LGRAB Summer Games continued

We've been keeping an eye of Dottie and Trisha's Let's Go Ride a Bike Summer Bike Games. Here's a report on our second phase that included these challenges:

June 7 - June 27: Learning Experiences

• Perform a maintenance task — big or small!
• Decorate your bike
• Read a book about cycling
• Carry a load on your bike — groceries, etc.
• Test ride a different type of bike than you normally ride

We decided to pull the family card for a few of these so happily have completed each of them but with different family members involved. The most exciting challenge for us in this group was taken on by our youngest guy who decided to "test ride" his brothers' two wheelers (no training wheels) and yes, he is off and riding now. He happily checks the tires before he rides and is insistent that he pump up the flats himself so another nod to F for performing our maintenance task-- however small, but necessary! We also took care of decorating our bike with our new Zero Per Gallon ginormous patch!

Read a book about cycling. We did that, too! I've been diving into Joe Kurmaskie's family cycling adventures but the bike book we want to share here:
How can you go wrong with a story about a duck who wants to ride a bike? Truly. Fun to hear Duck's friends' reactions (and see their expressions) watching him cruise on two wheels. My boys love author and illustrator David Shannon's books in general and one with farmyard animals AND a bike= cool!

Finally-- carry a load on your bike..... Well, this feels like cheating a bit since we are family bike riders so EVERY day both P and I are loaded up with children and their stuff on our two cargo bikes. When we first became parents, I remember a friend commenting, "I am my child's roadie. I have one little bag of stuff and they have two tractor trailers worth of things like a rock star." So we decided to show some snaps of our every day haul. I don't think we have yet mentioned that with the boys taking up that much more room in the cargo box that we expanded our haulin' capacities with a set of gorgeous hot pink, orange, and red Clarijs bags.


So here's a list of what goes in our Bakfiets on a daily basis during school time:

• Two boys (roughly weighing 110+ lbs.)
• At least two books-- pictured on top of this post: a Tin Tin collection and one of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson books.
  
• Three lunch boxes (mine included)
• Kids' artwork (an amazing amount after each school day)
• My school bag with laptop
• Two water bottles
• Tissues

I did want to share a snap of "my favorite load" last week....

• A 1/4 sized cello
• Small kid's chair
• A 1/2 violin in other side bag
• Music books & sheet music
  
• One cute musician
• One iced coffee for the tired dad who accompanies one cute musician to his cello lesson then hands off the first cute musician to mom (who has the box bike with their two other sons) who in turns drops off a different cute musician down to the music school for his violin lesson which dad stays for as well-- Whew!