A Most Unusual Trip to WalMart

Matthew learned how to ride a 2-wheeler a couple months ago. We knew this day was soon in coming, because he'd been riding a 2 and half (of a tiny) wheeler for about a year prior to this. To explain: I backed over his bike-plus-training-wheels the summer of 2008, and one of the training wheels was bent beyond all possibility of repair. So we removed it, and he learned to ride with the slightly warped one that remained.

Why, Cheapskates (ahem), didn't you just buy another set of training wheels? you may be asking. Because this was already the 2nd set of training wheels of that bike we had backed over, since Mark backed over it the year before. Not to mention, the first set put up such a fight that it tore out the rather expensive tire of our minivan. No more $ on training wheels was going to be spent for this thing!

But I digress. You may notice that Matthew was rather big for his bike. We were grateful for this bike, which the former owners of this house handed down to us a few months after moving here, and it has definitely served its purpose. Since the kid gets everything he owns (except socks and underwear) passed down to him, we told him at his birthday last January that we'd buy him a bike this summer after he learned to ride the bike he had without that crazy on-again, off-again training wheel. Matthew fulfilled his end of the bargain, but sometimes it takes his procrastinating parents a little bit longer.

A couple weeks ago, he and I were dragging the recycling & trash out to the curb and noticed a bike in our neighbor's trash pile. We decided to add it to our "treasures" in the garage and see what we could do with it. I talked to Matthew about getting the new bike or fixing up the old one, and he wanted to fix up the old one. Knowing that the day will soon come when that will absolutely not be the response, I decided to throw it in the van and drive to the cheapest bike shop I know to see if it was worth fixing.

I don't typically shop at WalMart much- there's a shiny new one in our area, but that area is constantly congested with construction traffic and frankly, Target's closer, which I'm more familiar with. However, the WalMart has a bike shop in the back and the guys there are extremely nice. I went and parked about 5 feet from the door and we went in to hand off the find and ask what they thought. There's a man who works there who looks just like Santa- long white beard plus mustache, old-fashioned spectacles, tummy that shakes like a bowl full of jelly, etc. The royal blue vest looks odd over his red coat, but whatever. I handed it over to him and he immediately started working away in the workshop- pulling out the weeds, taking off wheels, etc.

Max was about to Lose It so when Santa told me he was going to put in a innertube, I asked the other guys there if we could walk around and come back later. When we returned, the chain was functioning again, the tires were plump and rolling, the brakes tightened, etc. Santa even took it out for Matthew to test drive. Of course, it's a little awkward driving a bigger bike, especially when you start 2 feet away from a brick wall and pointed to connect with said wall, but Matthew was absolutely thrilled. And you know what the bike repair cost us? With tax, $3.07. For all of the labor, no charge. I'll just have to take some milk and cookies by another time.

The other thing that made it a surprising trip will have to wait for another day, but other than Max screaming his head off in the store and throwing fistfuls of crackers at me, it turned out to be a pretty good trip to the store.



Such a big shot on his bike! He's pretty happy about it, riding around in his Spider Man slippers. And he was really pumped when Mark and he went on a ride together Saturday- "Mom, even though it's old, my bike went faster than Dad's!"