Our LGRAB Summer Games Entry

The LGRAB Summer Games are not over quite yet, but I didn't want to run out of time to submit my entry. You can check out the full contest deals here. Below is what I emailed as our submission. I still have time to fill in the gaps. I am actually working on a letter to a couple of businesses, schools, and the paper. I just don't know if it will be ready by the August 8th deadline.  It's been a lot of fun so far, but the weather and the children have been very cooperative.

Did you participate? If not, there is still time, or there is always next year, or really why do you need an excuse, you could do these things anyway!

Dear LGRAB bloggers,

Thank you for this fun opportunity to push our boundaries on bikes. The summary story is below for each category and the album can be found here. Please let me know if you have any trouble accessing photos.

1. on vacation? rent a bike and go for a ride!
1. No out of town vacations here, sorry. It was summer break for the children and we have ridden almost everywhere all over town. You can read more about it below.
   
2. write a letter advocating for bicycling infrastructure (bike lanes, bike rack, etc) to your alderman/council representative, mayor, or a local business.
1. My husband Brent and daughter London biked to the orthodontist and had to lock up their bikes on his sign. The Dr actually said he has been meaning to get a bike rack. The conversation was short.
2. Brent and I have been sharing articles about bike commuting and car-free living on FB, G+ and with other families via email. We have been talking about choices with other people and began a blog about our transition to a car-lite life with four children in Huntington WV. (the blog is not ready for public consumption quite yet)
3. take a picture of something along your commute that says “summer” to you, and explain why
1. Please see all our photos in our Picasa LGRAB album. I think they all say summer. What other time of the year could we all get out and sweat so much, so often?
   
4. commute to work by bike or bike/transit if you don’t already
1. Brent is our income provider. Summer is his flex season, where he can work from home more often. Yet, anytime he has needed to go into work, he has taken the bike. He even had a day where he had to carry a lot of video equipment, laptops, lunch and three shares from our CSA. Before, he would have just taken the car. Since July 22, he has taken the bike with the Yakima trailer loaded.
   
5. perform a maintenance task on your bike
1. We are very new to biking. Before April it had been 10 years since I had been on a bike. I bought a bottle of chain oil and asked the shop owner for instructions. We are now oiling our own chains weekly. It's small maintenance, but important.
2. We purchased an iBert front toddler seat for our 19m old. on July 28. We installed it ourselves. Again, it was small, but important.
6. explore a greenway or bike path in your city that you haven’t previously visited
1. We rode PATH often. The whole family covered a new distance on July 23. We rode stretches of it for errands that we had never done before. We went to the grocery by bike for the first time on July 29. I rode to the farmer's market on Saturday July 30, also a first. It's the only bike path in Huntington, and we got to know it a bit better together.
   
7. test ride a different type of bike than you normally ride (road bike, mountain bike, etc.)
1. When I went to the farmer's market I rode with a friend. She borrowed my bike and I rode her husband's. I don't know what it was, but it was amazingly light and fabulous to ride. My bike is a basement salvage from the neighbor. Heavy and simple and now it "needs" replaced :)
2. Brent's bike chain has been skipping. He went down to the bike shop and test rode a Cannondale 5 and a couple other commuters. He's seriously considering an investment soon. Maybe today?
8. read a book about cycling
1. I taught a toddler art class last week and read Duck on a Bike to everyone the first day. David Shannon's illustrations are a wonderful and powerful message of "you can do it" reinforced through cleaver farm animal characterizations.
   
9. ride your bike somewhere new in your city
1. Everywhere we went was new for us, at least by bike. We rode our children (four children, ages 9, 7, 4, and 19m) to get our eggs. We rode with them all downtown to the comic shop, out to dinner, to a festival, to a play date, to a rain barrel workshop, to the river park for community service work. Brent and I rode downtown for a date night.
   
10. go on a group ride
1. Our Critical Mass ride was just before the start of the Summer Games. I was concerned we couldn't complete this category, then we found a Buns on Bike ride just for children and families. Our family rode the three mile charity event on July 30 with nearly thirty other people. We covered more than 8 miles together that day.
   

Again, thank you,
Stacy

Date Night by Bike

Babysitting for free has some great rewards. The best one happened Thursday night when the family we babysat for several times this month came over to watch our children. It was date night! I put a lot of thought into all the things I wanted to do. I first considered Geocaching. The idea was quickly thrown out when I realized we needed to have either a GPS or a mobile phone with GPS ability. We have neither. Then I thought we ought to do a long bike tour and picnic dinner. I looked over the PATH map and found it very under detailed and a bit incomplete at this time. I looked to ride all the way to Kenova for some ice cream at Austin's or Griffith & Feil. Both of these ideas were scrapped when the temperatures soared to 100 degrees.

The Date
Our sitters arrived about 6:30. We spent a few minutes catching up with our friends and giving them the 10-4 on getting everyone to bed pleasantly. Brent and I unhitched the trailer and the new iBert seat, settled our helmets and road off toward the sun. We set our sights to Huntington Prime on 4th Avenue. We took the most direct roads to get there, staying on 10th most of the way. Up to this point in my new biking life I had not ridden with out the children. Brent and I certainly had never had a biking date.

View Larger Map

The temperatures remained high and the air was heavy. Being free to glide around on our bikes, wind sliding over our skin and nothing but each other to be distracted by made the weather seem unimportant. On our typical date nights, it takes hours to get over the strange new feeling of not having children under our feet. Not yesterday. It was almost immediately clear that we were together on an adventure, relying on each other and savoring these new experiences.

We don't carry watches or have phones and therefore we had only a general sense of time. I guessed it took about fifteen minutes to get downtown from our house. It would have taken 15 minutes to drive there and park somewhere further than right in front of the restaurant, like we did with our bikes. Locked up on a lamppost, Brent put our names on the list and we strolled around the block to cool off and see what we could see.

On the same block as Huntington Prime was the Fredrick building. From 5:30-7:00pm on Thursdays, they host a Chat 'n Chew forum for individuals in the community looking to further develop ideas in town. These meetings have led to community garden initiatives, recycling pilot programs, graffiti removal organizations, creek clean ups, and plenty of other citizen based renewal in Huntington. We thought we would see if anyone was still lurking about, but they had left the place pretty deserted. Maybe we will catch them another week.

Inside the Frederick.

On the other side of the block is Pullman Square. There was a small crowd gathered at the courtyard listening to live country music. Brent and I enjoyed the liveliness of the people more than the sounds of the guitar. We are always happy to see downtown crawling with people enjoying what the town has to offer.

Our wait time was to be only 30 minutes so we walked around the other end of the block back to the restaurant. I was standing next to our bikes while Brent was checking on our table. One of the men from the city who was watering the hanging baskets came over to make sure we didn't want to move our bikes. He was certain they would get wet. I didn't mind a bit. I figured with this heat they wouldn't be wet for long.

Me, waiting on a table.

Talking with the crewman from the city.

We have had a few meals at Huntington Prime and have never been disappointed. They are doing their best to find local sources for their meals and the menu even highlights where their cuts of meat are from and where the veggies are grown. My current trend of reading has been entirely in food and nutrition, specifically locavore and sustainability. It was a real treat to have biked to a locally owned restaurant that was also trying to serve local commodities.

The helmet was hiding under the table until it was time to go.

Brent had a margarita pizza and crab cakes. I enjoyed a stuffed eggplant with a side of broccoli. German chocolate cake and tres leche cake for desserts. We discussed food culture and teaching philosophies, money and children. We chatted about the events coming this weekend and made plans for everyone going back to school. We didn't rush through anything. I sat there and watched darkness begin to descend on the town over Brent's shoulder, so we paid our bill and walked out into the night.

After Dinner
We were enjoying our company so much we didn't care to go home just yet. We rode back past Pullman Square down to Harris River Front Park. We were able to catch the last few shades of pink setting on the Ohio River and then turned south toward our neighborhood.

The ride home is graded slightly uphill. There also seemed to be several more cars than the few hours earlier when we arrived. I didn't realize downtown picked up after dark. We were able to keep up with the trucks in our neighboring lane as we all rushed from red light to red light toward Ritter Park. Most of the vehicles left our side as we neared the residential area.

We choose to ride through the park on our way back. Several people were out walking dogs and jogging on the loop. We were laughing at our need to ride side by side because Brent's bike was the only one with lights. We felt a bit fool hardy.

 As far as the history of our date nights go, this one will never be forgotten. Anyone else take their date out on a bike?