Training Wheels - A Thing of the Past?

One of Priya's summer goals is to ride her bike without training wheels. We have been talking about it a lot, but tonight we finally decided to do something about it. A last minute decision, we pack up the bikes and head over to the local park. With abundant grass and some small hills, this should be the perfect practice ground for riding a two-wheeler. Oh, she's nervous alright, but after a warm-up lap with the training wheels, Daddy removes them from the bike. We find a nice gentle, downhill, grassy slope and get her on the saddle. First, we practice getting her feet on the pedals and letting her fall to one side so that she can learn to put her foot down and stop the bike from falling. That goes well... so we're on to some movement. As expected, she freezes up and needs to be reminded to keep pedaling. I hold onto the bike until we're just about at the bottom of the slope, and then I let go and almost immediately the bike tips and she's on the ground. Luckily the landing was soft... to be expected at a speed of about 1 mile/hour and falling onto a carpet of grass... so she picks right up and goes again.

Things were going well and each time she added maybe one more rotation of the pedals before finally tumbling over. We also noticed that she tends to slightly turn to the left when on her own. After several runs, she had an idea. She wanted to try on the flat grass instead of the hill. I'm thinking this isn't such a good idea because she needs gravity to help her since her pedaling is weak, and frankly a lot to think about when you're concentrating so much on balance. But, low and behold... when we let go of her on the flat grass, she kind of took off. I mean, we are far from there, but some serious headway was made tonight.

So, my immediate thought... I need a picture or video of this... but the camera was not with me. I grab the keys from Bartee, run to the car, drive home, grab the camera and head back over to the park trying to beat the sun going down. Priya's back on the bike, Bartee is steadying her and I've got the camera on... focused and ready for push off. Something is holding them up, Priya can't get her feet on the pedals or something. I'm saying "Hurry up... my battery is low... push her... let's go" and finally she's in motion. Then, at that very moment, my lens starts collapsing back into the casing and my camera powers down. Dang... I missed it. You will have to just imagine what she looked like on two wheels. I did manage to revive the camera long enough to take this shot, though not very impressive. Will try again, and hopefully have some pictures for you, once the camera is recharged.