It is a lovely day here today and it seemed that all of Lyon were out and about. I was picnicing in the local park and watched with fascination a couple of different events that were going on.
Directly in front of us a family had strung up a tight rope and they were all practising hard, Mamon, Papa and their two daughters. It was quite amazing. There appears to be a technique just to get up and stand on the rope. After a couple of hours it appeared that the father and the older daughter had this sussed. Then to walk along the rope seemed to involve some manovre with the big toe but I wasn't close enough to see exactly what.
To my left there was a group of families with children in the 3-5 year age range and one bike. Yep, it was that time of teaching the children to ride without stabilisers. I really don't remember this episode of my childhood at all but I must have done it at some point as I now ride my bike around the streets all the time and don't worry about falling over. There seemed to be about 3 children taking in turns to 'ride' with various parents running alongside and shouting encouraging words 'Allez, ma puce!' 'C'est superb' etc. The parents also looked incredibly hot and sweaty (well it was about 26c). It amused me to think that the two sets of parents who did not own the bike, were probably cursing one set who had brought the bike along.

The thing that I did get from it all though was how easy it is for us to try something new, fail at it and walk away and yet all these people were showing me how important and how much pleasure you get from persisting and then succeeding - a little lesson I need in my life right now!