Fasteryoufool

My 5 year (almost 6) old son Gabe was home with me last week. On Thursday, I took him to Happy Hollow, on the Trail-A-Bike behind my '84 Schwinn Sierra, which is a round trip of 21 miles. On Friday we went to visit a friend in another part of San Jose, which was another round trip of 21 miles. He did 42 miles in two days pedaling the whole way. Of course, when I was at speed, he's not actually contributing anything to forward motion, but he doesn't know that, and his pedals went 'round the whole time, both days.

I'm gonna make him a life-long cyclist of him, I can tell. Heck, after dinner on Friday he asked if we could go on another bike ride, but this time wanted to ride his own bike!

Robert Foster

By 15 you will be on the tag bike.

DX-MAN

I can relate; my 7-y-o nephew (he's like my own son) did 25 with me a couple Wednesdays ago, all on his own bike. Granted, we were slow that day, but he steady pedaled the whole way, and took less of a nap than I thought he would after getting home. (We all ride fat tires and dual suspension for everything, too.)

nancyj

There was an article years ago in Bicycling Magazine (Think late 70s) about a 9 year old girl who rode across the united states on her own loaded touring bike with her parants. It could be inspirational! Her bike was a little 24 inch 10 speed.

Roody

A more recent one is a family, including two young boys, who are pedaling from the tip of North America to the tip of South America. They are blogging about it, but I lost the link.

Robert Foster

I don't have that link either but I have been following this family of five. The first link is their bike and the second is the home page.

https://www.pedouins.org/quint.html

https://www.pedouins.org/

They passed through our town and made quite an impression on the cycling community here.

Roody

My son is a trooper too, but he's 35.

My grandson just turned 11 and I want to introduce him to city riding this summer (he lives in the country). When I was his age, I rode at least a couple miles from home without adults, but he seems fearful of the city.

What do you all recommend? Do you ride on streets, sidewalks or bike paths with kids?

wahoonc

That would be our own nancy sv. Here is a link to their blog. A Wayward Journey and their website A Family on Bikes

Aaron

Fasteryoufool

Yeah, my other son is turning 20 next week.

I failed miserably with him and bicycles. He knows how to ride one and everything, but he's just not that into it.

With my little one, if we're going long distances I take him on the good ol' Adam's Trail-A-Bike, and I ride how I normally do, in the bike lane or on the shoulder, taking a lane for left turns and stuff.

If it's a shorter ride (up to about 4 or 5 miles) he rides his own bike, and I ride in the street next to him while he rides on the sidewalk. I'm currently training him to make his own decisions about crossing the street by not telling him, he tells me, and I will only correct him if he's about to make a catastrophic error. If it's an error that's not catastrophic, I point it out to him after the fact and we go on our way. I have yet to stop him from making a big mistake, he's a pretty smart kid. I'm helped in this by the fact that he's a fairly timid kid when it comes to possible physical danger. He doesn't like heights, so he doesn't voluntarily climb high things, and if he's unsure of whether or not he can cross the street safely, he always chooses to wait. It won't be long before I start training him to ride in the bike lane and to be vigilant. Self-reliant kids are confident kids with high self-esteem. I can help him in that by getting him to trust his own decision making.

I have a friend that's the total opposite. I love him like a brother, but I have some serious problems with the way he's raising his son. His son is going to turn 10 in August, and he still makes him ride on the sidewalk and only cross when his dad says. Man, when I was 9 I used to holler that I was going over my cousin's house and slam out the front door at 8:00 AM only to return when I was hungry or when the street lights came on. I realize that the world is a different place now, and I wouldn't let Gabe go out like that, but geez, he's gotta have SOME confidence in his own abilities.

Torrilin

I was only allowed to ride in the street as a kid. At 8, the street in front of my house was off limits, but I could see why. Posted at 35, and most car traffic actually went 55. It was also rather hilly, so drivers did not have an even remotely safe line of sight for those speeds. I was allowed to walk along it at that age, and cross it by myself, but it was pretty tough to cross, even in the middle of the day!

There were other, quieter (and hillier) streets where I was allowed to ride. I was supposed to signal turns and stop at stop signs, and mom and dad would check on me to make sure I was. And I was supposed to ride on the correct side of the street, and only do silly crazy stuff in cul-de-sacs.

By the time I was 13 or 14, I had a geared bike, and was allowed to ride on the busy street to go into town to get to the library, the swimming pool, the pizza place, the bike shop, the newstand, the pharmacy, Kmart... The first time or two, my dad went with me, to make sure he knew I was following the rules of the road. And given that that busy street also featured a 15-18% grade, I had a standing offer of a rescue if I needed/wanted it. It wouldn't necessarily be a fast rescue, but Mom and Dad would eventually come get us. I could also ask for them to come with, and a lot of the time they would.

A lot of times I'd choose to walk instead tho. Walking was slower, but I always had to walk the hill anyway, so it wasn't all that much slower on balance.

I don't think sidewalks are a good idea. They're for walking on. Most residential areas have some quiet streets, and kids need to learn and practice the rules of the road. A kid who is 4 might not be able to be consistent on the rules of the road yet, but that means IMO that they don't get to take their bike out alone. Biking alone is a "big kid" privilege, and if I'd been caught riding recklessly, my bike privileges would have been taken away. Bike paths around here can be pretty busy, so I don't think a kid should ride them alone until they're good at riding in heavy traffic. Yes, it's all low speed, but there can be stretches at rush hour where some local bike paths are multiblock long parades of bikes and pedestrians and rollerbladers and skateboards. Both ways.

Roody

Thanks Torrilin.

You raise some interesting points, especially that it takes more skill to ride on a bike path than to ride in the streets.

B. Carfree

I remember riding from the suburbs into Oakland as a nine-year old many times. No one gave a thought to a couple of little white kids hanging out in front of Huey Newton's house on their ten-speeds: safest place in the world. Of course, back then the drivers tended to not be so hostile to everyone. We either never had a close call or we were too dense to realize we had had one.

Roody

There are, I believe, more than twice as many cars on the roads as when I was a kid in the 1960s. That fact alone probably accounts for a lot of the danger and hostility we see on the "mean streets."

B. Carfree

I don't think it is just the increase in cars and car-miles, though that is clearly a factor. On our residential streets in the '60s drivers would generally go well below the posted 25 mph speed limit because they knew there were kids around who would run into the street without warning. Also, no cell phones, iPods or texting was going on and most families I knew had only one full-time worker in the household, so people did not feel so rushed. Maybe I was just too dense to notice it, but our neighborhoods just seemed to be more civilized "back in the day". I must really be getting old; I don't like the music the kids listen to either.