Of course, one trailer soon led to two and before you knew it, my husband was out trying to teach my older two children to ride on their own.
I say my husband was out teaching them because my state of panic watching them ride around the neighborhood or even in a parking lot on a Sunday afternoon was too much to handle. One child would race ahead, while the other would dawdle behind. I found myself often stuck in the middle trying to keep an eye on both.
Then, we had a third child, and as soon as she was holding her head up on her own enough to sustain a helmet, she was in the bike trailer as the older two were taking off with expert riding skills.
So, this leads us to today...
My husband is a self-employed musician which means he has rarely ever had a weekend off since I've known him. Well, we are still not quite sure how it happened, but he has now had two weekends off in a row. So, last weekend we headed out to a state trail called the K-T Trail.
It is called that because it is an abandoned railroad path that the state has laid down limestone gravel on to turn into a bike path. The trains that used to frequent the rails that once sat on what is now a bike path, ran from Kansas to Texas, hence the name "K-T".
Last weekend, we realized that my older daughter had grown so tall that her bike was now resembling a circus clown bike as she tried to ride it. Her knees were up in her chest, and her back side hurt when we got home. So, my husband thought he'd try to raise her bike seat. There was tape wrapped around the bar that held her seat, so he went to work on a bike she hasn't ridden in awhile. Success! The seat raised on the first try, so he had her take it around to our back yard.
The child started pedaling, and then started going so fast that the bike was out of control. Her feet flew off of the pedals, where she could have stopped the bike with the back pedal brakes, and she tried to stop with her front hand brakes, but they failed her. She went plummeting at rocket speed down the hill till she came to an abrupt stop in our chainlink fence.
We believe that angels were watching over her as her daddy watched in horror not able to get there fast enough. We thought we'd be in an ambulance with serious injuries as I heard her scream and looked out my kitchen window to see her limp in my husband's arms.
We're still not sure how she escaped serious injury, but came out of the ordeal with the top bar of the fence nearly missing her jawline and barely scraping her neck. Besides that, she only really has a couple small bruises.
My husband was quite shaken thinking about what could have happened - She could have been paralyzed, broken her neck or even died - That fast! But, she was o.k. Her angels and the Holy Spirit working overtime. We are still very grateful!
This leads us to this morning...
We had planned to ride on the K-T once more. This particular daughter is our one child who gets the most excited about riding bikes than any of them. We weren't sure how she would be after this horrific frightening bike wreck.
To our amazement, but really no surprise as we truly know our daughter - She is the one that was up before the other two kids and insisting that we go on the trail once more.
Nothing like getting right back in the saddle.
This time, we went back to her too-little bike, and my husband managed to successfully raise the seat. And, she rode like a champ!
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