START LINE 29.11
After 20 years working in the cycling industry, and a few more than that as a cyclist, I thought I was pretty knowledgeable. That was until
I started looking at kids’ bikes. Definitely something I hadn’t paid much attention to.
But my hand has been forced. My two-year-old is surrounded by cycling at home and naturally wants a bike. I’ve therefore been researching bikes where the words ‘carbon’ and ‘Di2’ are just meaningless sounds. On the recommendation of colleagues I’ve gone for a balance bike — I’ll let you know how it goes and I promise not to be a pushy parent.
You’ll be glad to know she’s already started to embarrass me. If you’re a regular reader you’ll know that I fell off my bike a couple of months back. This translated to, “Daddy. Oww!” in toddler talk. But now every time she sees a bike she says, “Daddy. Bike. Ahhhhhhh [as she mimics falling down]. Oww!”
So now people think I fall off my bike a lot. At first I started to say how she’d got it wrong, that I don’t fall off my bike all the time, it just happened this once until I realised that such a vociferous defence wasn’t helping much.
Maybe I’ll get ‘Daddy. Bike. Oww!’ printed on a T-shirt.
MY HIGHLIGHTS THIS WEEK
06 Brammeier and Pidcock flying high 34 Crash-detecting helmet SOS system 60 Dr Hutch and his love of penny farthings