Ditto the yay!
I saw someone using one of these today, and thought I'd share. She said that her first dd had a horrible time learning to ride without training wheels, so she decided to swear off for the rest of her children, and they use this instead:
http://www.amazon.com/Balance-Buddy-31264002-Adjustable/dp/B000MISWIWShe also said that using scooters helped them gain a sense of balance (but also gets them used to putting their foot on the ground...
)
I'll vouch for this item.
This is exactly what it took before my then-nine-year-old was willing to really learn. She, too, was a super-cautious kid; she had taken a single minor spill off of her little bicycle (with training wheels, no less) when she was about five, and then all but refused to learn after that.
On another, related note, we can vouch for the joys of Play-It-Again Sports for inexpensive kids' bicycles.
Balance Buddy = twenty bucks, two afternoons jogging at a local university campus with grassy commons and nicely paved flat pathways ~100 yards long, and virtually no tears at all. From anyone, I mean.
We used the incentive of a beautiful new Electra cruiser for her tenth birthday as an additional lure for learning. She loves that bicycle, and it should still fit her okay even when she's a young adult.
(While it is true that this is an "optional" activity-- if you happen to live in a very bike-centric area, as those of us on the West coast tend to, it becomes a significant social issue if you can't ride.)
