It’s April! That means 30 Days of Biking and biking every day and hopefully blogging about it each day.

Today threatened to be my first day of the month with no reason to ride and I didn’t want to risk messing up 30 Days of Biking so I convinced myself I should route test a new hill for the weekly ride from the dentist’s. I don’t know why I feel the need to find hilly routes for us–my friends seem to like riding up mountains, but I know for a fact they also like long flat rides. They’ve been riding together for years and years and train for centuries (100-mile rides) so I guess I feel a little out of my depth. I don’t know how my finding new routes up big hills helps with that, but that’s what I’m doing. Except I don’t want to take them on the route I tested today–it was too much.

Apparently hearing about a mountain nearby and then looking for random people’s routes up it on Ride with GPS doesn’t necessarily yield the perfect ride. That random person might just be a hill-climbing beast. Also, I don’t know how to look at a map and tell if I’ll like a route. I see the hill profile and the numbers, but it’s just wiggly lines to me. Now I’m noticing that there was a 12.8% climb and several 10% climbs so I know for in the future those are numbers I’ll want to avoid. However, today I rode my Straggler rather than my road bike, and while I may have disliked the ride on the lighter bike, too, it wouldn’t have been quite as hard. And can I blame a 48-hour-old Moderna vaccine? I dunno. Oh, and Pixie came along and she’s put on a bit of weight lately so I had a heavy basket. So many excuses! My heart hasn’t pounded as hard as it did climbing the biggest hill in I don’t know how long.

And it turns out I didn’t need to make an excuse to get myself out today after all, because later I rode one flat mile with Pixie and just one kid (still working on getting them both out of the house and on their bikes) to pick up a pizza. Pizza is easier without Pixie so it can ride in or atop the basket, so today got me thinking about putting a milk crate or other bin on my deck. I rarely carry the kids, but I don’t feel ready to get rid of the Xtracycle Mini Magic Carpet pads on my deck and bolt a bin on. I think I could run straps or zip ties through a bin and attach it on top of the pads. This would also work well on the days I fill more than five grocery bags at the store. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for free milk crates.

Today’s miles: 14.9
Total April miles: 495.7