Utter Failures

When I was younger -- maybe 6 or 7 -- I learned to ride a bike. I think I must have been about that age because I remember Sarah being fairly young but I don't remember Charlotte being born yet, so we'll go with that. My mom must have been working part time because we went to a sitter's house during the summer. I don't remember how many days a week but regardless, we'd go to her house for the morning and early afternoon. The sitter's son was grown and out of the house but her daughter was in high school -- I want to say a junior or senior at the time. Sometimes she'd take us outside to play. So this particular day we were riding bikes and I decided to try riding without training wheels. Instead of learning in a more traditional way, for some reason, we decided that I'd start up at the top of their yard and ride down a huge incline toward the house and then turn at some point in there to keep going on a straighter path. To recap, the idea was