All over the city, people in love with bicycling got up early this morning to attend the annual Group Health Bike Everywhere Breakfast (formerly Bike to Work Breakfast). This is my fifth time attending, starting in 2012 when I didn’t have a choice ;) since we were in the video.

This year’s video was about the free group rides program and one of my Kidical Mass rides, filmed back in August, was part of it!

New for me this year was biking to the breakfast with friends. I was seated at Haley Keller’s table, member of the Cascade Bicycle Club board, co-owner of Peddler Brewing Co, and all-around awesome person. She orchestrated a 6:30 a.m. meeting in Ballard and then 6:40 a.m. meeting in Fremont for riding over in a group.

And we took the new one-block 7th Avenue cycletrack. That was exciting! In Seattle we get excited about one-block infrastructure because we don’t have things that connect yet anyway ;)

The breakfast was fun and I got to see a lot of friends and make some new ones, but unfortunately not see each and every person I had hoped to see.

With Kidical Mass on my mind, I met up with my friend Brad and did a route test for Saturday’s Earth Day Kidical Mass. We usually each ride Surly Big Dummies with two kids, but for this ride, I was on my single speed cyclocross bike (a reasonable choice given the flat route and the gravel portion of the ride) and Brad was on his recumbent (a very unreasonable choice given it has the skinniest tires of all his bikes and he prefers to use it out of the city). Needless to say, it went great. We saw turtles in the Center for Urban Horticulture and decided to route the ride by the runnel (optional!) because I think the kids will like using it.

After school, I took the kids and Pixie to fetch the tandem bike from R+E Cycles, now with kidback kiddie cranks back on. The mile-and-a-half walk over took forever. My big kid rode his bike, my little kid kicked a small basketball the whole way, and Pixie valiantly panted along in the 80-degree heat.

My little guy was uncharacteristically eager to help pedal and insisted on doing all the work on any uphill so I’m starting to really look forward to camping this weekend. He’s been talking more often about being in le Tour de France when he’s bigger so perhaps he means to start helping pedal regularly. My bigger kid asked when I would adjust the stoker seat for him to use so I should probably let him try at some point…it’s just that I can’t lower the seat of the Burley Piccolo trailer bike low enough for the little kid to use (due to the rear rack getting in the way) and possibly more so because he’s not as focused a stoker as his little brother.

One more thing:

I didn’t just ride two different bikes today, I rode three different bikes today! A friend came over right after school so her daughter could test ride our two Islabikes. She’s outgrown her 16″ and we have a large 20″ and a 24″. Since the kids were biking up and down the block, I decided my friend and I should do the same and we took turns spinning the tiny cranks of Gran Furismo, my minibike (it’s covered in blue fur).

When people ask me how many bikes I own (as my friend did today), I usually deflect with a, “Freak bikes don’t count, right?” Because Gran Furismo is really just for fun, not an official member of my useful fleet.

30 Days of Biking stats:
April 20 miles: 22.7
April cumulative miles: 334.2