Easter Sunday Inside Ride

Easter Sunday, cold and snowy.
Was the question, "Spring?"
The answer must have been, "Not yet."


In our family, left-handedness occurs in approximately three persons out of four.


Friday night, another four to six inches of wet snow fell. All of the naturally accumulated snow had melted, although dirty mounds still stood in large parking lots and a few remnants remained hidden along the shady north side of fences. It's probably my fault because I had foolishly replaced the studded tires on my bicycle with my normal road tires Thursday morning. Today we we had a little sunshine, but the temperature stayed not too far above freezing, so I worked readying the tandems ready for a spring that never seems to come.

I had to raise Quinn's saddle and handlebars to accommodate his winter growth spurt. His seat had to come up a full three inches! Maybe it was too low last fall; it's hard to believe his inseam would increase quite that much, but with his new long legs, his knees are less likely to hit his chin when he pedals. We made all the adjustments to his stoker compartment and then spent some time pedaling to nowhere on the trainer. But not too much time, as he has little patience for the trainer.


Abbey needed only about an inch of additional height for her saddle. I suppose her growth curve has flattened as she's reached nine years. Cindy's saddle was just fine where it was. I don't know if I should mention it in this forum, but Cindy hasn't grown for years. Abbey and Cindy spent some time on the trainer, too, with the usual debate about which was pedaling the hardest. None of us have the patience to ride the trainer for hours and hours at a time. If the snow never melts, I don't know how we'll ever get ready for the MUP tour. Maybe if the snow doesn't melt, we'll do a tour in Arizona instead. Maybe we'll go to Arizona to train for a few months.


Abbey and all of the other third-graders at Cornell spent all of last week at the zoo. Abbey's animal of study was the cotton-top tamarin. They observed their animals for an hour each day, and answered a series of questions in their field notebooks. The rest of their time was spent learning all sorts of interesting stuff about other animals, conservation, and ecology. I spent the day with her on Thursday and Friday. This class picture was taken Friday morning - a few hours before it started snowing.

Spring?

It might be here, finally. The temperature on Friday rose into the 50s F for the first time this year. I left work before dark to pull the tandems off the wall so we could take a spin around the neighborhood. The tandems are so smooth and quiet, especially in comparison to my commuting bike with it's studded tires. Since, Quinn had a cold and had been running a fever, we didn't ride much. His fever hung around off and on for the rest of the weekend, so we didn't do any more tandem rides. As the temperature was around 40 F Saturday and Sunday, riding wouldn't have been quite as nice, either.

We're trying to make it possible for Cindy and Quinn to pedal to Quinn's school this spring rather than driving the van. They used the Rodriguez tandem for their commute in fall 2006 and spring 2007, but when we got the blue Burleys we moved Quinn's child stoker kit from he Rodriguez to the new Burley, and Quinn could no longer ride the Rodriguez. But we've still got the old Burley Piccolo, which is a pedal trailer that attaches to the back of an adult bike. We set up Cindy's old mountain/commuter bike to accept the Piccolo, and now she and Quinn can ride together. We took the Scott/Piccolo system out for a short test run this afternoon, and it looks like it will work pretty well. Surprisingly, Quinn is just barely big enough for the pedal trailer.

Since the last time I posted here, we've been busy:

We replaced the dead garage door opener after more than a year of doing without.

Abbey played the piano in a recital at her piano teachers home and in the Michigan Music Teachers Association Student Achievement Test at MSU. She did a great job on the test, scoring a 97.75%. Her teacher, Mrs. Black, was tickled pink!

Cindy started her job at Playmakers, a really nice independent running and athletic gear store. It seems like it will be a great job - with great discounts on shoes and clothes. They're the largest Smart Wool dealer in North America. Must be because it's so cold here.

Quinn's room went from flat white walls with yellow trim to rich blue and red walls with white trim, colors selected from the suit of his favorite superhero.

I've been training for a half marathon trail run scheduled for late April, so I've been out running in the dark on snow and ice a few mornings each week. Cindy and I have both been riding the bike trainer in the basement in preparation for another summer of bicycling.

After taking the bus to work for most of the months of January and February, I've finally starting bicycling to work regularly again. The snow and ice on the roads and sidewalks made it nearly impossible for me to ride to work - even with studded tires. I've complained about this in previous posts. It was just too difficult to traverse some sections of my route without tying up traffic on a busy two lane road (one that I think is a two-lane residential road, but the local drivers think is a two-lane race track). Next year I may try to set up a mountain bike with super fat tires (I'd love to get Surley Pugsley) so that I might be able to ride the ice-packed sidewalk on this stretch of road. We'll see. All the snow from road ends up on the sidewalk, so the snow and ice can easily be a couple feet deep.

We have all sorts of adventures planned for this summer. We just regiestred for the League of Michigan Bicyclists Shoreline Tour on Michigan's Upper Peninsula (the LMB MUP tour). It's a week-long bicycle tour around the eastern perimeter of the UP. It will be a challenge for us, but we like challenges. The kids are really excited, although the current debate revolves around how many Webkinz each kid gets to bring. We'll see how they do on when spring training begins. More on that to come.