Speed Bumps for Bicycles

Road Blocks for Bicycles?
Winter may have Christmas and Summer may have beach vacations but Spring and Fall, they are the real winners in my book. These seasons are not known for extremes like freezing cold or blazing heat but rather great weather for being and playing outside. They are perfection. Cool breezes, warm sunshine, and endless amounts of daylight.
My family and I have been holed up playing Wii for three and a half long months, pretending to be playing tennis and volleyball for hours on end. That, thankfully, is now over.
It was officially warm this weekend. All week long we talked about our Saturday outing. We were loading up the bikes and picnic basket and spending a long day on the trails.
My eight year old got a big girl bike for Christmas and has been practicing hand braking, gears, and hills relentlessly in between snow storms. My husband also got a new bike for Christmas which meant that I no longer had to haul the bike trailer with our 6 and 2 year olds. WOO HOO! I was dreaming of how much more fun I was going to have without an extra 105 pounds connected to my rear wheel.
Spring is like a re-birth for us each year. We try to think of ways to beat the Winter doldrums and stay active in the cold, but ultimately get bored and lazy. Then the temp hits 65 and you cannot drag us back inside. Catch, soccer, bikes, grilling, or just reading a book on front porch. We become those active people you see in commercials selling McDonalds and Sun Block.
So like I said, we were excited. We talked about our little trip, bought snacks, went to bed early: the works. Saturday morning the girls and I get everything ready inside while my loving and patient husband spends over an hour trying to get the new bikes to fit properly on our old bike rack. Then we were off.
We have now spent approximately 3 hours talking about our trip and two hours loading up for it at this point in time.
We drove 30 minutes and spill out of the car in an excited burst. Walter unloads while I haul every one into the bathrooms to the chorus of , “ but I DON’T have to pee”. And yes, every single one of them peed. I get back and there are bikes laying everywhere (why don’t nice bikes come with kickstands but cheap bikes do? I don’t understand) and Walter is growling at the bike rack. The kids are bouncing around like automated pogo sticks making the situation more tense and then it happened. . . I tried to help.
Yup. Instead of following our tried and true routine of taking the kids down to the lake while Daddy wrestled with the technical stuff, I started to assemble the bike trailer. Guess how long it takes me to break a bike trailer? That is right, after 5 and half hours of bike ride preparation I broke the trailer in less than 45 seconds.
Walter then spent another thirty minutes trying to re-assembled the spring thingy that busted everywhere when I touched it, excersizing his right to free speech before spending another 20 minutes re-loading the bikes back onto the rack. So now we have worked 6 and a half hours and ridden 0 minutes.
We then took a very quiet (Walter’s right to free speech was overridden by Golden Rule #2, if you don’t have anything nice to say then say nothing at all)walk around the lake (which was lovely) and headed home.
All in all I have to say that although our day did not turn out anything like I had planned, I was very proud of our kids for bouncing back so easily and maintaining a good attitude through-out the whole ordeal and that was worth a lot in my book.
Next week is another Spring rite, The Cherry Blossom Festival, wish us luck.