Kid Friendly

Oregon is amazingly kid-friendly, with skate parks and stuff to do all over.
McMinnville has two skate parks, Newberg has one that's in the top five worldwide, and Lincoln City has a nice two-part park. The Newberg park is right next to the Chehalem Valley BMX track, where Max raced his first BMX moto last night.

He came in 2nd and got a big trophy because it was his first race. Generally they give out medals on Wednesdays and trophies on Saturday. The announcer called him "Mad Max", which is obvious, but still funny.

Racing only takes about an hour and a half. We left at eight p.m., right after Max got his trophy. I hope that wasn't a terrible breach of etiquette.

It was really fun to watch, and Max liked the racing a lot, but hated the noise of the gate coming down. An air compressor keeps the gate up, and when it drops there's a loud FFSSHT and a clang. The first time, Max was so stunned that he just rolled down the hill to the first jump. The second time, I was holding him up by the back tire with my knees, and when the gate went down he didn't go anywhere at all. Oops. I moved and yelled "Pedal all the way to the hill!" like the other kids' dads.

Max was the only kid there without a full-face helmet and 'racing clothes'. He's very concerned about image, but I'm more concerned about his bike. He was also the only kid on an old-school fat-tired BMX tank. The other racers all had 'minis', which run narrow slicks or semi-knobbies. They also weigh a lot less and look a lot cooler, with gear more appropriately-sized for a five year old. The cranks on Max's Schwinn are 170mm long, which is the same as my road bikes.

Word is you can buy a good mini for about $100 on Craigslist. I want two, so I can set one up with the narrowest drop bars I can find, and maybe a fork with a front brake and an offset appropriate for road-riding. Maybe one day Kogswell will make a kid's bmx-to-roadbike conversion kit.

The BMX track is really cool just to ride around on, but the fact that there's an active racing scene there is phenomenal. The first time we went to Newberg it was to skate, and we went back every day for a week, taking Max's 16" Gamma-Ray. He'd skate for a while, bike for a while, skate for a while, then have one of those awful Power-Ades that taste like greasy kool-aid and stain his mouth like he's a vampire that's been feeding on astronauts with Tang for blood.

For all the kid stuff, I expected more places for dogs. All the big parks, frisbee-golf fields and skateparks, but no dog parks. California has a ton, and Killingsworth Park in Portland has a big off-leash dog area, but it seems like Yamhill County has none. I think it's because people around here don't treat their dogs as kids.
They have kids for that.