After reading this How to Teach Your Kid to Ride a Bike tutorial, we broke out the new princess pedal bike for the first time. I thought we’d be golden practicing on our block, given Step 1: Point the child up a gentle incline, but we didn’t make a lot of progress today. Back inside, I checked the steepness of our hill for the first time with the veloroutes.org hill grade calculator. Perhaps I shouldn’t have considered our 7.1% grade gentle. So even though the solo pedaling was a bust, it was cool that the little balance biker got to zoom ahead of his big brother for a change. I’ll rest my back a bit (Step 2: Hold the back of the saddle is hard work!) and find a gentler slope. The bike looks a bit on the small side so we’ll have to get over to Bike Works soon.
We checked out the fall colors today, too. Perhaps not the most glamorous locale, but the parking lot of Gas Works Park is full of red trees.
We collected a couple buckets of leaves and then admired the latest colors recently added to the play barn.
Yesterday’s miles: 3.3 miles
Today’s miles: 8.8 miles
October cumulative: 191.1 miles
Days missed: 3
Family Ride 
How fun! I love seeing how excited he is on his new bike!
I guess our hill won’t work for Roozle, when the time comes. Thanks to your link I just found out that our hill to get home is a 10% grade! No wonder I have to walk it so much!
Wow 10%! The block I have to walk half of (right before my 7% grade) is only 5%…but after 3 other blocks of hills of various grades. I hope that knowing the numbers will toughen me up.
I have 10% grade the shorter way or 6.8% the longer way (adding almost a mile to the ride and two stop lights). No cargo bike for us unless it comes with a motor! :)
Learning to pedal is so much fun! Yes, I think 7% is a bit too steep…and sidewalks are bumpy and cracked and tricky in general. :)
What about the grassy area in Woodland Park just below the zoo? You could do laps up and down the hill. Tim took our daughter to Magnuson and found a gentle slope on the grass. Took a couple of hours and the falls on grass weren’t so bad.
Grass–great idea! I’m going to give that a try soon.