My Favourite Bike Ride

Written and narrated by Rob Laing

Most kids love to ride bikes. They love just getting away and having a great time. They love pushing hard on the pedals, they love the wind in their face, being able to explore, being able to learn new things.

Do you remember that there was once a time that you couldn’t ride a bike, and that you had to find the courage to learn something new, something that might have once looked scary but turned out to be really good fun?

So, find somewhere comfortable where we can do some pretending. Get yourself comfortable and ready to pretend.

Let’s start by taking a deep breath in, then as you breathe out, close your eyes and begin to get ready for your bike ride. You are doing great.

Put on the clothes you wear when you ride your bike – maybe that’s some shorts and a t-shirt or whatever you wear, put them on, noticing the colours and anything else that’s special about what you are wearing today as you go for a ride. You can feel the shirt going over your head, pulling on your ears and then your arms going in the sleeves and feeling ready for your best bike ride ever.

Put on your bike riding shoes and look around.

Who’s coming with you on the best bike ride? Are they getting ready? What are they wearing?

Let’s go outside and get your bike ready – take a moment to see what colour it is.

Put on your helmet, feel the strap holding the helmet and knowing it’s there to keep you safe.

Hold your bike by the handle bars and wheel it out to where you can start pedalling.

Feel yourself sitting on the seat, one foot on the ground and the other ready to push the pedal. Feel how good that feels, ready to go somewhere for an adventure.

Holding the handle bars, feet pushing on the pedals, begin to pedal wherever you would like to go for your favourite bike ride. You can go anywhere, perhaps somewhere you’ve been before or we can go somewhere new…….you’re doing great. Let’s start pedalling to your favourite place, feet on the pedals, hands on the handle bars, feel your breathing becoming stronger, wind in your face.

As you start to pedal a little faster you can look around and notice who’s with you, maybe your parents or your friends? You can notice the weather – is it a sunny day with blue skies or is it cloudy day? You can take a deep breath and notice any familiar smells of the trees and the flowers.

And as you pedal a bit faster, you can feel your legs pushing, you can feel the wind on your face and you can feel the feeling of the best ride ever, as you begin to feel so good, so strong and so free. It’s as if you don’t have a care in the world, you can leave any worries behind as you just pedal so easily. And as you feel so good, so strong, so relaxed and so confident you can take this feeling with you.

Some kids pretend their arms are their legs and use their arms to do the pedalling, with their arms out front, turning around and around just as if they were really riding their bike.

You can go anywhere on your favourite bike ride – maybe it’s a ride to your school when there’s no one else there? When you can ride around the playground and between the buildings or maybe it’s a ride to your favourite park where you can see the trees and the other people enjoying themselves….

As you keep pedalling you can pedal even faster, and even faster and even faster, and if you pedal fast enough, you may be able to start flying your bike, it’s almost like magic, the faster you pedal the higher you can go. The faster you pedal the higher you go.

An as you begin to fly your bike you can look down and see your world getting a little bit smaller, a little bit further away, it’s a bit like a bird flying higher and higher and getting a bird’s eye view.

And when you have taken yourself high enough, and far enough away, to somewhere where there are just blue skies and beautiful white clouds, you can stop pedalling and begin to glide and float, and notice how good this feels, gliding and floating – somewhere that you can look down at where you live and where you play and at the same time feeling safe and knowing that people are looking after you, keeping you safe.

Some kids like the feeling of gliding so much that they just keep gliding, others like to find the nicest most comfortable cloud to rest on, some keep pedalling, and as you do what you need to do, you realise how you have learnt to do things like riding a bike, that used to be a bit scary, that you could use your courage and know that instead of being scary that it could be challenging and fun, and make you feel so good. In fact, as you are riding, you can feel so good you can leave all your worries behind you, and look forward to learning new things and feeling good. Feeling strong.

You can keep riding your bike for a bit longer, or you can glide all the way home, knowing that someone will be there, ready to look after you, ready to give you something really nice to eat and to drink, feeling so good, feeling safe, having learnt something new, knowing you can come on this special bike ride anytime you want to.