My son learned to ride a bike last week.  He is 13.  Yahoo.  I bought him a bike at Christmas, again, it’s the fourth one we have bought him.   Normally he flips it over and spins the wheels turning them into spinning “looms” where he can stick random objects in and watch them be shot off like little kids on a merry-go-round.

Step number two is he tries to dismantle it.  By March we normally have what looks like a bike graveyard where bikes come to die.

This time he rode it several times with training wheels and seemed to be getting the hang of it.  He hunches over like he is really concentrating, focusing all his energies on his bike.  When riding one of the training wheels feel off and he keep going making me want to yell , “ride Forest ride !” at the top of my lungs.

oh, that my son would have a life as full as Gump's

It was a magical moment just like the Gump movie where the shackles of a previous impairment fall off and he transcended the moment vaulting himself to the next level of life…just like Forest Gump did.  (But with less running and more hunching).

We went for a 20 minute run/bike ride today.  I think this is the first father/son sporting activity we have ever done.  We have tried many others, unsuccessfully.  It is not truly a game a catch if one of the players refused to catch the ball and instead lets it hit in the face.  Same goes for basketball and football.

This really does feel like a milestone.  A delayed one, but a milestone non-the less.

Here is to growing as people, one painstakingly slow step at a time.

Godspeed to you, which my brother says is usually 3 mph.