u/_GoinOutWest_

At 45, it’s fair to say my centre of mass has changed a bit since my 20s! So getting back on the bike has taken a bit of time and patience.
After a couple of weeks of cruising around in the neighbourhood, I’ve built enough confidence to see what I can and can’t do at the park.
Today was day 1. I literally haven’t bunnyhopped in 16 years!
What surprised me was how strong the muscle memory was. Within a few tries I’d landed a hop to manual on a little manual pad - my favourite chill trick.
Then I spent a bit of time on a 6ft transition, slowly working my way up to the coping and finally airing the rear tyre out! Super happy with this!
Last on my list was dropping into a 4ft bowl. I’m not sure why but it took a while to build up the courage to do it - I nearly chickened out. It was like I’d never done it before! But eventually I did it - of course it was far simpler than I’d built it up in my head to be!
All in all I’m super stoked with my progress. It’s baby steps but it definitely didn’t feel as squirly or alien as I’d thought it might. I didn’t hurt myself, but I am definitely feeling some sore Muscles I haven’t used in a decade!
For those thinking about getting back into riding - do it! It felt awesome!
If you’ve already taken the plunge again, how long have you been back, and what tricks are you working on - what’ve you lost, what’ve you learnt that’s new!?

Thought I'd share the twists and turns of finding the best first pedal bike for my 3 year old toddler.

My Son progressed from a baby trike to balance bike just before his 2nd birthday, and had been asking for "pedals" for ages. His 3rd Birthday was coming up so I started hunting around - of course it had to be a bmx!

There were 3 complete bikes I considered:

Cult Juvenile 12": ~ 6.5kg, Aluminium frame, cheaper componentry - centre mounted caliper on top of the stays, lengthy axles, 25t sprocket etc. I liked the low weight frame, and lower standover was a plus for the Cult. This was a close second, and a good choice - although the brakes were very disappointing.

Kink Roaster 12": ~ 7.5kg, Cheaper still than the Cult, with a coaster brake, and slightly lighter than the fit. I thought hard about the coaster brake and decided against it. I liked how it might be more intuitive, but at the same time, I realized I'd have to ween him off of it at some point and re-teach him to use a hand brake. So I ruled this one out for that reason. In retrospect, I'm glad I made this choice as his first day practicing ended up with me pushing him and him spending a LOT of time backpedaling! With a freecoaster, it would have been a lot more complicated (and hard work!) to get him rolling at all. Also, the one piece cranks weren't as cool as the little FIT and Cult options!

Fit Misfit 12": ~ 8kg. Considerably heavier than the Cult and the standover height was a concern, which made the choice a lot harder harder. The MisFit is a well thought out bike, 23T sprocket, domed axle nuts, brakes tucked away in the proper place with a smaller brake lever. It all made sense for a toddler who will definitely wipe out a lot in the coming year or two. Comparing the components and attention to detail with the FIT, the FIT was a far better built bike for similar money. My biggest concerns about the FIT were the weight and the seat height. I wanted to try to get the seat height down as close as I could to the existing balance bike seat height - so he was as confident as possible when stationary, and could manage the increase in weight better. I also figured I could have some fun switching out parts to lighten the thing up a bit. So I went with the FIT and set about lowering and lightening it.

Modifications:

Once I'd settled on the MisFit, there were two important improvements I wanted to make to ensure the little man was confident on his new bike: Weight reduction & Standover/Seat height

Moving from a sub 3kg balance bike to an 8kg bmx was going to be a massive change and could have affected the little guys confidence so I did a few things to lighten the load:

Bars: Aluminium race bars shed a ton of weight from the Hi-Tensile stock bars

Tyres: Switched with the balance bike tyres which were about 30% lighter, and also smaller diameter helped improve the seat height a little bit. Not as cool looking as the stock fit tyres, but a decent improvement overall.

Tubes: TPU Tubes also shed a considerable amount of rolling weight - I couldn't find schraders but you can buy adaptors super cheap

Pedals: The Stock pedals are pretty large plastic bmx pedals. They were fine, but seemed a bit too large to begin with. But using smaller, lighter pedals (Trek kids platforms) I could also lose some weight and increase the butt-to-foot distance to make pedaling easier.

Crank: The stock cranks are kinda cool little 95mm cranks with an 8 spline spindle. I had high hopes of swapping in a Ti spindle to shed a good amount of weight. But there are no 8 spline ti-spindle manufacturers. I then tried to find similar length 48spline cranks so I could swap in an old ti spindle from my spares box. It looks like a company called WildCat used to use 48spline cranks (no pinchbolt), so I ordered a set, unfortunately they arrived and were 8 splines.. I guess they updated the design. There may be 48pline versions floating around but I couldn't find any. On the plus side, these wildcat cranks were the same weight as the stock cranks but were a little shorter (89mm) - which would help make pedalling whilst sitting easier. They aren't particularly nicely made, but the shorter length was advantageous.

Sprocket: The MisFit comes with a 23T sprocket which makes pedaling a bit easier - a nice detail for kids. However, there aren't as many 23T sprockets as there used to be. I found a lot were out of stock. I ended up with a profile imperial which is a nice mid-school design and shed a decent chunk of weight compared to the stock steel version.

Seat: With the stock seat, at its lowest, it drops to around 45cms from the top of the seat to the ground. This was an inch or two higher than my kids balance bike seat height and would have really pushed him up onto his tip-toes - perfect for a more confident rider, but not ideal for the step up to his first bike, especially given that it's twice as heavy as he is used to. I tried a few options trying to find the lowest seat stack height possible. Colony do a nice mini pivotal seat, but I found many pivotals have a lot of plastic reinforcement that really push the overal stack height. Combo seats also tend you have a lot of gubbins undernath the seat. The very lowest profile options I found were the tioga spyder d pivotal race seat - but this was a huge adult seat with no padding, and the chase hawk Tripod seat is a great design, where the seat padding actually drops below the TT at it's lowest. It's also pretty small for an adult seat. It was a hair too large for the little bike if i'm honest, but the final nail in the coffin for the chase tripod was the pretty extreme angle, even in the most chill wedge setting, it was too angled for a little kid. I finally settled on an In-Sight Mini pivotal race seat. It's kid sized, padded and very low stack height. I combined it with a pivotal post with no flairing/tapering - just the pivotal toothed section cleanly attached to a straight. I also shaved off a final 5mm from the seat tube clamping area of the frame as it was plenty long enough to run a lower profile seatclamp.

Brakes: I whacked on a new odyssey slic cable (lubed), and adjusted the tension to make it as easy to brake as possible. The little guy LOVED playing with the brakes.

Fun little tweaks: I added some Ti Wheel nuts to try to help lighten the realtively heavy wheelset. And added Carbon headset spacers for some bling - but were fun little easter eggs for a 12" bmx.

All in all I've saved around 1.5kgs - mostly from the bars, tyres and tubes, and reduced the seat height by about 2 inches.

Options I didn't pursue:

Forks: I was suprised to find 12" Carbon Forks from AliExpress at a pretty reasonable price... What could go wrong!?! Honestly, they would probably be fine for a 3 year old, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Hubs:I looked at trying to find lighter hubs and rims, but there's almost nothing on the retail market. The balance bike front wheel has a very nice lightweight female axle, lightweight rim and less spokes and is significantly lighter as a result, but annoyingly the axle is too short to fit in the FIT forks.

Stem: The stem turned out to be very light already. I have considered getting a flatland stem but the stack heights were often higher and they weren't much lighter than the existing stem.

I (literally!) dusted off my bike which has been in storage for about 15 years, and have been trying to figure out what stem I’m running.
It’s short ~ 40-45mm
It has fun inboard steering tube bolts which my knees thanked me for.
Obviously it could be used regular or flipped as I have it here.
I seem to remember it being a bit of an oddball at the time, but loved it…
Any suggestions welcome!