Our biking adventure

A couple of weeks ago, I asked the kids if they wanted to go for a bike ride.  We do, after all, live right on the bike path, and we don't take advantage of that nearly often enough!

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The kids said they wanted to go to the library.  Okay.  We got our backpacks, packed up the books that were due, and I also got the couple of items that I needed to mail, just in case we felt like going to the post office as well.

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Off we went.  As I was riding, I kept feeling like something was wrong with my bike pedal, but ignored it and kept going.

We arrived at the library (this involved riding for a bit on an actual road, not the bike path, which the kids are just getting used to doing).  The librarians warned us that it isn't smart to leave your bikes outside unless you have a chain and a lock, so Eli stood guard while we picked out a few books.

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Now we wanted to go to the post office, and we had two choices.  P.O. #1 was only about 1/2 mile away, but up a very busy road.  P.O. #2 was about 2 miles away, but down a much wider, less busy road.  We picked #2, and off we went.  About 1.5 miles into the ride (the kids were doing great riding on the road), my pedals really started acting up.  We finally stopped, and it turned out that the pedals were broken!

I don't know if you can see in this picture, but the plastic is actually cracked.

Two minutes after I discovered this, the pedal fell completely off!

No worries!  I could ride the bike like that, right?  Sure I could!

Unfortunately, about 5 minutes after that happened, MADDIE's bike pedal came off of HER bike, and there was no peg for her to keep riding!

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Well, I called Steve, but he was on a job, and couldn't come help us.  I called my dad, but he was still at work, and not answering his phone.  I called my friend, Sue, because she has a bike rack, but she wasn't home either.  Sigh.  So we sat down for a minute, on a bench outside of a factory.  Maddie was pretty upset.  We were almost 5 miles from home, and the most direct route home involved a very big hill.  I didn't relish the thought of walking the bikes home.

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God was watching out for us, though!  An employee came over to see what was up, and was able to fix Maddie's bike!  It was so great!!!  We finished riding over to the post office, only to find that our delay meant that we got to the p.o. while it was closed for lunch!  We hung around and read our library books, I finally mailed my items, and then I took the kids to lunch at a local bakery.   I figured they deserved it! 

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I thought we'd be out for about an hour.  Three hours later, we pulled back into the driveway! It was quite the outing!

8:41 PM - Jun. 27, 2009 - post comment