I think I figured out a better way to teach kids to ride a bicycle than the way my parents taught me. Here’s the recipe:

1. Take the pedals off the bicycle using a wrench.

2. Make sure the seat height is set so that they can set their feet firmly on the ground, but no lower.

3. Take them to some place that has a gentle slope.

4. Tell them to mount the bicycle and push themselves down the slope with their feet. When they built a bit of speed they should lift their feet and see how long they can cruise without their feet touching the ground.

5. After a while they should be able to navigate 10-20 meters without using their feet for support.

6. Put the pedals back on the bicycle, have them do the same thing as before but by putting their feet on the pedals.

7. Have them to turn the pedals while they are going down the slope. Congrats, your kid just learned to ride a bike.

I’ve used this technique to teach my 7-year old son and my 5-year old daughter how to do it. It took my son about an hour and my daughter a bit more than two hours.

Side note: Training wheels are useless. If they are in the same plane as the bike’s tires, then they will lift the back wheel off the ground if the pavement is not perfectly flat and the kid will be stuck. They make the bicycle unstable in corners because the kid can’t lean. They suck. If your kid is too young to ride without them get them a tricycle.

My colleague, Laza found a nasty leak in WinForms last week. It seems that if you turn on the AllowItemReorder property of the ToolStrip class, this class will stay rooted forever and will never be collected, together with whatever it’s referencing, which is usually the containing window due to event bindings.

The problem is due to an obvious bug in the drag & drop unhooking logic. If you want to work around it either implement your own drag & drop or use stupid reflection tricks to make it happen.