A few weeks ago a friend/classmate of Spencer's (we'll call him 'T') told his mom he wanted to do bicycle riding as his sport. So T's mom organized a series of bike riding playdates with friends at a local middle school track.
We were the first to arrive at one of the playdates. We got Spencer's little kid bike (with training wheels) out of the car. We fastened his Cars themed helmet, and away he went down the track. V e r y s l o w l y. There was just enough light breeze to keep him from making forward progress. But it was a flat, smooth surface so with a little coaxing and pushing now and then he made it around the track in nothing near record time. But he made it.
Then Spencer's friend T arrives. It took me a moment to recognize T, since from a distance all I saw were 2 adult bicycles. I was wondering where T's bike was. As they approached, I realized T was actually on one of the adult sized bicycles. Now, mind you, T is a little guy. A few inches and a few months behind Spencer. But T came flying around the track on his bicycle, no training wheels, real helment (sans cartoon characters), and flew around the track in near record speed. T's mom saw the look on my face as I watched her bicycle riding prodigy ride laps around poor Spencer, pedaling his heart out trying to go forward against the light breeze, looking so...young...compared to his peer. She helpfully offered that T's older cousins do a lot of bike riding and T had spent time with them and learned from them. I'm not sure if that made me feel any better.
Spencer was done after 1.5 laps, and quickly got distracted by a dog. We'll be at the next bicycle riding playdate...I'm hoping that eventually some of T's bicycle riding enthusiasm and skills will rub off on Spencer.
