Pig on a Bike

Piggy has recently become tall enough to ride his pedal-less bike and we’re allowing him out on it now.  This weekend saw me running up and down our street along side him trying to make sure that he wasn’t going too fast, crashing into stuff or falling over the very high drop at the end of our street, and in the main I was successful.

We don’t allow him to ride the bike without a helmet, which I think is quite common place now isn’t it?  If you wore a helmet when I was a lad you would be ridiculed immensely.  It was a sign of weakness and ridiculousness; you might as well go the whole hog and wear lipstick, eye-liner and ladies panties with your stupid helmet.

I learnt to ride a 2 wheel bike (without stabilisers) when I was 6.  The first time I took off unassisted I quickly realised that speed was the key, the faster I went the easier it seemed to balance.  I was concentrating so hard on balancing that I forgot how to both turn the bike and apply the brakes, and all the time I was accelerating faster and faster towards the pavilion wall on Moor Park, Preston.  I hit the wall at about 20mph.  The bike flew up rear wheel first and my face rammed into and then scraped down the wall.  I don’t think a helmet would have helped anyway.