Weekend rides and rains

The intermittent rain and thunderstorms made things tricky both in the garden and on the bike over the weekend.

Poor Matthew took Friday off work, hoping for two full back-to-back garden days to get caught up.  Instead, he got a few hours on Friday morning and a few hours on Saturday morning.  On his way home from the garden on Friday, he swung by The Hub to pick up our Burley Piccolo!

The Piccolo mounts onto Burley’s proprietary rear rack.  I was anxious to get the rack on my new bike so it would be ready for Saturday’s CyclingSavvy class.  Of course, I made the mistake of assuming that the rack would be “easy” to install.  It ended up taking at least an hour and required using our small, manual metal saw to cut the rack stays to the appropriate length.  We had to wait on installing the second rack on Matthew’s bike — it will need some kind of extender to reach the bottom mounting point on his hybrid.

Saturday morning dawned overcast, but my bike was ready, and it looked like we might be able to squeeze in “Train Your Bike” (the parking lot, bike handling skills session of CyclingSavvy) before the next wave of rain hit.

The first rain drops began to fall as we started the second-to-last drill.  We wrapped things up, mindful of the slippery pavement.  We stashed all of the bikes under an awning or in Karen’s van and dashed into Kaldi’s just before it started pouring.  After lunch, I accepted Karen’s gracious offer to give me a lift, though I felt like a bit of a wimp for not just biking in the rain.  (My decision was fueled by the fact that, for whatever reason due to sleep debt and an unexpectedly challenging yoga class on Friday afternoon, my energy level was pretty low — I had felt every bit of the 6.5 miles on the way to the class location.  That, and wanting to baby my new bike — yes, it will get wet (and scratched) eventually, but it’s nice to enjoy it shiny and new for just a bit longer.)

Instead of just stabling my bike and heading inside for a nap after returning home, I embarked on a garage-cleaning project, which expanded to include some basement cleaning.  Both spaces look much better now!

We kicked off Mother’s Day with the Piccolo’s maiden voyage.  G was excited upon seeing the new bike, and then, once sitting on it, immediately uncertain (called that one #mamaknows).  He spent the first two blocks saying he didn’t like it and thought he was going to fall off (he wasn’t).

Then it changed to “I’m doing it” . . .

And finally, “I like this new bike.”  Success!

For this first Piccolo outing, we stuck to the small streets right around our place.  Given G’s initial reaction, I thought we’d go two blocks and head right back home, but we added a few more after he got into it.

I spent the rest of the morning getting stuff done around the house while Matthew tackled bread baking — so nice to have five beautiful loaves in the freezer!

We closed the weekend with a much-anticipated date night to see the student showcase at Bumbershoot Aerial Arts.

I was hoping we could make it a date night by bike, but the weather had other plans.  The forecast was for a high chance of thunderstorms all evening, and the skies opened up just as we were ready to head to Lucky Buddha for dinner, so we took the car (of course, by the time we arrived, it had stopped raining).

We dined on noodle salad, steamed buns, and pho at Lucky Buddha, continued on to I Scream Cakes for dessert, and then hit the main event at the Bumbershoot gym.  I enjoyed watching fellow students perform and thinking about perhaps being at that level eventually.  When we left, it was dry as a bone outside, and it would have made for a lovely, if late, bike ride home.  Fickle weather!