Mountain biking - Start 'em young!

Kai has the good (?) fortune of being born to parents who are a little bit bike crazy. So at the tender age of 2 years, 2 months he has already put quite a few miles on his trike and in his Chariot (bike trailer). This morning his mountain bike training continued.

Dear Dada decided to head to school today with our car keys in hand. I'm not sure why seeing as he was taking the bus.... but he did, and we're not so organized as to know where our spare set might be. (And our aging brains did not recall the super secret hiding place of our surfing key - which of course I can't divulge anyway in such a public forum!) Anyway, so Mama and Kai were faced with either cancelling our playdate at the splash park or figuring out another way to get there. Seeing as its been raining so much in Massachusetts lately that I've been considering snorkelling in the puddle at the end of our driveway, there was no way we wanted to pass up an opportunity for some company and some real summer fun!

So Mama had to figure out how to transfer the bike trailer from Dada's bike to her own. This sounds simple enough but the depth of my bike maintenance skill is inversely proportional to the seriousness of the relationship I'm in with a male cyclist. Seeing as I'm married to one, you might say that I haven't done much bike tinkering at all in the last few years. But, I'm proud to say I figured it out and got the Chariot hooked up behind the Blur. True my rear disc brake was rubbing and the suspension needs adjusting for my new heft but we were basically ready to go. It is after all only about a 2 mile ride to get there.

So off we headed, Kai the ever cooperative helmeted rider in back. His mountain bike training began as he was repeatedly splashed and speckled with muddy water every time we went through a puddle. As I said before, there has been alot of rain so puddles were plentiful on our route. Like any good mountain biker, he showed that he is not afraid of mud. His training ramped up a notch when Mama rounded a corner on a dirt trail just a little too tightly and the Chariot wheel clipped a large boulder and tipped over. Yes, tipped over. The pregnant lady on the bike towing the toddler crashed. Thank goodness no one was watching. While I wasn't impressed that the Chariot tipped, I was impressed that Kai didn't move an inch. He stayed in the middle of the Chariot, strapped into his seatbelt (and with his helmet on). He wasn't impressed by his sudden change of position from hurtling down the path to being suspended sideways but in true mountain biker form he was ready to go again once Mama righted the Chariot.

Despite showing such tremendous potential in the dirt, he was very happy to pursue some aquatic activity once we got to the splash park. It was kinda funny when he turned to me as he boarded the Chariot for our ride home (in the rain, some things never change) and said "Hey Mama, try keeping the rubber side down eh?"