Easy Rider

Times are changing.

Not so very long ago, we could go on hol­i­day as a fam­ily and all three chil­dren would whole­heart­edly join in the fam­ily fun on offer. Every sug­ges­tion was met with enthu­si­asm and a joy­ful, untainted child­ish sense of adventure.

A much antic­i­pated week­end to a Gold Coast beach­front resort reminded me we were slowly enter­ing a new era – one where fam­ily out­ings were not nec­es­sar­ily greeted with hoots of unabated joy. A phase where, dare I say it, we were no longer cool, fun par­ents but the source of acute embarrassment.

The sad part of the tale is that we were both bliss­fully unaware our sta­tus had changed at all.

We would have remained inno­cently unaware of our short­com­ings until we inno­cently sug­gested a fam­ily cycle on this fine week­end away. Surely it was a pleas­ant, bond­ing activ­ity to pass a per­fect Spring after­noon? All three chil­dren seemed quite keen on the idea and even the eldest, at 14, seemed to agree it would be a pleas­ant ride fol­low­ing the wind­ing broad­walk with its spec­tac­u­lar views of azure blue seas and a cloud­less Queens­land sky.

The first hint of all not being Swiss fam­ily Robin­son came while select­ing bikes. Those on offer were clearly vin­tage with their wide Harley-type handle-bars, com­fort­able seats and mud guards the way they used to make them – solid. There were no gears to worry about as these babies were built for com­fort, not speed. So far, no com­plaints. Then my teenaged son announced, rather diplo­mat­i­cally and with­out much fan­fare that he sud­denly pre­ferred the idea of jog­ging next to the fam­ily instead of actu­ally cycling. He had obvi­ously perused the old fash­ioned cycles on offer, and per­haps glanced at the hel­mets that were admit­tedly more suited to sky­div­ing than a sedate beach­front ride, and decided to opt out, fast. The vision of a sweet lit­tle fam­ily of five ped­alling on cloned bikes was too much for this teen to bear.

My 12-year-old daugh­ter silently accepted her pink flow­ery vin­tage bike but insisted she didn’t need a hel­met. No hel­met, no ride, insisted her dad. So she reluc­tantly donned helmet.

The youngest did what every nine year old would do – chose a bike, put on his hel­met and set off with gusto.

I was quite delighted with my baby blue bicy­cle — all that was miss­ing was a front bas­ket and it would have been quite perfect.

We didn’t get far before my lit­tle fam­ily bond­ing illu­sion was well and truly crushed. After cycling past the first group of teenagers enjoy­ing a Sat­ur­day after­noon bar­beque at a pic­nic table along­side the cycle track, I looked back to see my daugh­ter had stopped dead, hel­met removed. She refused to budge. “They were laugh­ing at me!” she hissed when I approached. “I can’t ride this bike, I’m going back,” she insisted.

After try­ing the stern, ‘don’t be silly no-one’s look­ing at you’ approach; I vainly attempted appeal­ing to her fash­ion sense. Did she know that these bikes were so old they were now back in fash­ion? Didn’t she notice all the cool young surfers rid­ing their bikes along the shore on exactly the same vin­tage? My cajol­ing sim­ply made her more deter­mined than ever not to move.  

Refus­ing to be daunted, I opted for pure, unadul­ter­ated bribery: If she wanted din­ner and a movie that night, she had bet­ter get her butt back on her bike and cycle or she would spend the night alone at the resort while we enjoyed a fam­ily dinner.

With all the resolve she could muster, my daugh­ter finally took me seri­ously and resumed her tor­tur­ous jour­ney. Then I looked behind me again and dis­cov­ered she was cycling, yes, but way off the beaten track – rid­ing so close to the beach and away from her pre­cious fam­ily she may have tried wave cycling instead.

Every time she passed another group of teens, she tucked her head to the side so her long hair would cover face and make it suit­ably invis­i­ble. Where was my bold, unself­con­scious daugh­ter? I wanted her back!

She endured the last kilo­me­tre or so with sullen expres­sion and tilted head. This was not a fun fam­ily out­ing, it was an endurance test.

“Maybe this is one of those mem­o­ries that will scar her for life,” my hus­band sug­gested as we neared the end of the cycle.

I hoped not. We returned the bikes and assessed the emo­tional dam­age just in case.

“It wasn’t just the bike, it was the stu­pid hel­met — I’m wear­ing a dress with a home-boy hel­met, I look ridicu­lous!” explained a repen­tant 12-year-old.

How silly of me not to realise.