Ups and Downs…

Last weekend, on the Bank Holiday, when the sun shone (yay!) and we cleared out the garage… we also attempted some fun stuff too.

Well, actually, we did do some fun stuff, but on our second attempt at fun stuff, My Make Do and Mend Year let us down…

On the Saturday, in the afternoon, we ventured over to the picturesque village of Urchfont, near Devizes for their annual Scarecrow hunt.

We had a brilliant time in the sunshine, wandering round with the Smalls, spotting scarecrows, eating ice cream, and rolling down grassy hills.

But we didn’t have time to get all the way around the 53 scarecrows.

So we decided to have another stab at it on the Bank Holiday Monday.

This time, on bikes. And it was hotter. And much busier…

A couple of months ago, after extensive research, hubby bought a secondhand Trail-Gator from E-bay. This is essentially a tow-bar for a Small person’s bike, but it has the advantage that they can un-hitch and ride along for a bit on their own if they want to.
We were most delighted with our bargainantious purchase and smugly congratulated ourselves at how much money My Make Do and Mend Year was saving us.
Until hubby went to fit it to my bike, and it was missing a vital part…
It was missing something called a “Shims”, which I am told, wraps around the saddle stem like a cuff if your saddle stem is not big enough. Undeterred, hubby started to improvise and wrapped the stem with insulating tape, and proceeded as normal. All was going well, until we went on a test run and went around a corner and BigSmall and his bike ended up on a bit of a lean.
Still undeterred, hubby retired back to the (now much clearer) garage with a socket set and a spanner (or something like that) and declared that the problem was solved.
So off we set, on Bank Holiday Monday. BigSmall’s bike was in the boot, with SmallSmall’s bike seat, 4 helmets and a picnic, and the 2 Big people’s bikes were mounted onto the snazzy carrier thing that went on the back of the car.
After a small amount of faffing unloading the bikes and preparing for the off (and negotiating SmallSmall into his bike helmet…) we set off to look for the remaining scarecrows and a suitable picnic site.
All was going well, and BigSmall and I were just getting used to the whole Trail-Gator thing, when his bike started to lean again….
A few minor adjustments later, we set off (again), only to stop for a picnic as BigSmall was ‘starving’.

We set off (again) and as soon as we went round a corner BigSmall’s bike started that by now very familiar lean…
We stopped (again. Bear in mind also that every time we stopped, SmallSmall started grizzling. Just to add to the fun…) and Hubby fiddled about a bit and we re-started (again).
This pattern essentially repeated itself until I got fed up and asked whether it would be more sensible to just detach BigSmall from the Trail-Gator and let him ride along on his own. We were clear of the main roads by now, so we decided this was a sensible option. But we hadn’t accounted for the sheer numbers of pedestrians and the attention span of a 4 year old for watching where he was going…
You can all tell where this is going to end up, right? Right. BigSmall biked into the back of some poor unsuspecting pedestrian, flew over the handlebars and ate a large chunk of pavement.
Cue much wailing, snot and tears, with blood and bits of gravel in BigSmall’s mouth.
Ooooops.

The jury is still out on whether BigSmall’s front teeth will survive the episode. I am told there is not a lot you can do other than “wait and see if they go black and fall out”. Yay. Thankfully, he has not lost his confidence on his bike and biked into town this morning at speed.

But I have to confess to feeling slightly to blame for the whole sorry tale. If it wasn’t for me and my stupid Make Do and Mend Year and my insistence that we Buy Nothing New, we may well have bought a brand spanking new Trail-Gator, which would have had a bl**dy Shims, and we would have all had a lovely day out biking in the sunshine, and BigSmall would not have a sore mouth.

And don’t even mention the fact that SmallSmall then compounded our ‘lovely day out’ by lobbing one of his sandals out of the open window of the car while we were on our way home…