Today marks the first day of 30 Days of Biking round two, an event in which [mostly Minnesotans] pledge to ride their bikes every day of the month. I’m excited to give it a go, though a camping trip and a possible San Diego excursion might prove challenging.

We decided to start small and just rode a mile and a half around Green Lake to PCC Natural Market to score a free piece of fruit for each kid and pick up the Live at KEXP CD. I ended up buying a few extra items and Brandt didn’t want to carry the grocery sack–he was too busy with his free banana in one hand and leafy branch in the other. The straps on my canvas bag weren’t long enough to hang over the windshield (not pretty, but it’s worked in the past) so I resorted to wearing the bag like a baby in my ring sling. I leave it slung over my shoulder while riding anyway so I figured I didn’t look much funnier than normal.

Blog entries are no fun without photographic evidence so I asked a stranger to please take a picture of us on the way home. Not excited about the prospect of approaching strangers every day, but I could stand being a bit more outgoing. Back on the path, I fielded a phone call from my friend in Florida–who was calling me from her beach cruiser. A bike-to-bike phone call! I pulled over to talk so people wouldn’t look at me funny. She was riding to her son’s preschool to pick him up quickly by bike rather than wait an hour and a half in the minivan pickup line. I’m seeing this school pickup solution more and more…and by “seeing this” I mean reading about it in friends’ Facebook statuses.

After a nap we headed back out for Brandt’s 30 Days of Balance Biking ride. We had noticed some awesome tree roots on the south side of the lake on our way home this morning and I promised Brandt we’d check them out. Warmed up on the roots, we crossed the street to the skatepark in Woodland Park to see if Brandt could handle any of the adjacent dirt bike jumps. He was able to make it up and down the smaller hills, but quickly lost interest in favor of making snow angels in a large pile of sand. Baby Rijder had a blast watching the skaters and eating rocks.