Well, HB (Honey-Bunny, aka my hubby) recently decided to take up cycling as his form of exercise. After a couple of weeks of riding his, as he calls it, $80-8-year-old-Target-bike, he thought that for Christmas, my gift to him could be a new mountain bike.
Tangent: To some, it may seem strange to ask for a certain present for Christmas or a birthday, but it is quite normal in my family. It is actually considered a win-win situation for all.
I offered to give it to him now, while the weather is nice. Of course, I'd envisioned going to the store when he actually bought it, which is what we usually try to do for these kinds of presents. Well, you can imagine my surprise when I arrived home from church last week and here he was with his brand-new bike! Ha! Ah well, even if it wasn't quite how I had envisioned it all happening, it was kind of funny and definitely cute to see him so excited.
During the week that just passed, he was very diligent about going out every day to ride. He was also stopping/shopping almost every day at every bike store that exists on his commute to and from work. He started coming home with bike trail maps for places in and around Boston... and we discussed over supper how neat it would be to explore certain trails. Well, one thing we'd always talked about doing, but had never done, was to walk (or bike) the battle trail around Concord. This created visions in my head of the two of us adventuring to new areas and exploring places like the battle trail. These visions ended up being the impetus to get my Christmas present from him early... and have it be a new bike!
grin
Saturday, he bought my bike, helmet, shorts, gloves, water bottle cages, and bottles. Who knew you needed so much stuff?
We suited up and we went to the nearby State Park, where he'd scoped out good beginner trails for me. It was very exhilarating to go downhill and really go fast. The uphill... well, lets just say that my legs (and butt) were quite sore by the end of the day.
Note the beauteous yellow and blue paint scheme.
To be continued...
Posted by danielle at 01:52 PM
Sunday, after church and lunch, HB and I headed out to Concord for our first true cycling adventure. We biked the battle trail (it follows the battles of the first day of the Revolution) which is really very pretty and nice.
We started at the Minute Man visitor center (the one with the multi-dimensional recreation/presentation of the initial battle of the Revolution) and biked toward the Old North Bridge.
Since we'd seen the sites previously on foot, we didn't stop and look much, we just utilized the well-laid-out trail. We did stop near the Hartwell Tavern, because this was the first time we'd ever seen sheep in the fields and spaces near the trail.
Note that this picture of the Hartwell Tavern was taken on a different trip, during the summer season.
Very pastoral, eh? Note the traditional New England stone wall.
We biked all of the way through downtown Concord and to the Old North Bridge where we got to overhear part of a tour guide's spiel about the battle at the bridge.
After a break at the bridge, we biked downtown, locked our bikes up, went in a couple of shops and stopped for ice-cream. Mmmmm... chocolate with peanut butter sauce... eaten on a nice shaded bench.
All in all, it was definitely a good inaugural biking weekend.
Posted by danielle at 12:32 PM | Comments (1)