Riding Through the Woods
One of my earliest memories is my dad strapping blocks of wood onto the pedals of a tricycle so that my feet could reach and me pedaling up and down the sidewalk in front of our house. Flash forward. My 3-year-old grandson Jack on his Strider balance bike pushing his way through the woods—5 miles! When I first got him the balance bike in the spring he was flush with excitement, but then the glow wore off. I realized he was tired of just going on our street; he needed to branch out. We rode around the “block”—he on his bike and me on mine. Next we rode to Playmakers, where I work, then through Indian Hills the residential track next to ours along the Red Cedar River. Then . . . I loaded his bike onto the trailer and we rode across busy Grand River Road and at a trailhead through the woods I’d stop and get Jack out and his bike and we’d ride. The path was recently paved as an extension of the Lansing River Trail. The trail winds up and down some sloughs and drainage ponds and t