Training Wheels

The other week over at the Vinyl Villain's as part of the guest bloggers series on Happiness and Sadness, Heather posted a beautiful track The Ghost Inside Our House from Cloud Cult. Go here to read her entry and find out more about Cloud Cult and Greg Minowa's heartbreaking story. I commented about a song from Advice To The Happy Hippopotamus which never fails to have me in tears due to the events that surrounded the making of the album and the sentiment of the song. What I didn't really think about was how the song would become relevant to me for other reasons so shortly after reading Heather's writing.

Yesterday I spent what began as a very frustrating but ultimately rewarding afternoon helping Max to learn to ride his bike without the aid of stabilisers or training wheels as they are also called. I have no recollection of learning to ride a bike, I'm sure it must have been a big deal and that my dad was the one who did the running along behind holding on to the seat as I did yesterday but I don't remember. I do know that I was younger than Max is now, as we grew up in a quiet cul-de-sac and not on a main road.

I would love to say that I had a Chopper to instill the idea that as a child I was cool but alas no,  I had a Grifter, a beast of a bike which weighed about ten tons and no matter how many times my dad fixed the gears and bought new cables would go back to default mode of being stuck in third within a week making it virtually impossible to ride the whole way up the hill from the shop back to our house.

Anyway, I digress back to yesterday and eventually after a lot of falling off, huffs, the odd venting of anger and I'm sure some swear words being uttered under his breath Max can now ride his bike without assistance.

Tomorrow's lesson how to turn corners and learning to stop without jumping off.

Cloud Cult - Training Wheels
.