Death by Bicycle

It has long been a nagging goal of mine to get my boys to ride bikes. Talmage and Cole are ridiculously, adamantly against it and usually get hysterical and sometimes violent whenever I bring it up. Jack thinks bikes are great and can ride circles around them on his little two-wheeler with training wheels. The weather in Memphis is gorgeous in the Fall--it's perfect bike riding weather. So, I have been plotting and scheming on this one for weeks. I bought them all new helmets, knee pads, elbow pads, and gloves to make them feel a tad less vulnerable. I scoped out the perfect one-mile training loop in Joey and Katie's neighborhood. It's perfectly flat, it's in the far end of the neighborhood where most of the lots are either vacant, or partially constructed and, ideally, a new playground was just constructed at the midpoint of the loop.
This morning I announced we were going for a bike ride. This was when we began our argument which continued for the hour it took us to fix the bikes and get Tal, Jack and friend, Ethan, in the car. My side of the argument was just a broken record: "We're going on a bike ride." Here's Tal's side of the argument.
"I'm not going on a bike ride. I will ride a scooter or I will walk. Riding a bike is a want, not a need. Mom, you don't understand, you could fall over and your feet wouldn't go out fast enough and you really could die from a bike, Mom! I can get my exercise some other way!"
We got there and the weeping and wailing continued and I was very grateful that it was such a desolate neighborhood so that no one had to hear. He screamed and cried and grunted and yelled and threatened. Did I mention the bike still has the training wheels on? Did I mention he's seven? He'd make a fabulous actor because you would not believe the lengths he was going to to convince me that he really could not move those pedals on that bike. It was too hard and the road was too bumpy and he was going to get killed! "It is NOT flat, Mom!" "There ARE cars here and one is going to hit me!" "I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die!"
He was going unbelievably slow--usually a half turn of the crank before he'd stop and scream some more. He'd throw his bike on the ground and yell, "I'm going to break this bike in pieces and throw it in the lake!" He did this three or four times before I hit upon a very effective threat of my own. The worst threat in the world: "If you do that again we'll be out here again tomorrow." At this point I was a) kicking myself for avoiding fights for the past year and letting him walk or take his scooter; and b) so grateful to have Ethan along to entertain Jack. Whenever they got too far ahead Ethan always found an adventure in the field for them to explore. Good thing because it took us about 45 minutes to travel two sides of a block.
We finally made it to the park and played a while. When it was time to ride back to the car Tal tried to get me to promise to never make him ride a bike again, and why was I being so mean?
I had a hunch that the old horse-nearing-it's-home-pasture routine would kick in. It did. Tal saw the car and suddenly found his rhythm. As he sped off I heard him mutter, "Hey it is getting easier." I knew if he ended up having fun I'd have to be very careful about not pulling an "I told you so" or I'd undo any positive result of this ordeal. When I caught up with him at the car he volunteered that he had really started going fast and he had beat me and it was, "well, sort of fun." As we drove home he asked if we were going to HAVE to ride bikes next Saturday. I said "I thought you said it was a little fun." In his flat monotone voice he sometimes uses, Tal replied, "Well, I did say Yippee a couple of times."