Every summer since we grew our small person, we have biked up to Skogan Pass from Canmore. First time was when he was one. And now he is four. So we have done it *counts* FOUR times! (I am a genius)
It’s about a 45km round trip, with a fair bit of climbing. This was the first time he’s come close to participating in moving himself along though – which is good, as he’s starting to get heavy!
On the whole, he’s been spending most of his time on the trail-a-bike dangling with his feet in the air, rather than on the pedals. We came up with a solution for this later in the ride…
With the un-scenic and slightly un-official portion of the ride out of the way, we picked our way around the creek, and started riding uphill.
Enthusiasm and energy levels were a little low today. So thankfully the weather was nice, and there was a lot of food to distract everyone from the fact they were riding up an enormous hill.
About halfway up, the switch was made, and Lincoln started towing the wasp boy (he looks a lot like a wasp, with his legs all dangling down like that.
At the summit we ate some more, then had a brief game of child tossing (instigated by the child, who was most upset when we wouldn’t keep doing it). And then a roll all the way back down the hill.
We were part way down the hill when we came up with this brilliant duct-tape themed idea. Because what else do you use to solve the problem of feet that won’t stay on pedals?
After some initial unhappiness with the idea, the boy was fine with it, and he actually (finally!) started pedalling the bike. So, success! (The scrinchy face above is the result of eating a nutbar at a snack stop, not despair over having trapped feet.)
Hopefully next summer we’ll be making the transition to doing all of our bike trips with the trail-a-bike… or _a_ trail-a-bike at any rate, I’m not really sold on the one we have.