Since the offspring arrived, not surprisingly, I’ve had bugger-all time to get on two wheels and do some pedalling. In fact, apart from the commute back-and-forth to work I can count on TWO fingers how many times I’ve been able to get out for a skid.

 

At first this pissed me off. For someone who has used a bike-ride as their blow-off valve for the past two decades, the whole transition to fatherhood and the inevitable weight of responsibility falling on my shoulders was not really that welcome. It has taken me a couple of months to realise that trying to get out for a ride was just winding me up even more as it was just becoming something else that I had to do along with work, burping the baby, doing the dishes, cooking dinner…argh.

Then one Saturday morning I had an epiphany. Saturday mornings are when I let the wife get a few extra precious hours of sleep while I take the offspring for a walk. This usually entails a wander through Chingford Park, an awesome green area just two doors down from our house.

Before Cadence (the offspring) showed up I didn’t give the place a second look, it was just another park in Dunedin with a few unremarkable trees and tracks. This particular Saturday morning Cadence decided she wasn’t going to sleep in the stroller so I picked her up and took her for a quiet walk through a patch of trees. Then I noticed her eyes following a fan-tail through the trees and about ten metres down the track, her hand grabbing at some of the branches that were brushing at our arms. 

After this walk I got home and felt a bit of a long-forgotten buzz I hadn’t felt for a while, the sort I used to get after a ride. I didn’t need to ride, I just needed to get outside and actually touch and interact with the environment.

After doing the same track over-and-over, it has gone from being somewhere I walked Cadence to get her to go to sleep to a place where Cadence and I go exploring. As Cadence develops she is more interested in looking and touching the trees and leaves, and as a result I’m more interested in my surroundings as well. Stuff that I just blew by on the bike is taking on a new life as I explore through the eye of a six-month-old.

So I guess I should say thanks to Chingford Park for giving me somewhere to hang out with my daughter, and to Cadence for getting me off the bike and showing me a different way of looking at things outside.