It’s time for one of my most important fatherly duties… Poppy needs to learn to ride a bike. So.. after seeing a few odd looking pedal-less bikes around last year I turned to good old Google for information. It turns out there’s a new and less painful way to learn, the way of the Balance Bike. Riding a bike requires a number of learned skills to be performed all at once. You have the pedals of course needing strength and co-ordination, there’s the all important brakes, you need to steer the thing, and most importantly there’s balance. The story (unverfied and probably not true!) goes that a German family noticed the ability of their 18-month old to scoot along and balance on a two-wheeled toy scooter and thought, “ooh, that’s clever”. The idea was refined in to an actual bike with no pedals and sold in vast numbers. Children were able to quickly pick up the idea of using a balance bike, pushing themselves along with their feet and eventually scooting along with their legs up for further distances. Once they are comfortable with this then most children were given a normal child’s bike without stabilisers and off they went. Stabilisers are a pain in the bum. They are dangerous when cornering and they add an extra learning curve (and tears) when they are removed. Riding a bike with stabilisers teaches bike steering in the wrong way. When you steer a bike, most of the work is done by leaning one way or the other and correcting your balance. Moving the handlebar just increases the curve of your turn. When you ride with stabilisers you are not balancing and turns are based purely on the direction you point the front wheel. Removing stabilisers from a child’s bike means they need to learn to balance whilst pedalling AND learn to balance while steering at the same time… hence the sight of thousands of dads up and down the country during summer months running behind their children holding on to the back of the bike. Crash. Ouch.
I’ve gone for a reasonably priced balance bike for Poppy. She’s only just been given it so I can’t comment on whether or not it works as I hope, but I’ll be certain to post updates on her progress. My intention is to take her to the park at the weekend and see how she copes with a big open space.
If you’d like to read more about balance bikes then check out this article from The Guardian: The Guardian Kids Cycling Guide
What’s so special about this cat flap? WT@ is RFID I hear you say? Well I shall tell you.. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) can be thought of a replacement for a bar code – a miniature micro-chip that emits a unique code when stimulated by a special reader device.. however where it differs from a bar code is that it is contact-less and doesn’t require line-of-sight to be read. So you can embed a microchip inside something. Many shop security systems use RFID tags to prevent theft, and so does the Oyster card that many London travellers should be familiar with. Tinkerbell has a microchip embedded in the back of her neck between her shoulder blades and this cat flap can detect and read it. If any other cat attempts to get through the cat flap, regardless of whether they also have a microchip, the flap will not open.. Tinkerbell’s identification number is hopefully unique! This so far seems to work a lot better than the last techie cat flap I purchased (a Staywell electromagnetic one) which needed a special dongle to be attached to her collar, and is certainly better than the cat flap that I replaced today (a Staywell passive magnetic flap) which didn’t even let Tinks in with the special collar dongle.
All the effort with that flap is however wasted unless I fitted a second flap allowing her to actually get out of the house and in to the garage where the Sureflap is. So I got a bog standard Staywell one from Argos and spent the afternoon drilling out a hole for it to go in. I’m hoping that all of this effort will reduce our cat litter bill and more importantly reduce the smell that fills the house every morning. She has used both flaps so I know she can get through both ways – now the next step will be to see if she’ll go through without being pushed from behind…..
… a paper fastener, a tube of glue, a pair of scissors or a craft knife and a little adult help. Shyeah, and the rest! Thanks to Sylvia and her gift of the “Usborne Farmyard Tales Cut-out Farm” book, I’ve spent the last 2 and a half hours with my stanley knife and no adult help. The picture at the bottom of this post shows what the finished farm ‘should’ look like. So far I’ve managed to put the base together and have piled a ton of heavy books on top of it to flatten it down overnight.. and I’ve finished building the farmhouse which will take pride of place in the centre, once I have the aforementioned paper fastener. The instructions number (letter?) the steps A to L. I’ve completed steps A and B. It’s going to be a long, long journey this one… one that will end in tears (mine) when I have to hand it over to the tyrannical model farm destroyer that is my daughter. Oh well, it’ll just have to act as practise for when I eventually get round to purchasing a copy of The Unseen University Cut-out Book.
Last year I decided to invest in some Slime ( www.slime.com ) filled inner-tubes for my mountain bike. Slime is a green liquid substance which you put inside tyre tubes to prevent punctures, when you do get a puncture the green ooze comes out and solidifies. The thing is, you don’t really know whether or not it is working because you aren’t sure whether you have just been lucky enough to not have a puncture, or if the slime was doing its job. Now I know and I’m glad I bought them. I fitted some new tyres this morning (Continental Travel Contact) and while changing them I noticed a couple of huge thorns going straight in to the tubes… there was green gunk inside the tyre where it had leaked out, but also a nice little green plug blocking both punctures. Thorns removed and tubes patched just in case, then on with the new tyres. I decided on hybrid style tyres (smooth with chunky edges) this time instead of heavy duty mountain bike ones, and again I’m glad I did.. an average speed increase of 25% and it is so much easier to keep the speed up. These ones are kevlar reinforced and have a one year anti-puncture guarantee. Combined with the Slime tubes I’m hoping they’ll be pretty invinsible.
Yeah yeah I know… it was a good plan and all that buying the Nike+ trainers, iPod nano, and sports kit, but he’ll never use it you all said. Well, ner ner, I used it. A bit anyway. It’s more than one run per month anyway, so that’s got to be good value! I’ve managed three runs this week anyway and two last week so that helped get my average up. In order to make sure I keep up the training I’ve set myself some special Nike+ running goals. The first is to make sure that I keep up the running, so I must achieve 10 runs over the next 4 weeks.. 2 of those I have managed already. My second goal is to manage 3 miles per run in April – once I get this goal I’ll increase it, but my main aim is to build stamina so distance is just a byproduct. I’m running for 25 minutes a time at the moment which I’ll increase to 30 minutes in April.. hopefully that will give me the 3 mile target (The Nike+ site won’t let me put 3.1 miles in which is 5km so I will just have to beat the target!). Anyway, you can track my progess here:
It’s time for one of my most important fatherly duties… Poppy needs to learn to ride a bike. So.. after seeing a few odd looking pedal-less bikes around last year I turned to good old Google for information. It turns out there’s a new and less painful way to learn, the way of the Balance Bike. Riding a bike requires a number of learned skills to be performed all at once. You have the pedals of course needing strength and co-ordination, there’s the all important brakes, you need to steer the thing, and most importantly there’s balance. The story (unverfied and probably not true!) goes that a German family noticed the ability of their 18-month old to scoot along and balance on a two-wheeled toy scooter and thought, “ooh, that’s clever”. The idea was refined in to an actual bike with no pedals and sold in vast numbers. Children were able to quickly pick up the idea of using a balance bike, pushing themselves along with their feet and eventually scooting along with their legs up for further distances. Once they are comfortable with this then most children were given a normal child’s bike without stabilisers and off they went. Stabilisers are a pain in the bum. They are dangerous when cornering and they add an extra learning curve (and tears) when they are removed. Riding a bike with stabilisers teaches bike steering in the wrong way. When you steer a bike, most of the work is done by leaning one way or the other and correcting your balance. Moving the handlebar just increases the curve of your turn. When you ride with stabilisers you are not balancing and turns are based purely on the direction you point the front wheel. Removing stabilisers from a child’s bike means they need to learn to balance whilst pedalling AND learn to balance while steering at the same time… hence the sight of thousands of dads up and down the country during summer months running behind their children holding on to the back of the bike. Crash. Ouch.
… a paper fastener, a tube of glue, a pair of scissors or a craft knife and a little adult help. Shyeah, and the rest! Thanks to Sylvia and her gift of the “Usborne Farmyard Tales Cut-out Farm” book, I’ve spent the last 2 and a half hours with my stanley knife and no adult help. The picture at the bottom of this post shows what the finished farm ‘should’ look like. So far I’ve managed to put the base together and have piled a ton of heavy books on top of it to flatten it down overnight.. and I’ve finished building the farmhouse which will take pride of place in the centre, once I have the aforementioned paper fastener. The instructions number (letter?) the steps A to L. I’ve completed steps A and B. It’s going to be a long, long journey this one… one that will end in tears (mine) when I have to hand it over to the tyrannical model farm destroyer that is my daughter. Oh well, it’ll just have to act as practise for when I eventually get round to purchasing a copy of 