Archive | May 2010

Bike to Work Day

This afternoon we biked to Ballard for the Bike to Work Day after party and the Kidical Mass ride. The weather wasn’t too bad when we arrived, but as soon as we hit the road for the group ride, it started raining soooo hard. We took cover under a bridge after a few blocks to put on our rain gear, but we were already drenched by that point.

The original plan was to ride west to secret beach for a picnic dinner, but the new plan was to head east (towards home, yay) and have dinner at Tacos Guaymas in Fremont. But a few blocks after the bridge I thought I heard Kim shout “hail!” and assumed Julian would only cancel the ride in the event of snow or hail. For the record, it wasn’t hailing, but it was awfully miserable out. It turns out Kim was shouting “Hales!” so we pulled over at Hales Ales and had a terrific time. I was initially upset that Dan couldn’t come along, but it worked out well because he drove over to rescue us after dinner and drinks. Everyone else was brave and biked home.

U-District Street Fair

The boys and I spent the first half of this gorgeous day at the U-District Street Fair. We tried something new and bungee’d the umbrella stroller into the bike trailer and I’m so glad I did so because it got very crowded as the day wore on. I’m not sure we’ll hit this event again, but we saw some good stuff. The bounce houses weren’t free so we skipped those, but we watched plenty of musicians, a tap dancer, balloon artists, and not quite as exciting: saw some giant chicken the website made a big deal about and spotted Dave Matthews (I think–it may have been some other smelly-looking dude).

After we walking the entire street fair, we continued downhill to Gasworks Park to watch boats and sea planes. Dan was able to take a break from weekend work and join us for a bit, too. After biking back up Stone (nonstop–yay!), I was too tired to ride one more block uphill to get to the house, so Dan headed home and the boys and I went six more flat blocks to the Green Lake playground.

Mother’s Day ride the sequel

We had a terrific day! We enjoyed our second annual Mother’s Day brunch at The Dish in Ballard. We even had the same table by the window as last time. Baby Rijder made the most of his first M-Day brunch and repeatedly spun in his high chair to flirt with diners and waitresses behind us. He may have convinced our previously-done-with-kids waitress to have a third baby.

After brunch we rode to the Ballard Farmers Market where D and B split an ice cream sandwich. We also had to find every booth with radishes–Brandt is way into radishes after recently reading some Peter Rabbit books. He has no desire to eat radishes, but he really likes to point at them. He also did a lot of horsey dancing in front of some street musicians. I thought we’d never pull him away from them, but eventually we got back to the bikes and made our way to the locks.

We had hoped to hang out on the grass at the locks for a while, but it’s just so covered in goose poo as to make it not worth staying long. But Brandt ran up and down the steep hills for a bit and we watched lots of boats make their way through. Baby Rijder found the bottom rung of the metal fence the perfect height for holding while standing. Unfortunately it also proved the perfect height for creating a big welt on his head while toppling. Thank goodness for sun hats and their lump-hiding properties.

We rounded out our big day at Golden Gardens beach. I almost had a chance to take a leisurely nap on the shady grass, but I made the mistake of announcing “Baby Rijder is asleep in the Burley” within Brandt’s hearing so he promptly shook his baby brother awake. It’s hard to be too upset when Brandt looks so surprised and excited as he says, “Hey, Baby Rijder woke up!” We met a 10-month-old baby boy who had just started walking. I tried to keep Baby Rijder from watching him, but I think he saw what was going on. The dad admitted he tried to prevent the baby from walking by pushing him down. That’s not the first time I’ve heard that one.

In other exciting Mother’s Day news: I made it up Stone! But that was only because my Bianchi city bike is in the shop finally getting tuned up so I was on my Specialized road bike. It’s so much easier to go uphill on a road bike with SPDs, though it was still harder than last July 4th on the city bike. Go figure. We each had a trailer and one kid and it worked out well. Once the boys can sit next to each other in the big trailer, I might do more road bike riding.