Jaxon, my 5 year old, wore out his old bicycle, so we went to the bike store last weekend to look for him a new bike.  I tried to get him to get this one, setting out in front of the store, but he wasn’t too keen on it.  So we went inside to see what else they had.  It’s been a while since I shopped for a bike.  It was probably 6 or 7 years ago the last time I was in a bike shop, and back then, you had pretty much 2 choices, a mountain bike or a road bike.  Mountain bikes wery very popular then.  Now, BMX bikes are big sellers, so the store had a lot of them, and in several different varieties.  The salesman told me that the BMX Freestyle bikes were very popular and are very strong.  They are built with extra strength to withstand all the punishment they take.  The Freestyle bikes are the ones the kids do all the tricks on.  So I figured that was right up Jaxon’s alley.  Here’s the one we ended up with.  It’s actually a full size 20″ bike.  So we won’t have to worry about him ever outgrowing it.  He’s completely fearless on his bike.  This picture here shows something very rare, Jaxon riding with shoes on.  If we didn’t make him, he would do everything barefoot.  His feet and toes are always scabbed and scarred from the asphalt, concrete and metal that is always tearing his skin off.  He wrecks on his bike several times a day, and always has fresh wounds to show for it.  Notice the big bandage on his elbow in the picture to the left.  You can see the blood soaked cotton under the bandage.  He had just done that about 5 minutes before this picture was taken.  That was how he found out that his new bike does not have coaster breaks.  He stopped his old bike by pedaling backwards.  This bike has the hand brakes.  So he had an accident the first time his backpedaling didn’t stop him.  But the injuries never bother him much more than the time it takes to check out his new battle wound, and maybe going inside for a bandaid.  He loves to do all the tricks, like riding while standing on his seat.  I can’t imagine what he’ll do when he gets a chance to ride on a ramp.