Persistence

I tried to get everyone out for a bike ride earlier this week, but no one was convinced. Everyone pretty much stayed in the house all week.

So I decided to use my "family" activity for the month to make some outdoor exercise happen. (In January we started doing a monthly "family activity". It's going well so far, it rotates each month with who decides what we are going to do. April is my turn.) So last night I said, "We are going to go for a bike ride, picnic and frisbee golf for my activity this month. Does lunchtime work for everyone?" Michael doesn't usually work on the weekend, but the job Michael got in Dec is at a company in the grocery business. They have been busy and Michael had something he needed to finish up today, so we decided on a picnic dinner.

I asked the girls to meet me at the garage at 3:40pm, the three of us hadn't biked yet this year and I knew our tires would need filling, so I gave us some extra time to get ready.

I got all the food packed, the sun was out, and we were going somewhere.

However when we pulled the bikes down the tire was flat on the eldest's bike. She went inside to tell Michael. We didn't have a spare tube, so he called the bike shop but of course it is not an "essential" business. What could we do? I could go get my dad's bike. But that would take more than an hour. One of us could drive, but that defeats the "family" aspect of the activity. We could see if a neighbor had a bike to borrow... One of our neighbors happened to be at her window talking to some people outside, I ran over when they were done and inquired if she happened to have a bike we could use. "If it is a fancy bike, I understand you might not want to lend it out and that's fine." She apologized that the bike was the opposite of fancy, but that was perfect. I wasn't worried about us using it. So we got the bike and I went inside to tell Michael to finish up work because we were going after all.

On my way back out the girls came to ask if I'd heard that loud sound.

"Nope."

"Your bike tire just popped," they said.

Seriously??

I went out and yep, the tire we'd just filled was now flat.

Sigh,

I thought I may have another tube and I went inside to look. I found it and hoped it was the right size. I've changed a tire before but it's been a long time, so I didn't have a lot of patience, but eventually we got that tire changed, and soon enough were off.

A few blocks later, I realized I forgot the bread for the sandwiches.

So I turned around and biked back.

After that it turned cloudy and cool.

But we had a bike ride.

We had a picnic.

We had frisbee golf.

We had our health.

We had each other.