If Wishes Were Bike Trailers . . .

A few days ago, my husband and I were poking around the makeshift shed out back that houses such oddities as a broken roto-tiller, a freezer that our house won't let us plug in without shorting the electric, a lawnmower on which we haven't quite figured out how to test the starter, and various booster seats and gardening tools.

 

We were pulling the bikes out to get to the lawnmower, and I casually said, "You know, we could use another bike trailer."

 

 

Be careful what words slip unguarded from your tongue!

 

The next day, my beaming husband came home from work a little late. And from the back of the car, he pulled out . . . another bike trailer. He has this knack for going into a thrift store and emerging with some treasure for which he paid next to nothing. I have a knack for going into a thrift store and emerging with yet another article of clothing which will not fit and which I will recycle to another thrift store. I like to keep the inventory moving, I guess . . . but I digress.

 

 

Yesterday, after about a half hour of airing up tires, filling water bottles, finding shoes, changing diapers, putting on shoes, stocking the trailers with the "guest riders" of a stuffed mouse, a turtle backrubber, a green shoestring, and a yo-yo, we were ready to go.  We popped the kids into the trailers, hopped on the bikes, and took off.

 

And when I say "we" hopped on the bikes, I guess I should really say *I* hopped on the bike. My husband deftly swung to his seat and started pedaling. But this is the guy who for FUN!!! took a bike trip after his senior year of high school. And not like, "Let's take a biking tour of Williamsburg"; this was a bike trip through CANADA, starting from Alaska. The kind where you use your graduation money to buy a Cannondale instead of a sensible used car and get together with three other guys to buy an old school bus and paint it purple and turn it into  your mobile home for sleeping in at night after you bike and in order to eat you stop in the next town and ask what kind of work you can do to pay for your feed and . . .

 

You get the idea. Macho stuff.

 

 

Whereas MY most memorable biking moment comes from biking in the parking lot of the local YMCA, where there was rut after rut after rut, and I kept thinking, "I WILL NOT hit those ruts; I WILL NOT hit those ruts" and so of course I hit every one of them, which sent me flying into the air only to land painfully on the hard bicycle seat, hands clenching the handlebars, every ounce of my being saying, "I WILL NOT hit those ruts!" and every ounce of my body heading right for them. I don't have terrible aim; I have terrific aim. I ALWAYS hit exactly what I most want to avoid.

 

But anyway. He deftly swung up to his seat; I hopped and hopped and hopped until I finally got up on mine.

 

But the ride was glorious. It was just a simple ride to the next farm over, where we got out and loved on the pygmy goats and honked back at the geese. And then we got back on our bikes, rode home with our shirts over our mouths to avoid eating the gnats that insisted on hovering over us (note to self: there is no way to keep a V-neck over your mouth when biking!), unloaded the kids and yo-yo and shoestring and turtle and mouse, and raced inside to scarf down the cold dinner that was waiting.  And then we smiled at each other and talked about how fun it was to race down the hill in a bike trailer and wondered whether the farm would get some more pigs and cows and horses.

 

And I'm wondering, as I stiffly sit here, aching in places I had forgotten about, whether we couldn't really use a massage chair.