Six year olds can drive

I recently overheard a ski dad say if you don’t have the children racing on four wheels before kindergarten they won’t have a chance at dominating in motorsports. It got me wondering if we should understand teaching our young children to drive as a default safety requirement, like swim lessons?

And it’s not hard to implement driving opportunities for children! For those with profound aversion to the indoor amusement centers: rest assured that you can find open air racetracks. If you’re in the U.S., you may well have “kid karting” near you for little ones as young as five or so!

For those in New York tristate area, Monticello karting camp for grade-school-age kids could be paired with a pleasant excursion for the adults this summer. Your bambinos must be six years old and 46" tall to get behind the wheel.

Greater Bay Area parents can take advantage of the Sonoma Raceway. You have to be at least thirteen to participate in their karting instruction, where they can develop their instincts on California’s longest track. $595 gets you a full day of learning “racing lines, braking methods, acceleration, cornering forces and vehicle balance.” It’s explicitly for both budding racers as well as those looking to better their driving skills. As with Monticello, the setting is easy on the eyes for the chaffeur-parents.

Or perhaps you are parent to an actual licensed young adult and you are unimpressed with the rigor of their American driving instruction. You can readily tack-on sessions of “skid pad” training. (I found this out in a search I was doing for myself—I have started chasing conditions to ski in, and didn’t want my first experience losing traction to be on a cliff with my children in the back seat.)

Skid pads are surfaces in a driver training area that cause slipping, similar to rain, snow, and ice. SpeedSF regularly holds skid pad education days at the Sonoma Raceway, where licensed drivers can learn on an obstacle course. The next one is June 10; must be eighteen, but no special skill prerequisites. Maybe I’ll see you or your kid there this summer?

If you want to spend more money for a prepackaged summer camp-style experience with advanced instruction, places like BMW and Porsche have affiliated high-performance driver ed. (Spartanburg, SC, looks like the better BMW school site; it would take a special person to pay thousands to spend a day or two in the direct sun of Thermal, CA!)

Wouldn’t it be convenient if kids could learn through simulators? Sadly, a recent literature review of the impact of simulated driving education is not particularly promising.

On another note: I’ve only recently apprehended that ice skating does not have to be dreadfully indoors or loop within a diameter no broader than that of a Swedish maypole.

My research was inspired by the fact that despite cajoling and lessons, my kids won’t let me tempt them to drop in on weekends to skate the loud, windowless downtown Oakland Sharks Ice Rink. And though I love it there, it’s not like I entirely relish the noise and trapped-pretzel-warmer fumes that bring me back to summer days on the Port Jefferson—Bridgeport ferry. And of course all my best memories are skating outside!

So, I don’t know why it took me so long to realize I should Google “longest continuous trails to ice skate outdoors.” Here are some of the destinations that I have marked down for my family:

The dream North American destination is Lake Windermere in British Colombia (south of Banff and three-plus hours from the Calgary airport). The “Whiteway” is the groomed ice skating terrain—a world record holder at thirty-four kilometers (twenty-one miles)!1 If your family doesn’t all swoon for ice skating, there are also groomed trails for cross country and skate skiing. This video of skating on the lake sold me.

For New Englanders, there is the 4.5 mile groomed skating trail in Fairlee, Vermont. The lodge there, Lake Morey Resort, offers adjoining rooms and lakeside cottages, at prices that reflect the location’s remoteness.

If you are thrill-seeking and have older, athletic kids: There are way more dramatic ice skating landscapes available in the ungroomed—or “wild ice”—world. I wonder if my friends who bought a helmet for their infant to do light rock-climbing in the Dolomites will be tempted reading this. (When I texted them about my qualms about my kids skiing on glaciers this summer they sent me a recent photo of their own small children navigating a southern hemisphere glacier tied with ropes.) The Internet has many lists of entry-level “wild ice” opportunities, many of which have some kind of institution that monitors safe ice conditions. And here are backcountry skating backcountry skating tips for the hearty explorers among you!

What would make it worth traveling with kids to wild ice? To me, it would be the small subset of places where you have a chance of seeing something truly astonishing below you. Under the right conditions—clear waters, fast freezing—you can skate on a lake frozen to smooth glass and enjoy the glass-bottom boat view. Speaking of chasing conditions! You’ll have to set a Google alert for the just-right conditions (“ice window”) and jump on a plane. Here’s a once-in a decade video taken at Rabbit Lake in Alaska to illustrate.