Our neighbors down the street gave Tory their daughter's old bicycle a few years back and for a while she didn't seem to have much interest in riding it. Lately, though, she's been practicing every chance she gets. County Street (which runs between Chestnut Street and Bullard Street) is flat, smooth, and quiet so it's a perfect place to learn how to ride a bike.

For most of the summer of 2001 I would walk Tory up and down the street, holding on to the handlebars and pushing her along. Gradually I had to push less, then steer less, and by the fall she could ride for 50 feet or so if I gave her a good push.

The weekend of March 16-17, 2002 was a big weekend because it was the first time that Tory rode from one end of County Street to the other, and also the first time that she was able to start from a standing stop all by herself. Kim Estes stopped by and pointed out that we should take some pictures, so I took a few.

-- TobyCabot - 17 Mar 2002

We didn't wear helmets when we were this age.

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Born to be wild (on a pink bike)

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An action shot

Watch where you're going!

I tried the movie mode of my camera; it works OK but I got a little confused and messed up the middle of the scene. Beware that this is a 7MB file. I couldn't click on it, but if I right-clicked and saved it to my local drive and played it from there it worked fine.

• PICT0007.avi: a movie of Tory riding her bike.