I had scheduled a play date with one of Aaron's friends, Malia. Malia's mom suggested that we meet at Inter-River Park to go bike riding (Malia rides a 2-wheeler too). I had no idea what to expect. This is a huge park, many ball fields ... I pictured something with meandering easy bike trails (and for all I know, the park has this as well), but we found Nora and Malia in the fifth parking lot we checked out. They were parked beside the skills park which has a variety of dirt hills, asphalt curves, and a separate wooden skills park with logs and a teeter-totter. So cool!
I had invited Austin to join us, and despite asking him several times between 9:00 and 9:30 this morning, he wouldn't budge from his bed. So Aaron and I went alone.
Aaron had a great time and now has a few more "cool" scratches and owies, and a couple spectacular bails to talk about. One was quite a hard landing, and he even bounced! He has a knick in his helmet now, because of it. And he never cried once ... until he got home and I tried to wash off the dirt. At the park, he would quickly get up, say he was okay, and remark, "That was totally awesome!!" I wondered if he was putting up a brave face for Malia.
When it was time to drop Aaron off at preschool, I asked Austin to join me for the drive because I wanted to show him the skills park. He reluctantly came along.
As we pulled up, I thought he'd be impressed with the wooden ramps, but he said he's still not ready for those. Then he looked over at the dirt hills and said, "Maybe those would be okay." I had Aidan's bike (Austin's old bike) in the back of the car, so I invited him to try it. I thought he'd refuse, but he was already opening his door to get out.
The bike is too small for him, but he loved it. He "got some air" on the first big jump, and he was hooked. After a couple spins around the circuit, he asked me to go home to get his bike, his friend and his friend's bike. He wanted to come back and try the course again, on the bike he loves.
We tried to call Ian and he wasn't home, but I'm not sure both bikes would have fit in the car anyway. Austin's bike is very big!
So we went back to the park and Austin had a chance to try out his bike instead. He was in heaven! He had both wheels off the ground for the first jump and set himself a goal to clear the first rise. Before we left today, after about 30 minutes of riding, he had nearly made it!
It's a beautiful skills park with a variety of easy-to-challenging runs. What a nice setting, and I can see we would be wise to make the best use of it outside of school hours. What a treat to have the whole park to himself!
