Learning to ride a bike

The apartment I have here in Berkeley sits midway up the Berkeley hills, and I have a view that at least equals, if not surpasses, the one I had in Iceland. The funny thing is I had never lived anywhere else in my life that had any sort of view, and now it seems to me an absolute requirement in an abode.

There is however one major problem with this apartment: it is an impossible place for Palmer to learn to ride his bike. The street goes downhill at probably a 30 degree grade, and well, I have only seen the craziest teenage boys attempting to go down it (on a skateboard no less!). So while my little guy is still in training wheels, it is out of the question.

I learned to ride a bike in my neighborhood in California, which was a little hilly. But the main problem with it was how much traffic was always coming up and down the street. To this day, I still get a little freaked out trying to bike ride anywhere where I have to "share the road" with cars.

But I know plenty of people here in Berkeley who have gotten over both of these challenges. They happily hop on their bikes and head over the narrow, windy, steep streets of the Berkeley hills, dodging past parked cars and moving cars. I think, however, they reserve this kind of risky behavior for the weekends, when they have the energy for a real challenge. Maybe someday I, or Palmer, will have weekends like that, but at the moment, even the thought of it makes me exhausted.

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