The Desert Chronicles: To Keep Up

For Phoebe's second birthday we moved to the desert, and because that sucks as a birthday present, we bought her a bike.

But her bike has no pedals you may notice. What gives?

Paige and Josh have fancy bikes called Hotrocks by the bike brand Specialized. They are the only aluminum frame bikes for kids and they are light, bright, and tough. And expensive. But these fancy bikes are well worth the money and maintain their value very well.

Josh has the smallest one they make with 16" wheels. Phoebe would need a 12" bike and the only Hotrock that is 12" is called a Hotwalk. No pedals.

What the kids do is push the bike around with their feet on the ground and as they learn the bike balance they can go super fast and tuck up their feet. (I've seen it in person. It really does work.)

When they are big enough for a 16" bike, around 3 in our family, they have already mastered the balance issue and all they have to learn is to put pedaling and the balance together. It makes for fast and easy two-wheel learning.

(Although Josh was riding without training wheels at 3 and a half, having learned the "hard", old-fashioned way.)

There goes my baby, riding her pedal-less bike from Wal-Mart.

Did I mention we found a cheap, not just inexpensive but cheap version of the Hotwalk at Wal-mart? Yup. $30, baby. Even if it breaks five times we're still coming out cheaper than having bought a Hotwalk. And if there's one thing I am is cheap. I mean frugal.

(Note: Hotwalks and Hotrocks really do hold their value so if we had bought the $150 Hotwalk we could have sold it for $100 after a few months or years. They don't break so why by new? We bought the kids Hotrocks new because we were planning on handing them down to their sibs.)

There goes my baby riding off into the sunset. What a beautiful night. Doves cooing, planes zooming overhead, and Phoebe crying, "Whoa!!" every six seconds.