Long Saturday = Lazy Sunday? Not so much.

I finally had a weekend at home when I didn't have about 1000 things going on, so I got permission to do the Hiawatha Ride on Saturday morning. I headed out from home around 7:15 and met up with the group for the 7:45 flight time. It was a much bigger group than the last time I rode with them, which was sometime back in May or early Jume. Have I mentioned that it was a busy summer? And there were women! The previous Hiawatha Rides I'd been on had been all XY. Good changes, all.

We rolled out and made a lazy loop around the Mpls lakes and up to the Greenway. We jumped off the trail at Uptown for some refreshment and caffeine at CRC. I'd never been before, and I liked it quite a bit. Nothing quite like drinking coffee surrounded by bikes hanging on the walls, bike stuff for sale (including the bikes on the walls), and even a fairly complete-looking repair station for that unexpected mechanical.

Once back at Hiawatha, I started shopping for rear racks for the Jamis. The Jamis is a great ride, but I don't use it for commuting all that often because I have to wear the messenger bag to do so. And I really don't like commuting with the messenger bag. I'm more of a pannier kind of guy. The frame has braze-ons for a rack, but most of the racks we tried interfered with the rear brake. Big thanks to Jim and Kevin for letting me open up damn near every rack in the place to find one that would fit. I had started with the most expensive rack in the place, and found that the cheapest one fit best. The frugal part of me loves it when stuff works out like that. So I'm all racked up and ready to roll.

Nancy called as I was finishing the rack install and said she and the girls were back to school shopping and told me to meet them at Old Chicago for lunch. I got the bike home with just a hair over 30 miles on it and went for lunch. While there we ran into one of Morgan's school friends, Laura, and set up an impromptu playdate for that afternoon. Laura came to our house around 2 and our other daughter Emma tried to pal around, but she doesn't know Laura and felt kind of left out. Nancy quickly suggested that I take Emma for a bike ride with the tag-along. So I hooked it all up and off we went. Nancy also called Emma's friend Sophia and set up a playdate for 5:00.

We had a great ride. I took her up along my normal commute route and we stopped off at Minnehaha Falls. After fooling around at the falls for a while we headed up the trail a bit more. After a couple more miles we turned around because Emma didn't want to be late for her playdate. We buzzed back home and I had 45 miles for the day. Emma's a good little pedaler, but it's still hard work pulling her and the tag-along.

After Nancy took Emma to Sophia's, Laura's folks picked her up and Morgan and I were on our own for dinner. Morgan looked at me with the big puppy-dog eyes and asked if we could bike to the waterfall. So I changed back into the bike clothes, hooked the tag-along up again and off we went. We saw the falls and tacked another 12 miles on to end up at 57 for the day (for me). This was the longest distance either of the kids had done on the tag-along and it went great. We'll be doing this more often.

I wanted to take it easy today, but ended up taking the kids to the Fair for nearly 6 hours this afternoon. A lot of walking. I think I'm gonna hit the hay.

Date: August 24
Mileage: 23
Ride type/Bike: Commute/Schwinn
August mileage: 165
Year to date mileage: 2279

Date: August 25
Mileage: 23
Ride type/Bike: Commute/Schwinn
August mileage: 188
Year to date mileage: 2302

Date: August 26
Mileage: 57
Ride type/Bike: Hiawatha/Kid/Kid/Jamis
August mileage: 245
Year to date mileage: 2359