Big bikey day today! Poor Dan had to work all day (as well as yesterday–boo), but I really wanted to check out the Cascade Bike Expo so I made the ride solo (sans Dan, but avec kiddos, that is) to Ballard to meet up with Totcycle/Kidical Mass to ride with them down to the ferry terminal. Things didn’t start out so well as I left the house ten minutes later than I had hoped to and then got a bit turned around between the end of the Burke-Gilman trail and Ballard Commons Park, so by the time I arrived, I was ten minutes late and the park was empty. I knew Julian had emailed out the route, but I thought by the time I pulled it up on my iPhone the peleton would be far far ahead of me. I definitely wasn’t heading straight back home (because I was way too winded to do so), but before I could decide what to do a guy rode by and said, “Hey, are you looking for Kidical Mass? They just left–thataway!” So I rushed off and caught sight of them and quickly caught up. Turned out the helpful dude was one of the dads on the ride whose wife thought she had forgotten to lock the door and sent him home to check. And not only was he helpful, but also hip: he saw Brandt’s necklace and said, “Hey! Is that iCarly?” They have a seven-year-old daughter, if you couldn’t guess.

It took a while to walk our bikes through the locks (or risk a steep fine) so by the time we arrived at the expo, Ryan Leech was almost done with his mountain bike stunts, but we checked out the show for an hour and made it back to the feature area to see the artistic cyclists from Germany. They were awesome! Check out the videos. And they’ll be back next year. They were very generous after the show and let everyone ride their bikes and happily posed Brandt on the handlebars. The show itself was very cool and much nicer than last year’s soggy Magnuson Park expo. I discovered the very cool Momentum magazine (I might subscribe since the gal at the booth said I was cute).

On the way home we saw a very big boat come through the locks and a train on the nearby tracks. And just to make the day even more perfect, we stopped (per Brandt’s adamant request) for fries at Lockspot Cafe. I couldn’t make it up Stone again, but I’d like to share the blame with my bike this time, as it kept falling out of gear. So we’ll both have to tune up/get in shape for next time.