Mini Spring Break Vacation

This week was spring break for Dublin schools, so I took the week off work as well and we set up a mini vacation for the family. We left on Tuesday after lunch (kid's eat free day at Moe's) and drove down towards Hocking Hills. We stopped at the Rocky Boots outlet in Nelsonville, where Kate picked up some trinket as her souvenir (we'll come back to this at the end), and then on to our destination, the Lodge at Burr Oak State Park (15% discount for March reservations).

We met up with Jodi's dad and stepmom there. They came down to stay with us, and we both stayed two nights. After a dinner at the lodge's restaurant ($0.99 kid's menu), we hit the pool. The pool was a typical hotel pool, but it was nicely warm and the kids were having a great time... right up until Henry dumped water on Sam's face, causing Sam to start crying and panicking, which caused him to throw up. In the pool. That pretty much ended our time--and everyone else's--in the pool that first night.

Krampus and the Breezer 69er Meet "Spring"

Allegedly, it's spring outside, but the forecast for this week barely breaks out of the 30s. There's some upside to this: when I got up this morning and checked the COMBO trail condition website, it mentioned P2 should be rideable until noon or so--due to the low overnight temps, the trail might be frozen enough to be rideable.

I decided to give it a try and dug my full winter kit out of the bottom drawer. March 24, and it was 21 degrees when I got to the trail! In the event, the trail forecast was exactly correct: even the typically mucky portions at the start of P2 were frozen.

I brought my Krampus for another attempt at a shakedown ride. My first attempt didn't go well, but I was hoping my time in the shop had paid off and I could actually ride the darn bike.

 

It was kind of a mixed bag.

Bike train, now departing

In addition to the seven bike in my current stable, I also have two trail-a-bikes. This is altogether too much stuff for someone my brother once described a "wannabe minimalist," but it does allow me to do things like this:

Ride Reports: Trek 620 and Breezer

With our long winter maybe, finally, hopefully receding, I was able to get out today for a few quick rides. First up was my Trek 620. I picked this bike up about a month ago off the local Craigslist. Then, it looked like this:

See See You Later

Henry and I were walking down the strip mall to our day's lunch spot (Moe's) this afternoon, when I noticed this sign in front of our local cheap pizza joint:

Killilea (again) and Coffman (again)

Last week was cold, and next week looks worse, but today it was in the upper 40s. Good enough that the twins and I hit the road without excessive bundling up. We hooked up the Picolo, took the Burley trailer out of folded-up storage, and were ready for the trail:

Regular and observant reader(s) will see the changes to my Buzz over the winter: