First Ride on the Old Trek

I was busy all week leaving me no time for riding or blogging. I was looking forward to Saturday morning. A couple of weeks ago I picked up an old Trek for my 12 year old son but we haven't had a chance to give it a shakedown ride so this morning I loaded up the bikes on our old Landcruiser and drove to the Trinity Trails. My son has never ridden anything other than a mountain bike so I wanted a traffic free place to ride. That turned out to be be a smart move. He is really big for his age and is as strong as an ox but unfortunately he's clumsy and practically trips over his own shadow. I raised the stem on his bike and tilted the bars up a little to give him a more upright position. I could see his handlebars shaking from side to side as he rode and he looked stressed. He veered off into the grass whenever he reached for the downtube shifters and he nearly slammed into the metal railing next to the trail when he tried standing to climb a short hill. After a while when things failed to improve I decided to cut the ride short and head back. When we arrived at our truck I tried a little experiment. I had him ride up and down the trail on my bike. Sure enough his riding was now smooth and controlled. I'm going to remove the drop bars for now and replace them with Albatross bars or something similar and install a longer stem and either bar end shifter or thumbshifters.  I think we'll both be a little less stressed if we can get him set up in a more upright position at least until he's a little older and more coordinated.