As promised, we gave Gareth his bike today. He was quite excited to get into the seat and start pedaling, even though pedaling a recumbent is a bit different than pedaling his trike at school.

Because of the short time frame, we improvised a harness system using an old hip restraint from one his seating systems and a weight lifting belt from Wal-Mart. They worked surprisingly well!

Make-A-Wish, the Centre Daily Times, and all of Gareth’s grandparents were in attendance for the presentation today and got to see both Gareth and me on the bike. Gareth received the bike, a Spongebob jersey, various maps of bike trails, word icons for describing our trips, and reflective ankle straps. I’m sure he thought it was Christmas all over again.

Word of warning for anybody considering something like the Pino - make sure you have wide hallways or, better yet, a garage. We don’t have either. Maneuvering the bike between rooms is insanely difficult and has resulted in the removal of two chunks of wall that will need to be patched and painted (they’re small, but enough for me to notice). Thank goodness we were going to repaint this summer anyway.

Now we just hang back and wait for the first spot of good weather. I need to get in a brief training ride to get used to the bike. After that, we’ll get Gareth on there. Please, Winter, hold off just a little longer!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 13th, 2007 at 11:13 pm and is filed under Status. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.