This is what took an extra ten minutes to leave the house today:

One kid snuck one dinosaur out so I had to let the other one go in and grab a dinosaur…but he came back with two…so the first kid had to go grab a horse. But finally we were on the road–to the new destination of Maple Leaf. I knew it would be all uphill, but we were on our way to claim a free rice cooker. The lengths I’ll go to for free stuff! I don’t think we’ll make this trek again–it was tough. The route I took up (recommended by Google maps) had great bike street markings most of the way.

I came back down on Roosevelt thinking I’d have a bike lane, but it was just sharrows until 73rd. Though we got a lovely view of the water tower this way.

And it was convenient to pop into Ride Bicycles and say hi. Christiaan and crew were getting their Xtracycle Radish ready to put on display at Ten Thousand Villages, the unique handmade fair trade gift shop. I’ve never been, but seeing the Radish in such a cool setting sounds like a great excuse to finally make it over.

Then three days in the works, we finally made it to Trader Joes. I saw Car Free Days Tim’s Big Dummy parked out front so we located him inside to see if he had a shopping cart loaded to the brim to pile on his rig. Sadly, it was just a small trip for him. For us, too. I could have fit four bags, even with the bulky rice cooker, but we just got two bags worth of stuff.

That’s Paul sweeping the sidewalk in the background. He runs a bike-based business selling foam-mounted photo prints outside Trader Joes. He’s got a lot of nice bike and local landscape shots.

Just one last quick stop on our way to drop off our cargo–I’d just read about Scratch Deli food truck on Thrillist and wanted to check it out. Wine World is easily visible from the street, but I’ve never noticed a food truck by it. Turns out one has to turn up 4th and find the parking lot behind the building. Food trucks are very convenient when biking with kids and it looks delish so we’ll be back to actually buy something.

Then we headed down to Westlake Park for the Blue Trees. Soon we’ll head view the ones along the Burke-Gilman Trail (near NE Bothell Way and 80th Ave NE in Kenmore), but today was perfect for Westlake Park since the Easter Bunny was in the area, too.

In even more food truck news, we passed Snout & Co. and Skillet on our way to the trees. It was 1:45 and when I checked the bunny’s whereabouts on the Downtown Seattle Twitter I saw “Easter Bunny will be at Waterfront Park til 1:30, then back to Westlake Park 2:30-3:30pm! Even bunnies need a lunch break!” so headed back to Snout & Co. but they were in the process of closing early having sold all their food. Today’s nice weather brought too many people out.

The trees were striking, but it was hard to stay in the one spot for 45 minutes waiting for the bunny. At first I thought Fridays downtown are exceptionally colorful, but it turns out the Sakura-Con anime convention is in town. I learned this when I asked Rainbow Brite what was going on. There were only two people who I really wasn’t sure whether or not they were part of the convention.

Other exciting downtown sights were a horse-mounted policeman, a guy riding a bike with his cat on his back, and this pedicab who loves shouting, “Hey! You’re stealing my business!” every time he sees me.

Heading towards home through South Lake Union Park we noticed an unfamiliar boat, the Olympus, so we rode alongside to admire it and appreciate how gorgeous the day had turned.

Our last stop of the big day was the elementary school by our house to meet a friend. She’s loaning us a 12″ pedal bike. I’ve decided that if the big kid doesn’t want to start pedaling, I’ll just teach the little one first. My younger brother learned to ride a bike before I did, so it’s only fitting. The kid loaning us the bike just upgraded from his twelve-incher to twenty. He just fits on his new bike and is so fast. And look at him threading the needle through the two mamabikes:

I started out trying to tow the bike with the rear wheel out, but it didn’t work very well (maybe because the rear tire is flat, but most likely because I didn’t secure it well) so I ended up putting the whole thing in the FreeLoader like I do the balance bikes.

But much more impressive was the setup of the Madsen bucket bike for their ride home: Radio Flyer Scoot About bungeed to the front rack (frame-mounted front racks are awesome–they can carry so much weight!), two kids and the 20″ bike in the bucket.

Today’s miles: 17.4 miles
April cumulative: 89.6 miles