MEAT Engines 2023...

Posted by: AndrewMajor

I asked her once about letting us go play by ourselves in the forest without adult supervision...

We did that as well. No adults even commented as we loaded our packs with flashlights, rope, carabiners, a knife, etc... As long as we were home for dinner and mostly uninjured it was all good. 

It certainly was a helpful period of life skills development that made adulting easier.

Posted by: AndrewMajor

The punchline is I’m a much nicer parent, the floors of my apartment are just dirty all the time no matter how much sweeping or vacuuming I do. But no one stands and gets hosed after a winter forest adventure.

I can't seem to stop the inflow of leaves and pine needles into the house either. Nor do I want to, it's fun where they come from.

Posted by: AndrewMajor

Posted by: skooks

Andrew; One thing I love about taking kids mountain biking is giving them the opportunity to use their judgement and make their own decisions. I have been lucky enough to ride with some exceptionally talented kids, who's judgement is often better than mine when it comes to assessing their abilities. It's so scary and hard to watch them do something that could get them seriously hurt, but trust that they know better than I do if they are ready for it. I now try not to influence them one way or another, unless I think they are being truly reckless. Honestly this almost never happens. Watching them progress and excel is the best!

This. 100%. I don’t ever push - support certainly - but my kid is excellent at knowning what she’s ready for on any given day and as she progresses. It’s actually true of most kids I’ve ridden with.

-

One of the hardest things about parenting is managing my emotions around injury. Not mountain biking specific - hockey, hiking, playgrounds, etc. most times we get right back up, other times it takes a while to heal.

Claire broke her tib & fib when she was almost-two in an accident at the playground. Not a big deal once we figured out it was broken - it wasn’t on the growth plate, she motored around in her cast, quite enjoyed the attention, and loved driving me nuts banging it on stuff to make noise. 

But the f***ing judgement from other parents was amazing and it was an important lesson. My kid is always a bit banged up and the only people who get that are the parents of other kids skating hard into corners and putting their bikes into the ground with some momentum (hopefully not too often).

Don't start me on the Helicopter Parents I see at the playground...

We almost never pick up our son when he falls and never really have once he could stand up on his own, even when he was first learning to walk. We calmly go over to him, check in to see if he thinks he's ok and tell him we're there if he needs help. We always let him get up on his own if he doesn't need or want help, he checks in on his own injuries and self assesses but we are always right there if he needs or wants it. It is incredibly important that kids learn to self assess IMO.

When he was very little (1-2ish) I used to get daggers from parents at the playground all the time when I wouldn't run over to pick him up or fawn all over him after he bailed. I'd be crouched next to him with my hand out telling him I was there if he needed me, checking in on him, but very specifically not picking him up after a bail and people used to hate it. This was all done in a very loving, teaching, supporting manner so that he could learn to trust his own judgement and learn independence and never even remotely a "toughening him up" kind of way. One day he tripped while running max speed and fell pretty hard for a toddler and just got up, looked at his hands and knees, and then just took off playing again. There was a man and 2 of his grand kids at least a couple years older than my boy playing nearby, the G-pa just said to me "If that fall happened to one of these boys our park trip would be over" and I was so proud that our little guy was able to check himself out and realize he was fine and then just keep going all on his own. We gave him the tools to make sure he was or wasn't OK and the confidence to ask for help.

He never ever freaked out about getting hurt because we never freaked out about it.

Edit - I'll add a few more of my thoughts on parenting as a whole I guess cuz why not. We almost never outright warn him about minor danger, ie; playground falls, kinda steep hills on his bike, balancing on stuff, generally things that won't cause actual bodily harm if they go poorly. We don't really say "Be careful" or "That's dangerous," because I think those are kind of empty statements from a learning point of view. While those might be valid things to say to an adult who knows how to make decisions the statement doesn't really help a kid learn how to make those decisions themselves or how to recognize dangerous situations really.

What we do do is ask him questions like "What kinds of things do you think might happen if this doesn't go the way you're thinking it will?" or how he could best prepare himself if he's trying something new. If we do have actual input it will be along the lines of "Those rocks look pretty wobbly, do you think there is a different path you could take or a different way to get around / over / whatever?" We try to ensure the decisions are his own to make while simultaneously highlighting the things that could trip him up. Teaching the thought process that goes in to making a decision is much better for him than just telling him not to do something.

Posted by: thaaad

It is incredibly important that kids learn to self assess IMO.

He never ever freaked out about getting hurt because we never freaked out about it.

Building bomber kids is a winner. 

One of our rules is not to lift them up to places they can't reach - climb yourself up, then you can climb yourself down. There were a few mid-tree tantrums early on, but now they just get on with it. 

We also tell them to only put their weight on branches thicker than their wrists - it's fairly reliable, and they have the measuring device up the tree with them. 

Daughter (nearly 8) will regularly vanish from the playground - she's always up a tree beyond the branches that would hold me, often 7-8+m off the deck and totally confident in her ability to get down.

My daughters have gotten heavily into equestrian over the last few years.  One of the best things they have learnt is that you ARE going to fall off and you've gotta get straight back on and keep going.  Also it doesn't matter how good you are - you're still going to fall off - as one of the instructors demonstrated at the Xmas pantomime when a horse threw her off in front of the crowd.  My eldest even got a rossette for the best off at a pony camp recently.

I see the same thing at playgrounds here (suburban middle class Surrey) where a parent (or group of parents) will swoop down an mollycoddle a kid who has fallen over.  My kids know that unless there is substantial blood or bone sticking out then they need to dust themselves off and get on with it.

Thaaad - I really like your "self assessment" method.

Glad to read that some folk are still still raising resilient offspring.  Our kids had similar tough love to deal with, seem to have turned out resilient adults. There was a park near Gran's house.  My wife had grown up there and knew it well.  In the park were two slides, one a small (at lest for the time) maybe 3m tall for the smaller kids and one large one, may 7 or 8 m tall.  IT was one of the tallest pubic park slides I've ever seen, built in the 1920's. We used to take the boys there, and they used to be in awe of the big slide.  They were happy on the little one.  As years went by, they ranged far and wide on our various adventures.  Eventually we moved to a house near the park near Grans house and we took the dog for a walk after we'd moved in and one of the boys remarked how small the slide had become over the years.. I never heard of anyone getting injured on that slide, but the rush reward of finally climbing that huge ladder and then swooping down the slide was a blast the boys remember to this day.   

Kids parks nowadays all seem supper safe, restraints on swings, curly slides of negibible height, rubber matted on the surface under the various devices, trees cleared of branches for climbing...  How do kids learn to recognise risk/reward/consequences if we wrap them in safety nets?

Getting kids outside and giving them the opportunity to learn about the consequences of their decisions will serve them well in life, especially if they happen to be interested in mountain biking  It's awesome seeing groups of kids out riding without a grownup in sight.

Cause for Celebration (or quoting Aerosmith)

Happy pentacentennial! Thanks for putting all those parts through the wringer on your rigid singlespeed and sharing what is not-junk. This combination of abuse and transparency is unique in bike media and has been incredibly valuable.

I can’t wait to see the revisions, recolouring and restickering of the Waltworks. I hope it’s not gone for too long. Silver lining - I bet that headset install for your recent review was a breeze!

Just curious Andrew, there's enough force coming through your rigid fork to distort your head tube. Do you notice this in your hands and arms?  I still remember how rough it was riding (shitty) rigid bikes on the shore back in the day. Lots of ovalized head tubes back then too.

Posted by: skooks

Just curious Andrew, there's enough force coming through your rigid fork to distort your head tube. Do you notice this in your hands and arms?  I still remember how rough it was riding (shitty) rigid bikes on the shore back in the day. Lots of ovalized head tubes back then too.

I mean, I run a ~3” tire, CushCore, a bar with flex, it must almost be like suspension right?! Hahaha.

It’s absolutely way more fatiguing descending a rigid bike no matter how smooth I am. Especially when I’m trying to keep friends in sight on their 6” super bikes. 

Arms and legs mostly. My hands do really well between the backsweep on my bar and the light action Dominion brakes and push-on grips. Not that my hands don’t fatigue, but I feel it in my arms and legs first.

Even riding with Claire. Today I rode my V2 for the last time before tearing it down, on the same trails I rode my El Roy on last weekend at the same pace and I’m twice as fatigued. Not sore, just tired. 

Just because riding is faster and easier on my El Roy (and then that experience again on a full suspension bike) though doesn’t make me love the rigid setup any less.

Posted by: Blofeld

Cause for Celebration (or quoting Aerosmith)

Happy pentacentennial! Thanks for putting all those parts through the wringer on your rigid singlespeed and sharing what is not-junk. This combination of abuse and transparency is unique in bike media and has been incredibly valuable.

I can’t wait to see the revisions, recolouring and restickering of the Waltworks. I hope it’s not gone for too long. Silver lining - I bet that headset install for your recent review was a breeze!

Cheers! Hitting 500x unique pieces for NSMB is very neat for me. It’s been a fun evolution.

Same colour for sure! Starting again with decals. Some very minor tweaks to geo. Not too worried about downtime as I’m doing a frame review that’s going to be really fun in the meantime. Also can’t wait to get it back - really nothing like it.

Yes congrats on 500+ NSMB articles. Great content. A nice change from the typical belly button posts on other MTB media sites. 

Here's to many more!

Now hopefully you beef up the Walt V2.5 so it can handle your full fury long-term.

I'm looking forward to the next 500!!!  Always so much good food for thought.