Madeleine on the left and Emily on the right.And on to the post...
For Emily and Madeleine's upcoming birthday they wanted "Big Girl Bikes" and so the journey began. Apparently, this is not something that is particularly easy to present as a surprise, because you should have the bike "fit" to the child. Okay. Couple that with the fact I'm as likely to know what the girls would choose, if given options, as I am to wake-up blond and anorexic tomorrow morning, and we decided to let Madeleine and Emily pick out their bikes.
Monday 2/14 - I spend a good part of the morning on the internet researching what to look for in a bike and on the phone calling different stores to see what they have in stock for our size and what sort of price range we are looking at. We go to a general sporting good store where we are shown our options. (Sadly, we are too tall for the bikes covered in Disney princesses - shucks!).
Emily sort of like a "pinky" bike and Madeleine likes the "purple" bike that is three racks up. The salesman says the bikes are actually the same color, it is just how the light hits the bike that is suspended over our heads. Off the record, I'm with Madeleine on this, they were different colors. "Can you put training wheels on this bike?" I ask. "Yes, no problem" he says. Then we look at helmets, etc. etc. etc. An hour later I walk out of the store with two children literally bouncing up and down.
Off to another store (mistake one), just to see. This is a specialty store and carries bikes that may cost more than the girls' first cars. Thankfully, we can swing the price of the children's bikes and we are buying bikes that will take some growing into...we need them to last. Emily falls in love with a bike at this store. Great. So, one child wants a bike at one store and the other wants one at a store across town. Not a crisis, but fun.
Go home and tell the girls to sleep on it and think about what they had seen. They had been told in advance this was a "research trip" and when you make large purchases you research them first.
Tuesday 2/15 - Emily and Madeleine wake-up and Emily announces she has changed her mind and wants the "pinky" bike at the first store. Hot dog, one stop! Emily confirms she is "sure". Okay. Madeleine and Emily pick out streamers, bells and baskets online and off to preschool they go.
I get home from dropping them off and think it would be a fun surprise to go pick-up the bikes after school instead of waiting until Friday as we had told them we would. I call the sporting goods store with the intent of giving them my credit card number, asking them to get the training wheels on and telling them we'd be in about 1 to pick them up. It is a different salesman in the bike department. He informs me "We can't put training wheels on that bike because of the derailer." I explained that yesterday we were told it was "no problem" to put training wheels on that bike and I had stood there with two small children for an hour looking at bikes. I was informed yesterday's clerk was wrong. This is when I tell the clerk I'll be coming in with the girls so the staff can tell them the bikes won't work, because I simply can not handle the tears today. He doesn't seemed impressed.
Back to the internet and phone. We are out of options in Williamsburg and there is no way I'm driving to Newport News. Stumble upon Back Alley Bikes in Yorktown. I call. D.J. answers. When I told him what had happened at the other store, he said "Oh, no that's awful." I like this guy. He understands bike trauma and preschoolers! He also confirms training wheels will not work on the model of bike the girls chose. I ask what he has in stock in the "girly/foo foo/training wheels category" in our size. He responds, "Well, I have a purple one on sale." D. J., do tell me more!! "The other one I have is light pink." Great! Don't sell them, we will be there this afternoon.
D.J. kindly gives me the model and manufacturer of both bikes and with the help of Google images I have photos up and ready to show the girls when I break the news that the bikes they had selected won't work. We grudgingly look at the pictures and decide it might be worth the drive to Yorktown. So, off we go.
Back Alley Bikes is a small, family-owned store that could not have been kinder or more helpful if they tried. D.J. was an absolute delight and the girls fell in love with their bikes when we walked in the door. The owner let the girls ride around the store on children's bikes while D.J. installed the training wheels.
Then the owner did something that makes me forever grateful. She showed the girls a racing bike and explained that is the kind of bike her husband rides, "...and he goes really fast, as fast as cars. One day his bike slipped and he flew over the handle bars and landed on his head and shoulder and slid on the street. He broke ribs and his collar bone, but look at this!" and that is when she showed the girls the helmet her husband had been wearing. Nice! Mom Award to this lady! She showed them how scuffed it was and how it had cracked and the foam was damaged and then explained that all of that damage would have happened to his skull and brain if he hadn't had on his helmet. She was great!
D.J. finished the second set of training wheels and as Madeleine pushed her bike out of the work area, she looked up, with her little chest thrust out and grinning ear to ear "Tricycles are for babies!"
Madeleine!
Emily
Off on our adventures with our, now, appropriately accessorized bikes....worthy of another post, but I'll spare you.
