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.