Family Snippets - 1. The Bike

I think my family hates me.

Colin, my eldest boy, received a new bike for his fifth birthday. Up until then, he had been riding a tiny little bike with training wheels. This new bike was twice the size – the salesman said he’d be able to grow into it. It also didn’t have training wheels, as my wife and I felt that it was time for him to learn to ride without them. That also allowed us to hand the smaller bike down to Andrew, Colin’s three-year-old younger brother.

Initially, it was moderately successful. The boys, with the candour that is so prevalent at that age, named the new bike, “The Falling Down Bike,” due to the number of crashes that Colin managed to achieve.

It was after one particularly bad fall that the new bike was relegated to sitting on the veranda. Colin wasn’t hurt seriously, but he had taken a very nasty fright. Whenever he was asked after that, he opted to ride his scooter instead.

All of this changed after his sixth birthday. Now that he was a school kid, outside influences were changing him. He decided he wanted a motorbike.

After looking at the prices for a motorbike, armour plating for the rider, a helmet that would do an astronaut proud, and leathers in an appropriate fashion style, and then staring at a bank balance that any third-world country deeply in debt would be happy to see, but anyone with a mortgage would cringe at, defensive actions were called for:

Colin was informed that he couldn’t have a motorbike until he learnt to ride his push-bike.

This resulted in sudden change of heart. The bike that had been masquerading as a garden ornament for twelve months was retrieved. In one solid two-week period of riding every day, often more than once, Colin learnt to ride his bike. In honour of this the boys renamed the bike. It was now “The Easy-Peasy Bike.”

Dreading the repeated request for a motorbike, I prepared additional requirements he’d have to meet. We live at the end of a long driveway, most of which is uphill. I was ready to tell him that he’d have to be able to ride up that hill before he could have a motorbike. As his current bike didn’t have gears, I was confident that this would give me at least a year’s grace.

I was surprised when, instead of the anticipated request, Colin remarked that he wanted to go riding along the road with his daddy. I felt this was so cute, I passed it on to his mum, my wife, Janine.

This was a major mistake.

She decided that this was an excellent idea. She’d been wondering what to get me for my birthday, and now that problem was solved: she’d get me a bike.

Now, she knows what my bike riding skills are like. I never learnt to ride when I was young. I can sit on a bike and do a credible job, but she was there the last time we went riding. It was up at Falls Creek during one summer before we had children. We had hired bikes for the day. Everything had gone well until she decided to ride along the narrow trail next to an aqueduct – a stream of water that ran down to the Rocky Valley dam. Being a skilled rider, she was pedalling slowly, taking in the scenery.

Being an unskilled rider, I wasn’t used to riding that slowly. The bike wandered from side to side of the narrow track until I lost control and ended up in the water. Janine thought this was hilarious. In the ten years since, I haven’t been on a bike.

This was my first inkling that she might not like me.

After all, if she really loved me, she wouldn’t put me through the torture of learning to ride a bike. Especially in front of my six-year-old son, who is already a better rider than me.

Paying no attention to my pained expression, she rang her parents to check if they’d bought me a present yet, and if they hadn’t, to suggest that they give her some money towards the bike instead.

That’s when I learnt that the in-laws may not like me, either.

My father-in-law had an old mountain bike that was still in good condition. My brother-in-law had bought it at a sale several years previously, but it hadn’t had a lot of use. They offered to give me that bike for my birthday present.

So, off to the in-laws it was, to see this instrument of torture that I might be given as a present.

The bike was in quite good condition. Colin and Andrew were very excited, and looked forward to seeing it in action. Trying to avoid the inevitable, I pointed out that my only riding helmet, dating back to the time when I was learning to ride a horse, was back at home, and it wasn’t wearable anyway. It has been several years since I last rode, and in the meantime some enterprising bird had decided to built a nest inside it. It had been just the right size. She had even laid a number of eggs, last time we checked.

My plans for delay were thwarted, however, when the in-laws produced a perfectly good, if slightly old, riding helmet. So, armed with a new bike and helmet, we headed off home.

This is where I learnt how cruel Janine could be. With Colin ready to ride rings around me, and Andrew gleefully riding around on his miniature bike with training wheels, Janine got out the video camera to capture for posterity my first bike ride in more than a decade – knowing full well that the last bike ride I’d taken had ended up with me soaking wet.

I decided that this was really a nefarious plan to knock me off. By videoing me, she had the evidence that would indicate it was only an accident, and if I didn’t crash, the heart-attack from over-exertion would finish me.

That was my other concern, and one that I knew I couldn’t raise. I had been complaining for months about being overweight and unfit, and that I needed to start doing some regular exercise again. Bike riding was not one of the things I’d been thinking of. If I tried to say anything, I knew Janine would just bat her eyelids at me and comment that not only was this good exercise for me, but it was also a good father/son bonding thing.

I managed to get through the next thirty minutes without losing too much pride. Janine chuckled several times as I found myself in the middle of a bush, or stopping to inspect a tree trunk at close range, but I didn’t really crash – at least by my definition.

Being passed by a six-year-old, pedalling flat out, augers well for the Australian Olympic cycling team in the future, but it does nothing to help the self-esteem of an overweight forty-one-year-old. There were things called gears on my bike that should have allowed me to correct that, but each time I tried to use them, I lost concentration on what I was doing and crashed. That wasn’t helping, either. Despite all the drama, I was smiling when I finished.

That’s when I learnt my sons may not like me. Either that or they have developed a cruel streak.

“Daddy, let’s go to the concrete!”

Now, “the concrete” is their name for the car park of the local high school. That is where we used to take Colin when he was learning to ride “The Falling Down Bike”. It is also the scene of the crash that caused an almost twelve-month break in that bike being ridden.

Janine, who I was beginning to suspect truly did want to knock me off, though this was a wonderful idea. So, after a short break, during which I tried to relearn how to breath and walk again, we drove down to the school.

Calmly announcing that she thought we should only stay for an hour, Janine settled back into the car to read a magazine. I was flabbergasted. An entire hour of riding? It would be either a fatal crash, or a heart-attack that finished me off, that was sure. At least my life insurance was paid up.

Colin proceeded to ride rings around me, literally.

Gritting my teeth, I made it through that hour. The “fun” was brought to a sudden stop when Colin decided that Daddy was going too slow and crashed into me. At least, that’s what I thought he was doing. There was the faint suspicion that Janine had bribed him to hit me so she could claim the insurance. Luckily for me, Colin hadn’t worked out that not only am I twice his height, I’m also more than four times heavier than him.

So, I carried one tearful boy back to the car. Andrew, the abnormal four-year-old that he is, immediately became upset. Not only was I not carrying him, but I’d left our bikes behind. This was distressing him. I had to take a minute to explain that I’d be back to get the bikes, before I was allowed to carry Colin the rest of the way back to his mum.

I thought that was the end of the bike incident, but I hadn’t allowed for the rebound ability of your typical six-year-old. As soon as we were back home, Colin was pestering me to go riding with him again.

Using the not-unreasonable excuse that I had to start cooking dinner, I managed to beg my way out of inflicting any more injuries on myself. My bum was already numb from the instrument of cruelty known as a bike seat.

The next morning, as I clambered stiffly out of bed, I remember thinking that a motorbike isn’t that unreasonable a piece of equipment – it doesn’t need pedalling. We don’t really need to eat for the next couple of months….