Since we went to the incredible farting fireworks on Monday night, and since Scott's mom was being taken care of by Vivian, we spent the day at home. It felt marvelous.
I didn't go biking in the morning, as a possible walk with a friend was on the slate, by 9:30am we were all outside at Andrew's request helping him with his bike riding skills. Since the training wheels came off on Saturday he has been mad to learn how to ride on two wheels. He'd be out there 24/7 if his parents had the strength to keep up with him!
He practiced riding down the hill along France Avenue, and then down the grassy hill by Crosspointe Church. He is a natural! After just a couple of hours, interspersed with sidewalk chalk art and playing on the playground at the church, he was riding like a pro.
The star background by the way, is a paper towel, on which I stamped stars using metallic paint and then took a bronze marker and dotted each dot of quilting on the towel. Took me an hour, but I love the results, and love that I scrapbooked with a paper towel. Mr. Stormecrowe, consider this page one.
In the afternoon he begged Scott to take him out again, and they went all over our block. Then in the early evening, he begged me to go on a "real" ride with him. Since I hadn't been out yet, I figured I'd start riding with him, then drop him at home and finish my ride.
Speaking of my ride...you know the grinding I'd talked about on Scott's bike, which I think I rode Sunday and Monday? Well, as Scott was loading it into the back of the truck after I road it to Lake Normandale he noticed something funny about the back wheel. The grinding was my back wheel rubbing against the frame. It was rubbing against the frame because the nut and bolt assembly that holds the tire on was loose. As in turn it in your hands and it falls off loose. Hmmm, that could have been scary! But I was kept safe and Scott did some maintenance to the bike Tuesday so I was safe to ride again.
Andrew did pretty well on his first "real" ride.
We traveled 2.7 miles and although it was a bit tedious for me with all the stops and starts, he really did amazingly well. We even had a couple walkers/riders comment on how well he was doing. We biked to Ethan's house, but they weren't home to tell the good news, so we headed back and stopped off at the park to play a bit.
Mainly Andrew just wanted to ride more. I am so proud of his determination and passion. He fell off once, and jumped back up saying, "I'm not hurt, I'm not hurt" and got right back on. I was grinning the whole ride. First we taught him to read, now we taught him to bike. Proud moments(oh and that potty trained thing was a pretty big one too!)
His papa took him home from that point and I finished up a 7.7 mile ride. It was while I was on 106th, a designated bike route, riding in the proper lane, on the four lane 30mph winding drive when I had my first yelled rude comment. The gist was that I needed to get off the road, but said with a few more extraneous words thrown in. Nice. Of course the white trash truck from whence it issued was going at least 50mph. It made me sad. But riding on the road is so much easier that I didn't back down and finished out the ride.
My week total through Monday was 49.7 by the way.
What? You want to hear about the farting fireworks? Oh, look at the time, I'll have to tell that one later! Andrew and I are off on the train to downtown to meet Laurie and Lauren at the library, have lunch and swim in their condo's pool!