Monday, July 23, 2012

Training -or Retraining -the Trainer!

After I got finished around noon with my general morning stuff, checked my e-mail, played a tiny bit on Facebook and then, cleared out all the posts waiting for me to read in my Reader, I had the kids get ready and we were going to take Sammy for a walk then, up the road to pick up our mail.

Maya wanted to ride her bike while I walked the dog and of course, Kurtis chimed in as he wanted to ride his bike too then. This meant that they would be riding their bicycles on the road and so, of course, had to be on the lookout then for cars going up and down the street.

Kurtis is still using a bike with training wheels and for that I am very grateful too as he doesn't pay a lick of attention to where he is going with that darned bike. He's too busy "star-gazing" in the middle of the day -as he has to keep turning his head and watching for anything and everything along the road, in people's yards and such!

After this walk with those two kids and their bikes, I think I need to look into signing into getting a policy for general liability insurance.

First, he almost wrecked as he started to bring his bike onto the road almost in front of the house because he was too excited and too busy looking all around him and not paying any attention to the fact he was pulling the bike off to the right and it started to topple over on him then as he put his leg over the crossbars.

Then on the way up to the mailboxes, again -not paying any attention to where his front wheel was going, he almost ran over the dog then! Actually, he did bang into Sammy's left front paw and Sam -poor baby, that he is -let out a yelp which in turn scared Kurtis and he almost fell off the bike again!

Finally, we arrived at the mailboxes and I got our lovely batch of junk mail (and only one bill) for the day and we headed back home.

On the way home, the kids saw the twin girls who live up the street from us -and one of them just so happened to have been in Kurt's class this past year at school, so of course, he goes into a bit of a showoff routine, yelling up to her that he's riding his bicycle and that it's a space rocket! Oh, brother! The boy does have a really vivid imagination now, doesn't he?

It was on the way home though that I realized Kurtis hadn't yet learned about this thing on bikes called brakes!

So, each time I had to remind him not to get going too fast or to slow down and pull over to stay clear of a car, he would immediately drop his feet to the road and begin to drag his feet with his toes agains the pavement! Not the best thing to do for one's feet especially if you are wearing sandels!

So I then had to show him how to position his feet on the pedals and how to place pressure on the pedals in the opposite direction he was using when going forward. Can't believe whoever has been trying to teach him about riding a bike hadn't bothered to show him about the darned brakes!

As we got closer to home, Maya was a good ways ahead of me and because she is more experienced at bike riding, she turned and began to ride her bike down the little hill down to our yard. I started to yell at Kurtis to try to get him to stop at the top of the bank in front of our house as I really didn't want to even think about him riding down that little bank there and down onto the grass because I just knew that would be the end of our safe trip up and back to the post office that was about to end with him laying on the ground and the bike being off to the side -or worse, maybe on top of him

But of course, little Mr. Independence, couldn't be bothered to stop and wait for me there. Nope! Away he went, playing a little game of follow the leader down the bank and in to the yard.

By the time I got to that spot, I saw his bike laying on its side in the back yard but since I didn't hear any screaming, didn't see him running up through the yard towards me with any bleeding cuts or other injuries, I breathed a big sigh of relief to be back home, both kids each all in one piece!

And I definitely did give some serious thought to popping open a nice cold relaxing bottle of Yuenglings but then, realized if I'd have had a beer now, it would have taken away the energy I will need to fix supper.

So, in the interest of feeding the family, I decided to save that beer for a later time -like maybe tonight as a nice little nitecap!

By the time that rolls around though, I'm liable to be in need of a whole darned six pack if these two kids don't soon stop their incessant petty fighting!

Each

1 comment:

terri said...

I remember those days when it was nerve-wracking to watch the kids try to maneuver their bikes. Soon enough, Kurt will be riding that thing around without a care in the world and minus the training wheels too.