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A Bent Plywood Children's Bicycle
Choppy, by Latvian design brand Stum
While living in Japan, I witnessed an interesting trick for teaching children to ride a bicycle: Remove the pedals. As the child Fred-Flintstones his way around the street on the bike, their body naturally picks up on how to balance a two-wheeler. They can literally pick it up in an afternoon, and be riding with the pedals back on later that day.
Latvian design brand Stum has created this Choppy Bicycle specifically for that purpose.
I don't think this is a particularly sustainable solution for a family; why buy a bicycle that will only be used for several hours, and never again? It makes more sense to buy a standard bicycle and temporarily remove the pedals for training.
That said, I'm writing this up because it might make good sense for a school or daycare center to purchase these. And also because this form is something that would've made the Eameses giddy to see.
Note that the seat, which has some natural spring to it, can be placed at one of three heights. The handlebars can be placed in one of two positions, and the bike can be assembled without tools.
These run €200 (USD $210).
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Comments
I completely disagree re: the utility of balance bikes vs. a regular bike with the pedals removed. Balance bikes have been absolutely transformative to bike riding for children. With the pedals removed, there's still a rotating thing to whack the kids's shins, and often those bikes are still too large for really young kids. With these, kids can have fun and get an earlier start learning balance and play for quite a long time – think months rather than hours. It's not just a short-term training tool. When the time comes, the kid transitions nearly instantly to pedaled biking usually with zero falling or other incidents. Every single parent I know who's used these *raves* about how much better they are than the old ways we all learned with. Including a professional cyclist of my acquaintance! Likewise, they're incredibly reusable - passed down through hand-me-down networks to new learners.
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100% agree. My son learned on a balance bike, He would glide around the streets with his feet up. Once he was big enough for his first pedal bike (a cube cubie) he took only a few days to get used to pedalling. The bike came with stabilisers, we didn't even fit them.