I did 30 miles on Saturday (found a nice route from home to the airport trail, so now I can start adding mileage by looping around the airport) and ten miles Sunday with my daughter. I'm attempting to teach my daughter the skills she needs for cycling on roads, but I think all I accomplished was raising my blood pressure and aging myself another ten years. She's 12 years old and not at all comfortable being on the roads (we stayed on quiet residential streets and a couple of busier streets with either wide shoulders or bike lanes) but is a terror on the sidewalks--she's not great with steering and is in danger of either running off the curb or plowing into people. I'm generally forgiving of kids on bikes on sidewalks, but I think it's time for her to transition to streets. Yet those same bad steering skills are REALLY dangerous on the streets, especially when you add in all the other things she should be paying attention to but hasn't learned how to yet (cars coming out of driveways, cars coming up behind you when you need to manoeuver around someone parked in the shoulder, staying to the right but not TOO much to the right, watching out for debris, etc.).

I'm sure I was just as clueless at that age, but I don't think I was given the opportunity to hurt myself so badly. We lived in a suburban development so I was able to stick to sidewalks for a long time, and the roads were quiet. I didn't start really riding on roads until I had been driving for some time, so I already had the instincts you need for managing traffic. But now we live in a small town off the main road, so she's learning how to get around when there are restaurants and traffic lights and people coming in and out of various businesses. She's also going further than I ever did at that age--I used to ride my bike a lot, but I don't think I ever went more than a couple miles from home.