The wheels on the trend go round and round

[mmcirvin]

There seems to be fad for introducing children to bicycle riding not with training wheels, but with a pedalless version called a run bike or balance bike. What amuses me about this is that the things basically seem to be identical to the early-19th-century draisine or dandy horse.

Oh, and when I Googled for "run bike" I got this page (warning: embedded movie with sound), which hawks a sort of low-impact-jogger's dandy horse called a RunBike that was actually invented by a guy named Dandy.

Comments

[swinehund.livejournal.com]

I don't know how old the fad is, but two years ago in Germany, all the toddlers seemed to have them. I don't think we saw any training wheels.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

It sounds like kind of a cool idea. I have a feeling that when I was a little kid I would have loved one of those things.

I used training wheels and I remember getting them jacked up higher and higher to the point that they were rarely touching the ground, but being simultaneously desirous and petrified of actually taking the big leap--other kids had long since done so since their parents forced them to, but my parents didn't believe in that, so I was the last one in my cohort.

Eventually my parents saw what an emotional wreck it was making me and cajoled me into trying to ride without them just once. I discovered to my delight that I already knew how to ride a bicycle--my one spill on that first ride came when I discovered that you can't make a 180 degree turn on a dime.