For Your Friday Feelies....
June 2, 2017 11:08 AM   Subscribe

Introducing the Strider Cup! The kids kick their bikes up to speeds that would make most adults uncomfortable, and carve through the course’s maze of sharp corners with tenacity and grace.

Balance bikes go back to the early 1800s, when the first bicycles, known as walking machines, featured wheels and seats but no pedals or brakes.

UK Cup Manchester

2012 Highlights

2016 World Championship - SF
posted by shockingbluamp (7 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'd seen some pretty adept kids on these, especially in Europe, but this is next-level.

Some of this definitely starts to dip into scary-competitive by the time you get to the 2016 Champs though.
posted by JauntyFedora at 11:52 AM on June 2, 2017


man where was this when my kids were little? my son would have crushed it.
posted by GuyZero at 11:52 AM on June 2, 2017


My kid crushes it on these things. We're having a hard time convincing him that it's time to start using his pedal bike, because he's so good with the balance bike, like why bother? We take him to a bike park every now and then and my main leverage is that it'll be easier for him to make it all the way to the top of the ramps if he has pedals. He's skeptical.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:42 PM on June 2, 2017 [1 favorite]


My son rocked his Strider so hard he cracked the stem tube. When we called Strider they didn't believe us (in a shocked way, not that we where trying to scam them) and asked us to send a picture, which we did. We got a new bike which now, sadly, has lost out in the coolness factor to a kid's sized battery powered used John Deere Gator.
posted by lstanley at 1:27 PM on June 2, 2017


We did Kiddie 'Cross with our daughter. Will have to see how she might do this summer after some more riding. Her first race was when she was about 3 on a Strider bike. She wore her Wonder Woman costume and I'm not sure she did the whole course but she did get a popsicle so, yayyy! That indoor track looks amazing.
posted by amanda at 1:27 PM on June 2, 2017


Amanda! We have an indoor track here in town. You should hit that up!

One of the highlights of parenting was taking my kid to the Lumberyard when he was 3 and 4. Every Monday or Friday they'd have some of the tracks blocked off for smaller kids. So we'd ride up with him on the cargo bike, his bike packed in my saddle bag, and he would just tear it up for HOURS. He would always point at the kids doing tricks on the larger, more complicated courses and would keep saying "I wanna do dat game next time..." in a hushed tone, rarely seen in a (this particular) small child. One time on some holiday we went there, and no one else was around for some reason, so they let me take the cargo bike for a spin on the kiddie track. The kid thought that was hilarious. Hysterical laughter for hours afterwards.

We haven't been back in a while, ever since he's started using a pedal bike and my work schedule changed. We really gotta hit that place up again.
posted by furnace.heart at 2:09 PM on June 2, 2017 [1 favorite]


Awww. These are a huge advance in the bike-riding learning curve for toddlers.

Best line ...
Adding to my race-day anxiety, the 1 p.m. start-time for the three-year-old class coincided with his naptime.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 6:45 PM on June 2, 2017


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