the yard before we got busted. There were the dare-devil days when we'd use bailer twine to tie our red Radio Flyer wagon onto the back of our pink banana-seat Huffy bike and try to convince each other that riding in the wagon was safe.....not too often did we have takers for back there. We practiced our hand signals (yup, in the driveway) so those riders behind us knew when we were turning right or left. That was about as much safety as you had to worry about, no use for bike helmets or knee pads & wrist guards back then. When we had convinced our parents we were old enough to be trusted along, we were set free to cruise the block. Riding around the block for us meant about a mile trek and often times we'd cut through the tractor path in the fields when the ride was too long. There were only 5 houses on our block, and 3 of them were family, so you'd have to stop over at Aunt Beth's house or at Grandma's house and check in. (It's obvious now that as soon as we left the driveway a call was made to the respective houses to be on the lookout for wild kids running the streets of the neighborhood). When I got my first job at the general store of the campground around the corner from our house (I was probably 13 or so), I'd have to depend on my own 2 legs and 2 wheels to get me there and back.

It's crazy to now think of my girls learning to ride their bikes. Of course safety is obviously a bit more of a concern these days, because we were NOT allowed to leave Toys R Us until all 3 had bike helmets! For those of you that have been to our house, you know that learning to ride in our driveway will be ~~a little~~ difficult. Once they master the small flat area we have, we'll have to graduate to loading everyone up in the truck and driving to the walking trail or the paved beach parking lot. (Although I am willing to bet money that one of them will come up with the bright idea to tie the wagon on the back of a bike and try and convince the others to give it a go).