Biking, with Purpose

"All your bases R belong to us" - Storm Troopers haven't landed, but this was some of the gear needed for this weekend (this really is Becca, if you couldn't tell).

This summer was going be all about putting up huge miles for distance. Notice how I already used "was" as the qualifier and summer hasn't even started yet? I'm already predicting that the big numbers I was hoping for aren't going to happen. It will still will be better then last year, which when looking at the positive side, "is" an improvement. I think Becca's "idea" is to get involved with dirt biking and to put on miles the easy way!

This weekend was a trip home to enjoy the local bike trails around my parents house. You know, all the trials that I never used growing up and never knew existed. Even though I wanted to pedal bike, the real purpose was to get Becca a demo of dirt biking with our new friend Cori. I really can't comment on what actually happened, while the girls headed out on the trails, I took the much more dangerous job of geocaching in the area. They had beautiful beach sand trails, I had to blaze trails through dense forest trails that reminded me of my time spent in Nam. They had song birds chirping, I was being chased by swarms of mosquitoes thirsty for my sweet blood. They had a group of helpful guys to tend to their every need on the trail, I had myself to remove at least ten ticks off my body once I got back to the car! Plus, found another three in the car while driving (I'm sure the other drivers thought I was drunk as I trying to catch the little critters)! Well, Becca did do her impression of an ostrich by going over her handlebars and planted her head in the sand, but that hardly sounds close to what I had to go through!

If I'm home visiting my parents, that means one thing, I'm eating. Cori got initiated to pasties. She then initiated us (really just me) to biscuit strawberry shortcake. Apparently because I grew up "urban", I like my shortcake using the easily purchased angel cake way and not the "traditional" home style of my mom slaving in the kitchen for hours. Don't get me wrong, it was good, and Cori can make it for me anytime, but if I'm having guests over, they are getting the angel cake way...deal with it!

We did get to take Cori out for her first official Geocaching experience. Though I'm not sure if she really enjoyed the walking around swamps and playing the slap mosquitoes off each other game. I thought we gave her a good experience when it came to finding various wildlife. It started with me scaring a momma partridge then almost stepping on three of her eight babies. They were pretty cute and reminded me of the candy peeps coming to life and running around. I'm sure Rascal would have loved them as much as the candy peeps as well! Deer, lots of deer. A momma turkey with I believe twelve kids and I believe the consensus favorite a huge porcupine that proceeded to climb down the small tree where Cori found him, to a much larger tree to get away from us (Cori) tormenting him. I noticed that he did stay in the tree, until Cori called him fat, then he got self-conscious.

It wasn't until the end of the weekend that we actually got some pedal biking in. I was totally shocked my parents wanted to go out and ride with us. That alone tells me that I'm not riding enough if they think they can keep up with me! We had a nice ride and I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I think it was my favorite part of the whole weekend. Now you all know how sentimental I am, so that's why you know that for me to enjoy something, it must mean there is some kind of destruction going on, there was! The tent worm population exploded and there were thousands of them running across the trail and were creating ecological terrorism. I put on my Homeland Security hat, raised the terror level, and the game became running them over with the bike tires. My favorite moment of the whole weekend was missing a tent worm, trying to point it out to Becca, only to have her not in a position to get it, but watching my mom line up and crush it with a smile. It only took thirty four years before we actually could enjoy a destructive game together. So, here's my tip for this blog post, if your goal is to bike miles, get some some tent worms on trail. Not only is it a bonding experience, but it's therapeutic and damn fun!