Sunday, October 11, 2015

Fall Weekend Riding, and a Quiz

Fall is the best season for riding in Ohio. In addition to enjoying the beautiful trees, the trails are usually in pretty good shape, I'm usually in pretty good shape, and the weather is often ideal, cool and no bugs.

For various reasons, I haven't done any mountain biking in the past month, so I set out to fix that this weekend. Saturday after soccer, we were talking about what to do for the rest of the day, and Jodi asked, "why don't you go riding?" No need to ask that question twice, I headed out with the Ritchey for my first lap of P1 this year:

P1 was quite a mess all spring and summer, so I've been avoiding it until now. It's a nice change of pace, and nice to get back to, but man is that a bumpy, rooty trail! Almost, I was wishing for full suspension, but I'm not there yet. After all, I still have my fatbike:

Sunday, October 4, 2015

This Post is Actually About Bikes and Playgrounds

This evening, we did something we didn't do much this summer: we hopped on our bikes and went to a playground. Sure, the eldest child was whining about leaving, about being drug out of the house on a beautiful fall afternoon to get outside, but once he spotted the playground, his mood improved.

We headed for Park Place:

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Recycling Old Bike Boxes: Henry's 9th Birthday

The end of September, and Henry's birthday has rolled around again. We've had his last two parties at Scioto Park, but wanted something different this year. Henry initially talked about a game truck or a laser tag truck, but when we priced those out, the laser tag truck came to something like $300 for 12 kids for two hours. Ouch! Too rich for my blood... I figured for less than half of that, I could do something better.

It started with a big order of Nerf guns, darts, and safety glasses from Amazon:

New Bike: my $100* Jones LWB**! (2012 Specialized Expedition)

 * The frame was $100 on ebay. I probably could have found a complete bike locally for not much more if I wanted to be patient, but this cam...