After finishing the Superlight build, we went out for a casual ride around the neighborhood on our mountain bike fleet (I rode the old Stumpy since my Rize has fallen). We pedaled through the park, and I stopped to take some pictures while the kids and Cindy rode laps. Suddenly, I was inspired to hold a contest!
Put your front tire here, ride around the loop as fast as you can, and we'll stop the timer when you cross this line! Around and around we went. I won, of course. My best time was 18 seconds. Quinn's best was 24. Cindy and Abbey held times somewhere in between. The timing was atrocious and quite irrelevant. It was silly fun.
Here's Quinn on his Scott:
Abbey's riding Heather's old mountain bike now. Chris took it apart and had it powdercoated (Abbey picked the color), rebuilt it, and sent it to us. It's actually a very nice ride, with older but high-end components. It's smooth and quiet, and the lightest mountain bike in the fleet at only 24 pounds. Sometime I'll have to post some nice pics of it, but this is it for now:
Momma on the Superlight:
And Quinn again:
This summer we'll be trying to get in a mix of tandem riding on roads and some mountain biking on singles. The tandeming is great fun and I certainly don't want that to end, but I also want the kids to have the chance to improve their skills and strength riding on their own. We had some good times riding local trails last fall, and we'll try to continue that this year.
That looks like so much fun! I love the first picture of Quinn - RARRRR! The Kona looks to be fitting Abbey pretty well, and Cindy's new bike is sweet.
ReplyDeleteIt was great to see the kids pushing themselves to beat their previous time around the loop. It's not often that their competitiveness comes through anywhere outside of a Nintendo product.
ReplyDeleteThe Kona fits Abbey very well. She feels that she's leaning too far forward, but that is in comparison to her Trek, on which the bars are much higher than the seat. I actually think her front/rear balance would be better if she were using a slightly longer stem. We may experiment with that once she's ridden a few trails on it.
Chris and I time ourselves when we take turns doing Rustler's loop. I have this hare-brained idea that someday I will beat his time, but I don't really think that's possible, unless perhaps one of his legs fell off, or I secretly tied invisible lead weights to his bike. Our 'start of the season times' last Tuesday were 20 minutes for him and 24 for me on the 3.6 mile loop. I guess I'll just keep shooting for beating my own previous time.
ReplyDeleteHeather,
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of adding weight. On Boy Scout backpacking trips, on breaks, one always kept an eye on one's pack, else others would sneak rocks into it.
I wonder if you could get water into the tire tubes?