Nearly 16 years ago my wife and I took our income tax refund and bought a couple of mountain bikes. We also bought a trailer that we used to haul our small children around. They quickly got too big for me to pull in the trailer and we gave that to a friend. The bikes, like many new bikes purchased by 30-something's, got only occasional use and most of the time collected dust in the garage. The biggest problem was always transporting the bikes to wherever we wanted to ride. We had an old strap on big holder, but that thing was such a hassle we quit using it.
After visiting my daughter's college last month, we knew we wanted to take her bike up there (she won't have a car and the town is very bike friendly), but we still had the old bugaboo of how to get it there, especially with all of her other stuff that has to go. I finally got around to doing something I should have done years ago and had a hitch installed on our Explorer and bought a two bike carrier that fits into the hitch. Presto chango, an easy to use bike carrier:
One of the things we wanted to do was take the bikes down to the beach and ride along the boardwalk. Today was finally the day. My daughter wanted to go to the beach with her friend, so my wife and I loaded up the bikes and headed down to Newport Beach where there's a lot of good beach and nice flat concrete to ride on.
Even at 10 am the parking was all gone, but we managed to snag a spot out on the main drag near 15th street. That part of the beach is a lot less crowded than the area around the pier where we had wanted to park, and it worked out very well. While the girls went swimming under cool, overcast skies (typical for this time of year), we headed south down the beachfront about 1.25 miles until the sidewalk ran out. After returning to our beach spot, I took off on my own and rode nearly a mile north to 36th street where the sidewalk ends on that end. All in all, I got in about 5 miles of riding, which after not having ridden anything for a very long time, felt like a mountain stage in the Tour de France. My legs could use some work.
This afternoon we decided that Costco needed $500 of my dollars more than I did, so we did some much needed bulk shopping. Although we needed all the stuff we got, the main reason for going today was my wife's desire to get the new Harry Potter book. What with all the hype in advance of the release and the millions of pre-orders, I thought they might be sold out on this first day of release, but such was not the case. Costco had lots of them, and at $18.19, we got our copy cheaper and faster than we would have had we pre-ordered through Amazon. As I write this my wife is sequestered in the family room gleefully reading away while threatening all of us if we reveal any of the spoilers we've read on the internet.
This evening we decided to char some cow on the grill, and our backyard has a lot of tropical plants. I was watering one of my climbing vines while the meat cooked and one of the leaves started walking up the metal trellis. Now this particular plant is supposed to be a pretty aggressive climber, but I'd never known individual leaves to walk off on their own. A closer examination revealed a previously unknown guest:
Do you see him? Maybe this will help:
He looks to be a member of the grasshopper family, and I'm not sure if it's good to leave him on the plant or not, but he's so perfectly matched to the plant, they were obviously made for each other. I'm going to leave him alone and let him enjoy his new home (and hope he doesn't eat much).
After dinner the daughter and I took a little ride over to her old elementary school where she attended from 1994 to 2001. Back when she was barely walking and shortly after we moved in here, I took her over to the school and helped her learn how to climb up the equipment and slide down the old circular slide. It scared her mom to death, but she got the hang of it pretty quick. The school is in the process of putting in a whole bunch of new equipment, and my daughter just had to try out the new slides:
Right after this shot was taken she discovered that nearly 6' tall college girls don't fit elementary school slides. It was not a pretty landing.
Just another day in paradise....
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