The shadowy figures in the photograph are Jeannie and Matthew working on Matthew's bike riding skills. He's getting the hang of going without training wheels. He still steers like a distracted drunk and sometimes forgets to pedal, but he is much better than I was at that age.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bike
I never really got the hang of riding a bike when I was grade school aged. When I lived in Richland Center, Wisconsin we lived with my maternal grandparents. While my grandmother had lots of admirable traits, she was in the final analysis very flappable when it came to activities resulting in road rash. Her nervousness combined with my own ineptitude made learning to ride nightmarish for me. So I checked out for a few years.
When I was 13 or so I was determined that I would learn to ride a bike. Our house had a sloping alley behind it. Every night during the summer I would wait until nearly dusk and then launch myself down the alley on my moms rusty three speed bike. Sometimes I would make it to the end of the alley and I would push it back to our garage and start the process over again. I frequently fell into the neighbor's bushes on the way down the alley. I would dust myself off, find my bent up glasses and keep riding. After doing that for a good month or so I finally got the hang of it. A month or so later my dad won a ten speed from Dr. Pepper. I rode that bike everywhere until I moved to Minnesota.
This is pretty much the way I've learned everything in life, launching myself down an alley until the skill was second nature.
