Cruisin...

When I was in 3rd grade I was riding my bike home from school  when out of the blue Josh Hoffman ran up to me and pushed me off of my bike. While pushing me off, he yelled "This is a side walk, not a side ride!" I of course laid on the ground and cried while Gary Norman yelled at Josh for doing such a thing. I was devastated! I loved me bike. I wasn't crying because I was really hurt, I was crying because my bike might have gotten hurt.

My brother's and I had all gotten bikes that year for Christmas. We all thought there was nothing better than watching RAD on a Friday night and then spending Saturday at the bike track riding our BMX's around (ok, so my brother's had a predator and a black diamond, not BMX's) but mine was a BMX. It was purple and it was perfect. I loved riding it to and from school every day. I loved the wind in my hair and how much faster you could get to school on wheels than you could walking. Have I ever mentioned that I always wanted trampoline walk-ways to get to school? I thought that:
1. It would get you to school a lot quicker and
2. It would make kids love going to school, because who wouldn't want to bounce their way there?

Anyway, sorry... totally off subject. Back to Josh Hoffman... luckily, even though I was devestated that day, I knew that I could continue to ride my bike to school each day because either Gary Norman (thanks Gary!) or one of my brother's would have my back when Josh tried to bully me into only walking on the sidewalk. I don't know what happened after elementary school but somehow my brother's and I grew out of our RAD phase and didn't spend as much time at the bike track.

Fast forward 22 years or so and I've become a biker again! YAY! Ok, so not a real biker that wears spandex and actually get a great workout doing it. I've become more of what you'd call a "cruiser". Two weeks ago Tyler and I decided to jump on craigslist and find ourselves some beach cruisers. We drove fifteen or so miles to the North to a crazy guy's house to check out his collection. I'm not making up that he was crazy... he had a Delorian (yes, from Back to the Future),  naked manequins and Jon Deer tractors in his backyard and he told Tyler and I that a bunch of people on craigslist have been spreading rumors that he is a drug dealer and that he's murdered someone. We agreed when we left that we believed the rumors.

Anyway, we walked in to his backyard and right away I saw the perfect bike sitting there waiting for me. It was like the BMX had been reincarnated into a beach cruiser. Right down to the purple paint. Tyler didn't have as much luck at the crazy guy's house but he found a great bike later that day at an undisclosed location (I'm not about to admit that we purchased something from Walmart... I'm sorry Derek!).

We strapped a bike seat onto the back of my bike for Owen and we were on our way to our first fun filled family bike ride. Well, at least what we thought would be a fun filled bike ride. That lasted for about two seconds until we tried to put the helmet on Owen. He screamed all the way down the street until he figured out how to get his helmet off. For the next five minutes I tried to hold his head still while Tyler tried to put the helmet back on with him screaming the whole time. Super fun right?

Luckily over the course of the last couple of weeks, he's come to realize that putting on the helmet means he gets to go outside. Needless to say, he's formed a great relationship with that helmet now. Anything to get us outside. Doesn't he look so cute in that helmet? I mean really...

We tried to take some family photos of us on the bikes and this was the best we got... hmmmm... we may need some lessons on photography when biking.

Poor Owen... no wonder he hates the helmet. It's covering his sweet little face.














P.S. Josh Hoffman didn't grow up to be a bully... He turned out to be a super nice guy who according to facebook is very happily married. I guess Gary Norman shaped him right up.