The kids have wheels--bike wheels that is!

 It's been a long bikeless year for us here.  Last year, our bikes were stolen out of our shed.  It was traumatic at a number of levels.  For KC it was particularly painful as he had the previous December won a really beautiful Trex bike at our city holiday event.  It was a gorgeous bike, far beyond our price point.  He had barely ridden it as snow came early and then in spring, it was stolen.

It was obviously our fault.  We should have locked the shed.  But our city has not typically been a place where you had to lock things up.  So this new found knowledge brought pain as well.  Most times, our city has big city opportunities but kind of a smaller city feel.  There are festivals in the center of town, a farmers market weekly down there, free concerts on the common in the summer.  Food festivals galore throughout the year.  The list is really endless. But though they may lead to seeing friends and neighbors, we don't live in Mayberry RFD.

Despite all that, the opiod crisis is strongly felt here and likely contributed to the bike thefts. Lissa's bike was taken as well as Robs in the same sweep.  Mine was not because it was hanging up and far too difficult to remove quickly.

A few weeks ago I got Lissa a new bike.  It is a rather inexpensive big box discount store model, but she is growing so much that it does not make sense to invest in a pricey bike right now.  I was saving for one for KC when our friend (who is also KC's godfather) heard of the situation and offered a free used bike for him.  It had been given to him by someone and he has not gotten into riding as he thought he might.  So for the price of a tune up, my son has some nice new wheels again.

At first, he was afraid to ride the bike.  This one is bigger, but truly fits his growing, oh-so-tall young mans body.  But he is feeling all clumsy elbows, knees and gangly these days.  The bike seemed gigantic to him.  I assured him it was not and he could do it.  Sent him up the sidewalk listening to his dramatic discourse on how he was going to fall and break a limb right before dance classes resumed. (laughing in my head at the ranting!)

Tonight he and Lissa went for a bike ride and as I  suspected, the lure of freedom,the feel of the breeze as he moved his bike along the sidewalks, overcame his fear.  He came home with a gigantic smile on his face and said "it's back!  my confidence is BACK!"

I told him how happy I was (watched Lissa roll her eyes in the background--she's been out riding for weeks since she got her bike) and we talked of a family bike ride once my bike gets tuned up. I'm looking forward to it. There are some nice bike trails in our area and it will be fun to explore these together.