Full Out, No Brakes

Bryan has been taking the girls on bike rides a lot lately.  Ellie sticks to riding around the neighborhood with him, while Madeline has recently starting riding a ten mile bike trail with him.  For the most part they're all enjoying their biking expeditions.

We've had a couple incidents with Ellie who isn't very interested in utilizing the brakes on her bike.  She has a coaster brake and a hand one, so it's not an issue of her not knowing how to stop the bike.  A few weeks ago she managed to plow into the pole for our street sign.  She hit it so hard that it was knocked loose and was visibly crooked.  Later that week two city maintenance workers came out and fixed the sign.  Tonight she somehow managed to run into someone's mailbox.  Bryan came home and asked me to write a note to the people who own it and ask them to please assess whether or not it is damaged.  I walked over to their house with Bryan hoping that the mailbox wouldn't look too bad.  Instead I find that it's leaning and is one of those nice heavy duty metal ones that appear to be screwed down into a slab of concrete.  I think she may have knocked another concrete block loose.

Bryan and I are amazed that Ellie has managed to plow into these things and come away with little more than a couple small cuts.  We're still not sure how she's managed to hit either of these things or why she won't use the brakes.  Just last week she nearly plowed into a woman who was walking on the sidewalk.

She's a bit scary when it comes to riding a bike, but it's adding to our list of funny stories we'll get to tell for years to come.  It's not everyday you get to tape a note to someone's front door telling them that your child crashed into their mailbox.