Sunday 20 April 2008

Learning to fly (o.k. ride)...

First steps can be sudden. Or slow.

This afternoon marked a small but significant one for Asha. She was able to wobble her way a good 20 meters or so on the bicycle.

As a dad who remembers my own delight at cycling at 5 years of age, I confess that I have not been the most patient of teachers / encouragers / coaches to get Asha going. How to motivate her to move fast enough to keep her balance - knowing that it is also the speed at which a good prang will mean copious tears and various skinned appendages? She knows that falls are likely too - and so keeps slowing down.

But today I was able to leave her after getting the intial speed going - and see her maneover in more or less a straight line forward - while balancing on her own. The mini crashes that signalled the end of these little flights were without too much skin lost (two skinned knuckles and a bit of a knee was the damage this afternoon). We had a bit of a close shave when Asha bumped into the standing bicycle of our friendly door-to-door egg and bread vendour. His cycle had a large rack of a good 200 eggs on it. Asha just managed to come to a stop as her cycle nudged the front of this potential disaster. We escaped without having to compensate the good man for many cracked eggs!

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