I decided to use the opportunity of a nice Sunday morning to take a few of my kids out for a bike ride down across the river. This was the first attempt at getting Ellie out on the roads since last year. Last year it ended badly. During that fateful trip, we entered the bike path and it angled down as well as a slow turn to the left. Unfortunately, Ellie had an old used bike that has seen better days and for whatever reason, she went down and badly skinned her arm and leg. Tracy played ambulance and came down to get the girl and the bike. So, one of my two trips with Ellie last year caused her pain and bloodshed.
On a side note, a friend’s husband had just recently been in an accident and was fairly banged up. This brought into question my own love of cycling as well as my recent purchase of a motorcycle. I didn’t know what to think about it.
So this year, we purchased new bikes for the kids and the warm weather was a good place to start the riding season. Ellie wasn’t all that comfortable with shifting the bike yet and I had to tell her forcefully to “own the bike” and turn the shifter until that chain moved. We then went past the area where she spilled last year and she was proud of that. The trip to the river was pretty uneventful otherwise. We went across the bridge there just for the experience and then went to the north. Ellie said she wanted to go across the river and see where we had found Dave (our cat) and go along the paths there. Again, nothing eventful, except that she had a hard time keeping up, even though I was going as slow as I felt comfortable with. We crossed the streets going into South Elgin and I looked to the west and realized that we had to head home. The storms that weren’t expected until the afternoon looked like they were making an early appearance.
I must say that I did, once again, acknowledge that I absolutely love riding a bike. I have a cheap $80 bike, but I ride that thing hard. I feel so good with the burn in the legs and the crackle of dirt and gravel under the wheels. I could feel the arteries unclogging and the head clearing up. I wanted to ride for hours and hours just to feel that burn longer.
As we turned onto the road into South Elgin, I had to urge Ellie to move a little faster. Honestly, we weren’t moving much faster than walking. I was hoping to get under the bridge in SE before the heavens opened up. We did get to SE and the thunder was rumbling pretty strong. I decided that we could probably make a dash to home, as the edge of the clouds was visible. We crossed 31 and headed up the bluff. Then the lightning kicked in. It was directly overhead and Ellie was starting to become unnerved by the flash and noise. Then raindrops hit… I figured we couldn’t go on with Ellie in that state so I pulled up the kids into a nursing home’s porch to wait out the rain. I paged Tracy to come and get Ellie as she was clearly out of it at this point.
As I saw the downpour, I felt horrible to ask my wife to come out in this weather. Ellie had started to calm down once the lightning had moved on. A passer by drove up and offered to load our bikes and take us home but I told him that my wife was coming and thanked him for his consideration. Shortly after that, one of the aids came out and offered us to come inside. I felt that while I’m sure the residents would have greatly appreciated the company, I don’t think my somewhat shy kids wouldn’t take too well to being the center of attention of all those old people. Maybe if I had steeled them up to it before, sure, we could visit, but not on such short notice.
Tracy came and we realized that we couldn’t fit the bike in the van, and by that time the rain had tapered off. Ellie had settled down so we decided to ride the west of the way home. I thanked Tracy for all that she had gone through and apologized once again to Ellie for all the adventures she had when we went out for rides. She did cry once again on the way home so I told her how proud I was and that she was doing fine. By the time we got on our street, the second wave of rain was hitting and we did get a little wet, but otherwise we survived.
So much for a nice, calming, morning ride. I hope later rides are more uplifting.
