Abel (5.5) has been an enthusiastic balance bike rider since he was 2, but was reluctant to try a pedal bike. Being a proud #firsttimemom, I was convinced he would learn how to ride a pedal bike at three, and bought him a ridiculously cute and even more ridiculously expensive tiny 12″ pedal bike a couple years ago.
I have used the website Two Wheeling Tots to make all of our kid bike decisions. They do a great job of explaining the pros and cons of different bikes, bike and rider geometry, and common barriers to learning how to ride a bike. If you think this blog post is lengthy and nerdy, spend a couple hours wandering around that site!
Let me take a minute here to go on a slight tangent. John is a big fan of the genre some people call “narrative driven pop-psychology”. This includes books like Outliers, Freakonomics, Thinking Fast and Slow, and The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. The Paradox of Choice discusses the concept of decision Maximizers vs decision Satisficers (yes, that’s a word). There have been many follow up articles and Ted Talks on this topic. Supposedly Satisficers are happier than Maximizers – I think they just don’t know what they are missing out on. 😉
John quickly pegged me as a Maximizer. I research certain purchases, like kid bikes. A lot. I agonize over decisions. I place orders and then cancel them. I return things in search of a different and better product. I have theories for why this is (growing up low income, not having many choices). Oddly, I agonize more over decisions regarding my children than myself. Anyway, it’s an interesting concept and frequent point of discussion in our relationship.
A few weeks ago Abel suddenly learned how to ride his pedal bike, which was now way too small for him, to the point of being dangerous! It’s hard to look UP hunched over like that. This was the second time he rode it! Of course it took dad offering to help him for him to do it, not mom. Apologies for the huge video, still learning here.
So back to Two Wheeling Tots I went, in search of the next bike size up. I spent probably six hours over the course of a week reading about 16″ bikes. Hey, some people watch Netflix at night, I research stuff on the internet.
One feature I was looking for in a 16″ bike was a “free wheel” design with dual hand brakes, and lack of coaster/foot brake. Abel’s balance bike (Islabikes Rothan) featured a single rear hand brake, and his 12″ pedal bike (Cleary Gecko) was a free wheel with dual hand brakes.
According to Two Wheeling Tots:
“Coaster brakes (back-pedal brakes) are the standard on most 12″ to 16″ bikes as they are cheaper and essentially maintenance free, but they can be a headache for kids learning how to pedal. Kids naturally pedal backward on a bike when they start to lose their balance, or when riding uphill. On a freewheel bike (a bike without a coaster), backpedaling helps kids regain their balance and allows them to keep riding.
On a bike with a coaster brake, backpedaling causes unexpected stops, leading to falls and also delaying a child from mastering pedaling. For experienced riders, coaster brakes can cause them to lose all their momentum when riding uphill. As a result, we recommend freewheel bikes for beginning and experienced riders, BUT they can be expensive and hard to come by. In fact, coaster brakes are required by the CPSC on most 12″ and 14″ kids’ bikes, but not on 16″ and up.” Read more here.
To sum up pages and pages of reviews, their top recommendation was the Woom 3 16″ Pedal Bike. Friends of ours have this bike and it gets amazing reviews. We decided to go with another highly recommended bike, The Priority Start 2.0 F/W.
Priority Bicycles is a small Brooklyn start up company. They launched with a Kickstarter Campaign in 2014, promising virtually maintenance free commuter bikes. The Start 2.0 shares many features of their adult bikes, including puncture proof tires and a grease and rust free belt drive instead of a chain. I had never seen this feature in person before, it is pretty amazing! Even our major bike nerd neighbors were impressed.
This bike features an upright riding position which helps keep kids heads up and eyes on the road, but they also offer an optional low rise handlebar for more aggressive riders.
Abel’s bike arrived yesterday. I texted John the list of tools needed, which seemed daunting at first. Our neighbor who is quite handy with bikes said he would help if needed. In the end, John had all the tools needed and quickly put it together in about 30 minutes. I intended to get photos of that process but was busy wrangling curious children and making them dinner that would inevitably not get eaten.
Now, being *able* to ride a pedal bike and *wanting* to has been a bit of a battle.
Abel outgrew his balance bike years ago, but prefers the ease of it or his scooter over the effort required to get going on his pedal bike. I hid his balance bike in the basement loaned his balance bike to a friend a few days ago. This picture is from over a year ago and you can see it was already outgrown at that point!
He did take his new bike for a quick spin last night but we had lots of neighbor kids over and I didn’t get any pics. I’ll update with some action shots soon. We are also working on safety – not quite ready for bike trail riding and calling “bike on!” to indicate entering the trail yet.
For a full review of the Priority Start 2.0 read here.
Take Exit 5B 