Wichita in June

Life got busy and I got behind on this blogging adventure. Adventure blogging. Whatever it is.

Jessica's Wedding: Sometime back in the middle of June, the scaq family drove to Kansas to crash a wedding, that of my cousin Jessica. In the wedding, Abbey lit candles and Quinn held rings on a pillow. You can click here to see some of the pictures on the photographer's site. Just after the wedding, Cindy took this picture of Quinn and Abbey with cousins Sarah, Jennifer, Jayden, and Dakota. Where was Cailan? As you can see, Quinn was in a hurry to get to the reception...



where he and cousin Dakota danced for hours...



It was late when we got back to Sharon's, and the kids were out.



Bicycling Wichita: Of course, we took our tandems. We'd hoped to log some miles with Heather and Chris - they hauled four bikes, two of which were tandems, and Cailan's trailer, from Tacoma, WA, but Chris had something removed from his abdominal cavity shortly after arriving and wasn't able to do as much riding as he probably would have liked. I hope they got in some good rides on their way back to Washington, but I haven't heard from them yet. I miss Washington.

Somehow while we were staying at Cindy's mom's, Quinn and I found a little more time for cycling than Abbey and Cindy. We didn't take pictures, but we logged about 50 miles on Wichita's bike paths. It was hot, but we rode hard. We rode the trails at Sedgwick County Park those along the Big Ark river. We also met up with my friend Dave for cycling, and used our tandem's odometer to measure out some of his favorite running loops.

Augusta City Lake: The first really big group ride we did was in Augusta on a cool and wet morning. Included in that adventure were my parents; Heather and Cailan; Jill and John's girls, Sarah, Jennifer, Jayden, and Dakota; and Carol, one of Sarah's grandmas. My dad packed all the bikes into his truck, except those on our van, and we took them to the August City Lake. It was crazy fun:

Jennifer was fearless.



Heather and Cailan were best equipped for crossing the downed timber.



It takes some effort to get a large group like this moving - and to keep it moving - especially when the mean rider age is very low.

Most of the trail was concrete, new and smooth. But the storms had left debris in places.

We spent most of our time on the path along the lake shore. We also toured some of the nearby neighborhoods and rode past the school where some of the girls had been the previous year.



I didn't do a good job of getting usable pictures of everyone that rode. If you were a participant, and feel disappointed not to see yourself here, let me know and I'll see what else I have.

Sedgwick County Park: We also did some bicycling and playing at Sedgwick County Park with our big group. We met my Carol and my parents, with Jill and John's four, and Heather and Cailan, to ride the trails and have a picnic.

I gave Dakota a chance to try out the stoker compartment on our Burley:



Grandpa took Quinn for a spin on the pedal-trailer.



Wichita River Trail: For the biggest ride of the week, we gathered the same crew as above with the exception of the three Dobb's girls and with the addition of Terry and, at least for the first part of the ride, Chris. The day looked a little rainy early, and it was cloudy and windy, but cool. No complaints, for June in Kansas. We parked at Sharon's house and rode down Westdale to catch the bike path where the Big Ark dumps out of the Big Ditch and into the city. After a mile or so, we reached the Amidon (or is it Meridian?) bridge where Grandma and Grandpa D's house keeps watch over the trail. It was, I learned later, no coincidence that D's were out on the trail for a walk. I handed them our camera to document our procession. The picture below shows everyone except my dad. He was captaining the yellow Cannondale tandem with my mom, but I think he'd stepped away to take his own pictures.



Wichita has been putting some effort into renovating it's riverfront. The Indian Center, which sits at the confluence of the Little Ark and the Big, has really changed, and I thought it was very nicely done. I really like the suspension bridges crossing each river and meeting in the center. It's somewhat like the Tridge in Midland, MI (see my earlier post).



We continued down the Wichita bike path along the river for several miles, eventually reaching the terminus at Watson Park, where we munched on hot dogs nachos and other gross stuff that only sort-of passed for food. The kids played on the playground and Quinn threw rocks in the lake and chased the ducks and geese. I can't believe I didn't take any more photos. We followed the same route back to the D's house, but took the residential roads back to Sharon's to avoid riding west down Westdale. There were many hot, tired, and sweaty bodies drinking water on Sharon's lawn that afternoon.

Horses: Abbey had been talking non-stop about riding for the weeks preceding this trip. She was really glad to finally get some riding time, although I'm sure she wanted more.

Other stuff: We saw many friends and relatives while we were in Kansas. David and Laurie flew in from Baltimore for the wedding; Jim and Emiko flew from Seattle; we'd spent quite a bit of time with Jim and Emiko in Washington, but our kids had never met David or Laurie. We had some quiet time with Cindy's mom at her house, where we stayed for the week, and one evening Cindy's dad came down to visit with us. Terry made the trip up from Arkansas, so we had a little time to catch up with him. Dale had three baby skunks running around his yard - we got as close as we dared, but didn't want to risk getting too close and passing some human viruses to them, as there were so tiny. Despite our precautions, we heard later that none of them survived. Dale also had a new pool table in his basement. Our kids gave it a try, but I was terribly afraid they were going to rip the felt. We spent quite a bit of time at my parents house, where Abbey rode Roy, I rode Chris and Heather's dual-suspension Ventana tandem. Quinn helped his grandpa with the train, just a little. With the plethora of kids and house guests at my parents house, most of our time there was pretty wild. Here's picture of my dad and his two grandsons.