First Weekend

Saturday, we had a previously scheduled outing with some other families from school in another suburb about 10 miles away. We considered riding our bikes there, but we ultimately came to the conclusion that we weren't ready for a trip that length quite yet and decided to take the bus and train. As luck should have it, while we were standing on a street corner, waiting for the bus, one of the other mothers going on the same outing saw us and offered us a ride. She had an extra car seat for our daughter and was able to give us a ride there and a ride back.

Saturday night was date night and my husband and I decided to just take the Dutch bike. I sat in the front and my husband did the pedaling. It was an interesting sensation to be carted around in such a fashion. I couldn't help but feel as though I was the object of a balancing act at the mercy of someone else keeping their balance. There's just enough swaying, especially at starts and stops, to remind you that you are sitting in a bucket at the front of a bike and not in something a little more stable. The highlight of the trip, for my husband, was riding up to the drive-up window of Walgreen's to pick up a prescription. While we were there, four or five pharmacists must have stopped by the window to take a look at our bike and we had a nice chat with the gentleman helping us out with our order. Next, we stopped in for a drink at one of our favorite local hang outs. We sat in a window seat and my husband would beam every time he would see people stop to check out our bike chained to a bike rack across the street. My husband just loves the extra attention he gets from the bike and it's obvious he loves riding around in it as well.

Sunday, we had a busy day and our Dutch bike certainly came in handy. First, my husband took the bike, along with our son, on our first car-free grocery trip. Then, they took a trip to the children's school for an open house, they rode it to a restaurant for lunch and rode it to a play date a couple of miles away. Meanwhile, I had walked my daughter a mile and a half to the open house in a stroller, my daughter and I took a bus from there to the restaurant to meet up with my husband and my son, then I walked home from there to cheer on the Chicago Bears while my husband took both our kids to their play date.

I know we're only a week into this challenge, but at this point, we can't see ourselves having any problems keeping our end of the bargain. My husband loves this bike, the kids like riding it and now we know I can be carted around too.