ROAD RIDERS

Today I finally had a bike ride with my son on the street.  It took him a long time to finally master the bicycle and then only on a playground.  The heat wave arrived shortly afterward and that was good enough of an excuse not to go biking, even in the evening.  After much pleading and threatening, he recently finally resumed biking, moved up a notch to biking on the sidewalk on a large block that has few pedestrians.  I would prefer he rides on the road, but he was so unsteady and the typical driver in NYC are rude and uncaring, I didn't want to take the chance.  The first time he went around the block, I ran along with him.  He was slow and I could handle it, but it was still exhausting, so the second time I took out another bike and rode, on the road, with him.  He had some issues with making turns in the beginning but by the end of the second session, he was good enough.  Today, we took to the road.

It was not much of a ride, basically around a small park and a housing project, all right turns.  With a nephew of mine on the wife side, the three of us formed a bike train for safety in number.  I led, my son was in the middle, nephew covered the rear, since he's better than my son.  We first went around Scarangella Park, with one side bordered by the elevated track of the D train, the on-street columns creating somewhat of a protected bike lane.  Twice of that and we moved on to the housing project between Avenue V and Avenue W, as well as the block between Avenue W and Avenue X.  Most of the roads are wide and two-way.  A few times there was some vehicle double-parking and we had enough space to go around it.  Two loops of the big blocks and I considered that enough for the kids.  We accompanied nephew home then son and I actually pedaled home. 

I think the kids enjoyed the little outing.  There was little traffic but once some car slowly followed our bike train without honking, rare driver if I say so myself.  I made sure the children knew about "dooring", or being hit by a car door as a careless driver exits a parked car.  I used hand signal to let the back of the train know where to turn or stop.  We already agreed that before the end of summer we should ride all the way to Caesar's Bay to have a car-free trip along the waterfront to Owl's Head Pier.