Great Memorial Day

The day started off with an early morning ride with Ben, riding around town and surveying some of the destruction from the previous nights thunderstorm. Unfortunately I forgot my camera. Overall it wasn't too bad and we only had to ride around downed limbs a few times. We stopped at the Mexican place on Wedgewood St. and O St, where there used to be a KFC. I had a bean taco and bean burrito and couldn't finish the latter. It was fairly tasty. We decided to check out the limestone portion of the Mo-Pac after the rain and rode out a bit past Walton. A bit soggy and a few downed trees along the way, but the weather was great this morning, so I didn't mind. After we turned around we rode back through downtown and then the rock island back home. Overall I'm estimating ~32 miles on the Salsa Mamasita.

When I got home I decided to take the Burley kid trailer out and take Gus and Max for a ride around the neighborhood to see how they do. That way I'm never far enough from home for it to really suck if there is a meltdown. Emma and Simon were anxious to join us so 5/7s of the Banta family went out riding around the neighborhood. Colonial Hills has some hills, especially in the context of 6 and 7 year olds on single speed 16" wheel and 20" wheel bikes. Simon has really taken a liking to his new $11 Toys 'R Us 20" wheel bike I purchased earlier this year. It seems to fit him well once he's going and today he really started moving. He would get out of the saddle and attack each hill and made really good time up them. He was regularly waiting for me and Emma at the top. Overall we rode around for ~20 minutes. Max and Gus did great sitting together in the trailer. However, when Max realized we were heading home he got angry that the ride didn't include a visit to a park, which the previous ride in the trailer did. Thankfully those types of outbursts are becoming less frequent.


You can see Max and Gus looking out of the side of the Burly as we depart.

After we returned and dealt with Max (i.e. gave him to Katie to deal with :), Emma, Simon and I decided to go to the grocery store to get some necessities. Sounds exciting, yes? Well, it was since it was our first trip to the grocery store via bicycle and a trailer. I took the Burley Nomad since I already had the Burley bracket on the Dos Niner from riding with the kid trailer. I took a few locks to secure all three bikes plus the Nomad. The ride there was very quick, since we live < 1 mile from Super Saver if you take the short cut from our neighborhood that goes behind the movie theater. We ended up purchasing 2 gallons of milk, 2 loaves of bread, 10 ears of corn, and some bananas. The Nomad had plenty of room to spare, I'm guessing we could have gotten at least twice as much stuff (by volume) without issue. I was also very pleased with how well the trailer towed with an actual load. I can't wait to do some longer distance errands with it.

After all that the three of us decided to do some more riding, but this time using the new Thule T2 bike rack and driving to 27th and Hwy 2 and then riding to the Zoo/Sunken Gardens. The Thule handled our three bikes extremely well. The three were Salsa Dos Niner w/ WTB Nanoraptors, 20" wheel TRU bike, and 16" wheel Trek. The Thule is able to handle this wide variety of sizes from the large (29er) to the small (16" Trek) with no problems in fit. We parked by Arby's at 27th and Hwy 2 and saw several other families either packing up or unpacking, as it was a beautiful day for riding. We quickly departed and headed North towards the Zoo.



As we were riding I decided to stick with Emma, as she's the less experienced rider, and let Simon do his own thing. As I stated before, he finally had taken to his larger bike and grew quite a lead on us. He always did a great job of stopping and waiting for us at crossings. At the Calvert crossing was the moment of the day, for me at least. There had been a lady riding behind us for a few minutes and we all stopped at that crossing. Once the coast was clear we all started and she started passing us on the left. Simon apparently didn't appreciate that and quickly increased his speed to match hers, as she was riding on the left. They kept this up for a good quarter of a mile and Simon finally decided to stop and wait for me and Emma. The lady was a good sport about it and even told him "Good Job" as he stopped to wait. A few crossings later another lady passed us as we were stopped for water and Simon actually caught up to her and passed her before getting to the next crossing, where he stopped and waited for us (again). I'd be lying if I denied having one of the biggest smiles on my face I've ever had after his riding today.

We finally got to Sunken Gardens and got off our bikes to take in the scenery. Lots of people were enjoying it today. Simon and Emma 'played wedding' where Katie and I got married, which was pretty cute. After a quick rest we decided to head back. Once again Simon would take the lead and ended up waiting for us at most crossings. He was ready to go further south when we got back to 27th and Hwy 2 but Emma was worn out from a day of riding. So we decided to call it a day and go home.