The Blog Within

When I first entertained the idea of bike commuting to work, I decided to take a test run on a Saturday. For that trip I took Laney, attached with her tag-a-long. Ever since, Ava has been bugging me to take her on the same route, and she was convinced that she could make it the whole 10 miles. So this past Saturday, we loaded up the Camelbaks with ice water and Gu and headed out.

Thanks to the equestrian users, there is quite a bit of single-track that parallels the paved trail, so I swapped out the commuter tires for my real tires and we hit the dirt as often as we could. Like nearly every other sport she tries, Ava is a natural at mountain biking, and enthusiastically attacked the dirt, sand, rocks and transitions on and off the cement. Several near crashes and two occurrences of chainsuck did nothing to slow her down, and she proudly showed off her several chainring tattoos to anyone who would look. During one off trail detour, we saw a deer standing about 6 feet away. I wasn’t quite quick enough on the camera for that, so you’ll have to take our word for it…

At one section, the trail drops into the creek bed very abruptly. I rode it for fun, and Ava said she wanted to try. I’ve been wanting a chance to teach her the concept of downhill on a section with only a moderate chance of disaster, as opposed to certain doom, and this seemed like the perfect spot. I showed her how to assume the position, head down and butt back off the seat, and she got a running start and dropped in for her first steep drop.

Her form and execution were flawless, and she looked like she has been doing it all along. Again I was a little slow on the draw camera-wise, but afterwords I had her stand at the top to try to capture the perspective of the hill. The picture doesn’t do it justice, but picture one side of a small half-pipe and that’s about right.

This section marked the end of the dirt options, and we top-ringed it on the cement the rest of the way to my office.

Ava made it the whole 10 miles with almost no complaining, and even wanted to turn around and ride all the way back!

We opted instead to call in backup for a ride to the pizza place.

Ps. a 20″ wheeled Specialized Hotrock bike fits on a Thule Big Mouth roof rack! Very convenient.

Tags: Cycling, Family

This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 10:34 pm and is filed under Cycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.