COVID travels

It's a bit odd, but I find myself riding less than I thought I would during this coronavirus pandemic. Being home all the time, I thought I would be itching to get out. But the weather has been lousy, and a lot of my local riding is motivated by riding errands: returning books to the library, Kroger runs, stops for ice cream.

Much of that is gone, so I'm trying to find other reasons to ride. A few weekends back, Sam and I rode around town looking for little free libraries. I had some books to unload.

Our first stop was the nearby Tartan Ridge park near GRE. Nothing but kids' books there, so we kept on rolling.

We had stopped here earlier on a nice day for a little hammock reading, and I noticed the library box then:

Back to our scouting ride. Along Muirfield, someone had left little encouraging notes along the trail. We had to stop and check them out. I'm seeing a lot of stuff like this lately, or notes chalked on the sidewalk. People are working out their feelings about the pandemic.

I had an idea there might be a Little Free Library (LFL) near Amberleigh park, but there was not. We did take the stairs down to the river and skipped rocks into the Scioto. Sam is getting better at skipping.

Notice also the U shape on the stair rail: I think this is a slide to bring a kayak down to the river. Pretty cool for Dublin.

We finally hit pay dirt at the LFL near Bailey elementary. I've found a good book here before, so I wasn't too surprised. We traded in two books for a Jack Reacher novel and an almost new "Destroy this Diary" for Sam:

We found a random LFL near a church, nothing there, and then made our last stop at the LFL near Scottish Corners. Well stocked, but nothing for us.

More tandem miles. It's working well enough, the but the old Shimano 8 speed drivetrain skips every now and then. This is disconcerting, especially for Sam when it catches us by surprise. This weekend I finally replaced it with my old Sram X7 9 speed. It shifts better, and has a bit more range.

Last weekend, we braved the cold wind and grey skies to explore the new construction zone near our house. Henry was captaining the tandem this time:

We stopped to climb some local mountains:

Kate wanted to go home and get her own bike after this, and Henry was done captaining. Kate is really riding a lot more since she picked up Sam's (and Henry's) old Trek hybrid. Maybe it's a better fit for her than Jodi's old Trek mountain bike. She'll often roll out in the morning to take a lap through the neighborhood on her own, though I joined her one Saturday:

It's good to have these kids to keep me riding!