On Sat Jan 22 14:59:37 PST 2011, LizzieK said:
One of my favorite things to do as a child was to ride my bicycle. I was seven when I received a very old full size girls bike that was a hand me down from an aunt. I was small for my age, so the large full size bike was a lot for me to handle. I could only stand on the pedals and coast or pedal. If I hopped up onto the seat I could not reach the pedals so I had no brakes. In those days (1954) all of the kids bikes had pedal brakes and no brakes on the handlebars.
In order to learn how to ride the bike I would start at the top of a small hill in our yard and put one foot on a pedal and push off down the hill and try to get the other foot on the other pedal. At the same time I was trying to balance this big bike and steer it. The biggest problem was that at the bottom of the small hill was a pear tree that I had to navigate around. Needless to say, I smacked into that pear tree more than once until I mastered the balancing act.
