dynamic elf

And this is why I like sharrows and not bike lanes:



So my old pink horns finally gave up the ghost a couple of months ago, and I didn't get around to putting my new (bedazzled!) ones on my helmet until the beginning of this month. And it really does make such a difference! Cars are more polite when I'm wearing a ridiculous outfit. Also, they shout awesome things rather than hurling invective. The best one so far has been the BMW that rolled down the window to shout out, "Skol!"

Also sort of on the subject of biking, an old link I got from starphire on Daniel Kish, the blind man who uses echolocation to ride his mountain bike. So cool.

So, it was theoretically my LEAST favorite weather to bike in this morning: 30ish, precipitating, damp enough to fog up my glasses, and windy enough to be unpleasant on bare eyeballs. But in reality I had a lovely ride in. Wearing the perfect clothing made me warm and toasty, which is a good start. The snowflakes were pretty, and not wet enough to be aggravating on my glasses. A guy stopped me to compliment my braids and ask directions, just friendly, and I had an answer, which made me feel good. I'd put my iphone on speaker mode and tucked it speakers-up into my bra, so I had music playing on my ride but not loudly enough to be distracting or bad. I sang along. Nothing special happened. It's nice when an experience can feel transcendentally wonderful simply by not being awful.

( minor gear notes: gloves, tights )

Despite my awful (and frankly kind of debilitating) sunburn, dilletante and I managed to get N on the trail-a-bike on Tuesday and out for our first family bike tour.

Let me say that again, because I've been waiting to for years: FAMILY BIKE TOUR.

It was a little more modest than we'd originally planned, of course. That's how these things go. We had thought it would be fun to take all day Tuesday to bike along the commuter rail down to Providence, get a hotel, and take the train back the next day. After all, on a tandem, D and I have extra power -- more than enough to tow a little girl -- which makes us limited only by her attention span. And that attention span has recently proven itself to be rather long for trips she's motivated to take. It turns out that the promise of spending the night in a hotel with a pool is a strong motivator, so I didn't have any trouble conceiving of her taking four or five two-hour chunks of bike trip.

There were two problems, though: (1) she'd never been on a tagalong bike before, and (2) I had to sleep all morning because of the goddamned sunburn. Also, as it turned out, (3) we were a little bit petrified to take her on the road, despite having thousands and thousands of bike miles under our wise parental belts. OK, and also (4) we had the inevitable mechanical failures and setbacks. Four problems. But! We conquered them, threw some clothes and bathing suits in a little backpack, and set out on our newly-minted 12-mile journey to the end of the Minuteman bike trail.

At first, Natalie was a little frightened. After all, even a slow ride on the back of a tandem is a lot faster than she ever goes on the tricycle in the backyard at preschool. This caused her to shift wildly from side to side which (as you can guess if you've ever captained a tandem) made the handling and steering go from "tricky" to extremely difficult. So we walked up the hill near our house, got back on, and coasted down the other side. By the time we had covered the two-ish miles to Davis Square, mostly by protected bike path, she had learned to relax, try to balance, and just enjoy herself.

Heartened, we kept our curious bike train moving on down the path, and N began to get up enough confidence to start pedaling rather than just riding. Unfortunately, she chose a bad moment to do this, and fell halfway off the bike as we went over two big bumps. Since she only fell halfway, she got her leg stuck against the moving wheel and thereby got a big abrasion on her thigh. Poor bean. We cleaned it off as best we could, patched it up, and cuddled her on the grass in the park behind Alewife. She vowed never to get on the bike again. I asked her to get up just so I could take one picture, which I would then show to dancingwolfgrrl so that she would say "OOH WOW!". N agreed. Here it is:



Once on the bike, she consented to keep going, so go we did. We made a game out of calling bumps: when my front wheel hit a bump, I'd say "Badump!", which would then chain back with D and N each calling "badump!" as their respective wheels went over it. This gave us a game to play and also gave N a bit of warning to hang on. It wasn't long before she was yelling about how happy she was and how wonderful it was to be biking. Too true!

We sailed over the 128 overpass on our bikes, waved at the cars, and turned off the path to check into our "POOL HOTEL". The pool was closed for the night, but she was not fazed; we ran around and ate delivery Thai food and D told her stories at bedtime since we hadn't brought any books. Later, after she was asleep, we lured zsquirrelboy to sit outside the hotel room door and play Chrononauts with us in the hallway until there were noise complaints and we were forced back inside the room. The next day, we had a lazy and wonderful ride back: we stopped in Lexington center for lunch, Arlington center for ice cream, and stopped at a little pond to run around for no reason:



Natalie, being tallish, articulate, and capable, was mistaken for a 5-year-old (she's 3). I could have made the same mistake myself a few times with the way she took to this crazy biking business. We called out bumps, yelped at our echoes under bridges and tunnels, sang songs together, listened to made-up stories, told jokes, collected comments from other bikers, and just generally had a marvelous time.

More, please.

So, tonight, miz N rules-lawyered me for the first time. The girls were playing at the base of the stairs while starphire and I hung out and watched. S was jumping up and down in a bouncy chair, and N was running about doing, y'know, whatever it is she does, when she got it in her head to go upstairs.

Me: No, Natalie, we're not going upstairs right now. We're going to stay down here and play.
N: *thinks about this*
Me: Come down off the stairs, please.
N: *sits down on the first stair*
Me: Thank you! That's fine, you can sit on the first stair.
N: *stands up on the first stair*
Me: The first stair is okay, but we're staying down here, so no more stairs.
N: *teasingly starts up the stairs*
Me: No, stay down here. No more stairs. Stay on this stair, the first stair. The one with the crab on it. (*puts a toy crab on it*)
N: *thinks*...
N: *moves crab up a stair, climbs up, moves crab up another stair*...

Now, I'm sure everyone could see that coming but me. I have no idea why I decided that I should say "the one with the crab on it" and not "the one I'm sitting on" or, really, anything unaffectable by small girls, but there you have it. She found the loophole in my shoddy decree in less than five seconds.

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In other news, we have a long bike ride planned for tomorrow. Rather uncharacteristically, we were totally packed and ready before 11 PM. Like, clothes out, warm socks located, camera charged, bikes and gear in the car (which is full of gas), camelbaks stuffed full of goodies, diaper bag packed for N's day out with dancingwolfgrrl ready. Huh.

Yesterday, my Nascar-watchin' pickup-drivin' beer-drinkin' nature-worshippin' pagan redneck coworker JD took me mountain bike shopping. JD is crazy - jumping bikes off six-foot drops crazy. I've never been mountain biking in my life, but I had complete faith that JD would know where to go. We ended up at a bike shop in Burlington over lunch break, chatting with his friends, and I had a blast jumping the test bikes over curbs and hopping around. Wow! I must have one. I put a bike on hold to see if I still REALLY want it this weekend -- also, so that I can drag David out there and get him one, too. I see this as one of the advantages of having a car -- we now have the ability to drive to a trailhead. woo!

Between yesterday's bouncy bike shopping, Tuesday's oil spill, and my dream the other night that my car blew up and I had to walk ten miles to get home, I was determined to bike in this morning. Screw it! It's warm! I'll wear my falling-apart shoes! I don't need new fancy shit!

I still managed to sleep through my alarm, leaving myself almost no time to get up and get dressed if I wanted to make it to work on time. My sleep-heavy brain always assumes that I can make it to work EVERY day at my record pace, even though I have only done that maybe three times in my life. But I got out the door, figuring that the three or four minutes I might be late would be forgiven. The ride was beautiful. It was a brisk, lively morning; sun up, air in my face, birds happily gurgling under bridges, the works. I had really forgotten how much better it feels to bite the bullet and bike the 12 miles than it does to stuff myself into a car and shove it into traffic. I do love driving... but biking makes me grin in a way that cars never will.

The riding was physically good, too. One guy did pass me, slowly. I suppose that it makes sense, since I haven't biked in two months, but I still like it better when that doesn't happen. Anyway, he looked strong and fast, so I wasn't too hurt. It gives me something to aim for.