30 Days of Biking 2014 – Day 4

The morning was spent on foot–walked two blocks to bring the six-year old to school and then walked a mile to a playdate and back. Probably more than we normally walk in a week! After that we needed to stick close to home because the sewer guys working next door were going to start pouring concrete to patch their big hole in the sidewalk soon, but we snuck in a few laps around the block. Here’s the “velodrome” around the corner:

I didn’t want to carry the Big Dummy over the grass around the construction and I was too lazy to reset the rear wheel I somehow knocked off my road bike so I used my cyclocross bike. My pit crew wasn’t as quick as normal, distracted by the digging and cement mixing behind him. (I should have sneakily swapped the order of the pictures to make it look like we aired up before our first lap around the block.)

Our fourth and final lap was sans shoes for one of us. Turns out it hurts. I was riding my Time pedals with flip flops and was hardly in a position to lecture.

Eventually the hole was filled in and covered up so we loaded up for school pickup with all three bikes, snacks, and sand toys.

This is pretty exciting: the kids’ old bikes’ brakes weren’t strong enough for the hill down from school:

But I couldn’t convince them to ride the second block:

Down on the Burke-Gilman Trail we saw a Peddler Brewing Company keg delivery. It’s gradually getting easier riding with both kids on the busy trail. They get a lot of smiles and encouraging comments and are thankfully great at keeping right. I love hearing walkers giggle after hearing their chirps of “On your left!” But there are also multiple stops for water sips on sections with no shoulder and the occasional unsanctioned race that always ends with punching or scratching.

At Gas Works Park we met a lovely family with a Yuba Mundo longtail and three kids. One kid had scootered on the way there, but they squeezed all three on comfortably for the trip home.

We spent a long time in the sand pit and the biked separately up Kite Hill. The four-year old on his single-speed 16-inch bike had a stop a couple times, but with practice I think he could get all the way up.

I had to carry the four-year old and his bike for the hills on the way home. Here we are heading up the 12.3% hill the boys chose to walk down earlier. I heard a “Woo hoo!” from the trail which I assume was directed at me. (The six-year old was walking his bike up, otherwise I would have figured it was for him.)