S24O With The Boys

After a summer of relentless rain, we finally had a nice forecast to head out for some camping. After selling my Burley Picolo earlier in the spring, this would be Sam's first trip riding his own bike (and only Henry's second trip). I was also trying to get the boys more self-sufficient, so I had them packing up their own gear for this trip. After some quick omelets for dinner on Saturday night, we headed out.
Of course, we had to stop and exercise when we passed the course near the Dublin Rec:

Then we had the "big climb" up Emerald Parkway:

But the boys were motivated because they knew frozen yogurt was waiting at the top:

We were about nine miles in at this point, with three miles still to go.

We stopped to play at Emerald Park and top up our water bottles:

I was trying to give each boy some stuff to carry on this trip. Sam had an air mattress and a small frame bag with head lamps and other stuff. It's tough to fit anything on a tiny frame:

Henry really wanted a rack on his bike, but the carbon frame isn't really made for that. Luckily, my steel Fargo fork could easily accept a basket, and I had a spare handy:

I was towing the four man tent and the other gear on my Soma Wolverine:

I'm trying a new bar setup--my favorite and long-discontinued Ragley Carnegie's bar. I was too lazy to swap shifters, so I ended up with this silly position of a shifter stuck on a bar end:

It's only slightly more usable than down tube shifters, but the main position on the Carnegie's feels great.

I'm not really warming up to the Wolverine. I'm not sure why. It's a fine looking bike and can do a lot of different builds, but the ride is nothing special. I find myself continually cruising Craigslist for tall old UJBs (Universal Japanese Bikes, sport touring bikes from the late 70s or early 80s), maybe to equip it with an Albastache bar. Not a good sign for the Wolvie's longevity in my fleet.

We got to our non-disclosed campsite and got all set up. The boys pretty quickly set up the tent, mostly on their own. 

We then played around with hanging up our (unused) food supply from a nearby tree branch, before tucking in for an evening of card games and reading:

We had a fine, clear night, and were able to sleep all night without our rain fly.

What parent doesn't like to watch their kids sleeping?

Henry and I shook Sam out of his bag around 7:00 in the morning, and we headed for our traditional breakfast stop:

We rolled back to our house about 9:00 in the morning, tired but satisfied we had a good trip under our belts. Now Henry and I are talking about hammock camping. Maybe our next trip will be light and fast!