A Bike Story

What an absolutely wonderful weekend we enjoyed as a family. I’m not sure why it was so much better than any other weekend aside from the fact that the sun was out, or maybe I should say it wasn’t raining at least.

To expand Henry’s love of bike riding, we thought it would be a good idea to start doing some family rides around our area. This is so much easier than it actually sounds. First, our bikes looked like they had been used as armor in Iraq. Flat tires, spider webs, loose parts, rust…you get the picture. I spent a good portion of Friday night cleaning bikes and our bike trailer – which was home to many webs, small critters, dirt and who knows what else.

Bike Maintenance Trip #1: Nate went to the sporting goods store to buy a bike pump…which I’d like to point out he got quite a weasel-like deal. He picked up the $39.99 pump, which he thought was the $19.99 pump. And when he told the store he felt the pump was mislabeled, he got the $39.99 pump for a mere $19.99. Well done, Nate.

After cleaning the bike trailer to the point that you could eat off of the tires (Charlie actually tried), we tried to attach it to my bike. Mind you, it was attached to my bike for 3+ years. We only recently unattached it when we moved last October. When we unattached it, we misplaced the “coupler plate” (Impressed I know this? This is the result of much cussing when I thought we were so close to a family ride that I had to do my internet research to see what the hell we were actually missing!). We were missing a coupler plate. It is the coupler plate that stood between me and my family bike ride.

Bike Maintenance Trip #2: Same day as Trip #1, back to the sporting good store to find one of two things. (1) A coupler plate (which we were dreaming if we thought they’d sell a single coupler plate!) or (2) Something else to tow Charlie in. We went with #2 since #1 wasn’t an option at Dicks and we (ok I) was hell bent on a freaking family bike ride.

Here were our options for Charlie. The “Kia” model baby seat which he would fit in until he hits 40 lbs and was selling for the low, low price of $49.99, OR, the “Bentley” model baby seat which changes his diaper while he is riding, has a built-in camelback for water, probably performs a Swedish massage and likely also includes a built in nursery rhyme ipod for the not-so-low price of $129.99. We were looking for the “Honda” model, but Honda wasn’t an option. We weren't leaving empty-handed, damn it. We went Kia.

By the time we got home from Trip #2, it was dark and too late to assemble the Kia, so we danced a jig to distract the kids until the next morning.

The next morning, Nate, smelling the hell bentness I was excreting through my pores, started assembling the Kia at 9:00am only to find that the main Kia bolt that attaches the whole seat to my frame wasn’t going to work with what my bike had to offer. It was a, how do they say, “square peg, round hole” kind of problem. This, of course, led to:

Bike Maintenance Trip #3: The Bike Gallery. Let’s just say they only service “Bentleys” here and they were complete bike snobs. The moment they laid eyes on my motley crew they knew we weren’t direct blood decedents of Lance Armstrong and decided then and there that we were only allowed to drink from the non-Lance blood water fountains. I’ll just leave it at, they weren’t helpful.

We took a much needed lunch break and gorged, no literally, gorged on burritos from our new favorite Mexican restaurant, Qdoba. Not only is it good, the kids eat free on the weekend. We are really starting to get the hang of this “exploiting the kids” thing!

Later that afternoon, Nate got back to work on making the “square peg” round. That’s right! He started drilling and drilling and drilling and shaving and shaving until the square peg actually fit in the round hole! He was a miracle worker! Safe? Probably not. Will do? Yes. And finally, late Saturday night, we had the Kia sitting pretty on the back of my bike. We did a test ride in the driveway with Charlie buckled in and since it didn’t fall off my bike, we declared it a success! Of course, it was way past dinner time at this point, so we had to start jigging again and PROMISED that we’d take the kids out on a freaking family bike ride the next day.

And we finally did.

It was the scariest thing I’ve ever exposed my kids to. It was me and Charlie leading the way. Henry behind me and Nate bringing up the rear. Actually, Nate spent the entire ride walking his bike because Henry went so slow that Nate couldn’t balance his bike (after Henry fell in the roadside ditch, he was a little nervy and didn’t want to let loose on the pedals)….so Nate walked his bike next to Henry. I’m pretty sure Nate said “We’re going back now” three times in the ¼ mile that we pedaled. We eventually made it to the park next to our house and celebrated our adventure. We watched our boys play pretend pirate ship games on the play structure and listened to them squeal at bat-like decibels with pure excitement. It was beautiful.

The ride home was completely uneventful and it seems Henry was finally in his bike riding groove and only declared that “my legs hurt” during the last 200 meters of our ride. I’m pretty sure this means that our Henry has crossed over into Boy Hood, though I’m not sure he understands the significance of this adventure. On this adventure, he listened, he followed instruction, he didn’t whine, he toughed out a fall into a ditch and he pushed through the leg burn. But the only thing he had to say to me when our ride was over was “See Mommy? I didn’t run into any cars!” And he has no idea how much that actually means to me.