To Travel

Winter is a refreshing time, a time to ponder and dream of warmer more adventurous days. I enjoy this yearly opportunity to reflect on the time spent with my children and how I can improve on these long wintry days spent reading and building puzzles. I took my first long bike ride with my kids last year loading them up in their trailer and pedaling for over 2 hours. I didn't get far that first ride. The hills here practically killed me. I was about ready to throw in the towel and never ride again. Thankfully there is that age old saying, "what goes up must come down" and I fell in love with biking again as I coasted all the way home at 15 miles an hour. It was then that I realized biking was something I could do with my children that would get us out of the house, into nature. Later that summer my husband and I took a 7 mile loop around some ponds on the sparsely driven back roads in our area. It was a wonderful way to connect and talk and laugh and truly experience something together. So, this winter I decided that I would take advantage of the season to prepare and plan more rides with my boys. While pondering these short rides I began to dream of riding the coast of Maine with my boys, touring the great lakes, exploring the Mississippi and following the Pacific from Oregon to Mexico. All of these are more ambitious but have sparked an excitement that is sometimes lacking in the frequent tediousness that accompanies raising two small children. We'll begin small and hopefully you'll be entertained and uplifted as I chronicle our many adventures and derailments.