on the road again

[topaz]

Yesterday's little jaunt did nothing to quench the boys' thirst for riding, so this evening we returned to the Minuteman Trail.	This time I followed on rollerblades.
"But..." said Rosa. "Won't that just make him go .... faster?"	Still going strong at the 128 overpass.

We went as far as Massachusetts Avenue in Lexington before we turned around. The Mass. Ave. intersection is well past the 2½ mile mark from Bedford, and by my estimate is closer to three miles. We got back to the car a little more than an hour after we started, and while Morgan admitted to being "maybe a little tired," and did not object to getting in the car, it was also clear that he would happily have continued pedaling for who knows how long.

That's a six-mile round trip.

SIX MILES.

To put that in perspective, that's SIX MILES. It's TWICE AS MANY YEARS AS QUINN IS OLD. (for another day or so, at least.)

When I was a kid riding my bike on Nantucket, it was three miles from our house to the Surfside Beach on the south side of the island. I didn't do that six-mile round trip on my own bike until I was about twelve years old, and even then it was a significant effort.

I am a little stunned. I was hoping to get Morgan excited about biking early, but had not quite expected that even my Energizer Bunny kids would have this kind of enthusiasm. At least I probably don't have to worry that they'll be grown and in college before I have a chance to do a century. :-)

Comments

[agaran.livejournal.com]

Very cool. Kind of amazing. Makes me think I need to get off my fat butt and start getting the kids outside a LOT more often, before THEY get fat butts.

I took the guys to go fishing with John Barrett on Saturday afternoon. They were SO into it that they totally forgot to (1) pee; (2) eat; (3) rest; (4) think about where they were walking; and more. John and I were totally absorbed keeping them from ripping themselves and us to bits with the fishhooks, but when I took them off their lines, there were huge horking howls of protest.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Hah! That's great. :-) I can just see the two of them sitting there on a riverbank with poles in their hands.

One of the great things about taking kids bike riding at this age is that even at their very fastest, it's not hard to keep up with them. Quinn was pushing that bike pretty much as hard as he could the whole way, and he was still averaging about five miles an hour. As an adult it's almost difficult for me to keep a bike going that slowly. :-) So even people who are not really enthusiastic about stuff like riding bikes can keep up with the kids and give them a good run.