Saturday morning bike ride...

I think it started way back in my childhood viewings of the Sound of Music - the scene where Maria and the children are riding down the road on their bicycles wearing their new playclothes made of draperies. No, I don't have a dream of my kids running around in curtain knickers (although I'm not afraid to recycle old fabric).  But leisurely weekend bike rides as a family?  It's just one of those things I have always pictured doing with my family.

Now, I have to admit this "goal" was a little funny.  Two months ago, Max had a 12 inch bike with no training wheels and Luke had a 10 inch with training wheels.  That was it.  Not the equipment of quality family rides.  And for those of you who don't live in the PNW, you may not realize just how crazy and sacrilegious this was. So we've worked to remedy this - we've geared up.  Dan and I each bought a bike, Max has moved up to a 16 inch, and we found a tag-along on craigslist for Luke. We even picked up a bike rack so we can haul our bikes around to some of the great paths in the area.

We took our inaugural ride a couple of weeks ago - 6 miles on the Springwater trail.  We only planned on going 4, but I missed our turn to our midpoint stop, so we went out an extra mile before heading back.  With a bagel stop to refuel at the city park, and lots of greetings from other riders and runners along the path, it was the perfect start to our rides.

Today we decided to take another ride - a little shorter this time, since Max was pretty worn out after the first one.  (After all - the goal is to get them to love riding so they want to do it more often.) But the weather?  Not exactly cooperative.  It was sprinkling as we headed out of the driveway, and both boys were pretty resistant to the whole idea.  And as we unloaded the bikes, it really started to rain. We decided to give it a shot, anyway.

Within 2 minutes, it was pouring.  The boys were quickly getting soaked, and I could sense we were close to mutiny.  Time to pump it up - I was going to take a lesson from my dear friend, Beth, and we were going to "fake it till we make it."  So I started laughing and shouting about how much fun it was to ride in the rain.  I drove us through a big puddle and acted my silliest.  Dan saw where I was headed with this, and played along.  And after 30 seconds?  Both boys were giggling and talking about how much fun riding in the rain was. We ended up doing a 5 mile ride, soaking wet, with the trail almost to ourselves, and plenty of slugs to dodge.  And back at the car, both boys piped up to thank us for a "great ride in the rain".

We weren't exactly singing Do-Re-Mi, and the sun wasn't beating down on our flowing golden hair.  But it was wonderful, just the same.