Another weekend with the kids

23 September, 2006 at 10:50 am | Posted in Kidlets | 5 Comments

G’day.

 Another weekend with the kids. I actually haven’t had them over for quite a while, as the last time they were supposed to be over here, I was in Melbourne. I bought the young man a second hand 16″ BMX with training wheels this week, and whilst he loves it, it is a little too big for him. We managed (the three of us) to go for a bit of a ride this morning, although most of my riding consisted of travelling at 3ks an hour, pushing Anthony along, as he doesn’t yet have the strength in his legs to ride uphill. He doens’t quite get the back-pedal brake thing either. It was still lots of fun, with Natasza zooming ahead yelling out to me that she was going to win (being the bastard that I am, I left Anthony to fend for himself for a minute whilst I sped up and overtook Natasza… she had the grace to laugh). Because of the terrain around here, I had to make some adjustments to the training wheels on Anthony’s BMX, as when he rides into a slight depression along the drive, he just sits there with the back wheel off the ground spinning like mad (the back wheel, not him).

I managed to give myself a bit of a fright too! I was bragging to Natasza about how, in my youth, I was the king of push bikes at high school, and was the only person who could do a one-handed wheelie (mono, whatever). I planted the foot, pulled up on the handlebars, and the front wheel came off the ground at a great rate of knots. Luckily, I didn’t flip with the bike, but managed to slide my fat ass off the seat, and landed on my feet while the bike kinda sprung out from underneath me (BTW Seebs, I’m never getting (?) lug pedals).

I’d better get back into developing some of my long-lost skills. I need to look at least a little competent when I go riding with the gang in Melbourne at Christmas time.

Also, who has some advice on how to stop the handgrips from sliding around on the handlebars? I could wrap electrical insulation tape around the bars and then replace the handgrips, but I think there may be something better I could use. Any tips would be helpful.

 Also any advice how to make sure that the pictures I upload aren’t defaulting to thumbnail size…. this really pisses me off. It should be around 213Kb, not 213bytes. Bloody thing.