The Cycle Begins

One of my favorite things about our new home is sidewalks. While in most ways White Salmon--despite its lack of sidewalks--was infinitely more walkable (everything was close enough and traffic was light), we've found Milpitas to be more bikeable. The sidewalks create clear and safe boundaries for the kids, and there's a park with a pedestrian/bike-only entrance and completely paved loop path at the end of our street. Also, it's much flatter here; some of those steep hills in White Salmon and Bingen were just not conducive to biking--at least not at my level. So, really, maybe it's not the sidewalks that I like so much, but rather all of the things that go together to making it so easy to ride bikes here.

I've long told Damon that I want us to be a biking family. I love riding bikes but have found it difficult to do much of it since having children. I never was never ready to commit to the purchase or physical strain of a trailer, and even if I had a couple kids in the trailer, the older ones weren't ready to ride along where we could go. But, now, the time is here. Since moving to California, Gunnar has become completely independent on his bike (when we got here, he could ride a 2-wheeler, but still had trouble starting up on his own), meaning there's just one family member who'd be left out on a bike ride.

So, a few weeks ago I finally did what I'd been contemplating for months: I bought a bike seat for my bike for carrying Holly. We installed it immediately and took it out for a spin right away. Holly's first words: "This is fun!"  And I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to ride with the extra weight. I'd anticipated a period of balance-adjustments, but really didn't notice much of a difference at all.  Away we went!

We take advantage of the bike lanes, too (meaning not just sidewalks). Twice now, Adah, Maggie, and I have ridden over a mile along a somewhat busy road to a Saturday morning farmers' market. In these photos, we were about to embark on our second trip, this time taking Holly along.  It's a bit of a trek for the girls on their one-speed bikes, but they make it and then help carry home our purchases in their backpacks. I'm so proud of them, and they also feel such accomplishment for going on such a big ride and a family errand.

I'm not quite ready to take Gunnar out on the busy streets, and he was pretty disappointed that we were leaving him home with Daddy that Saturday morning.

 

Still, we have managed at least one whole-family bike ride through neighborhoods and parks, and I'm trying to take Holly and Gunnar on frequent rides, even if it's just to the park down the block and then around the loop in the park a few times. We even rode bikes to take Adah to school two times during a week of early releases (meaning we had extra time to pick her up via bike and then come home and get in the car to go get Maggie). Our next step is to get a bike rack for the car so that we can actually take our bikes to other places where we can find longer trails.

We're beginning to be that biking family I've always hoped we'd be!