A nature bike ride in the hood

I love family bike rides.

LOVE them!

We haven't ridden since before the tornado last year.  The bikes got locked in the garage for about a month, then they got buried behind building materials and everything in the garage just got out of control.

Today we rescued out bikes and took them out for a ride!

I had a such an entertaining time partaking in the sights and sounds of our nature path weaving in and out of the hood/ghetto.

Let me take you along for the ride so you can enjoy it too.

Paul is the only one who is responsible enough to know where his bike helmet is.  The rest of us are at a loss.  So he wins the award for being the coolest, safest, and most responsible in the house.  This is no surprise really as he has held this title for the last 10 years.  I mean truly, he is unbeatable, its disgusting.

So, my bun is really big so that works for me.
Little is in the buggy so a private cave works for her.
Middle puts on Great Grandpa's helmet that has 100% no padding.  He rides with a tilted, slanted helmet the whole way.  The crooked helmet is perfect for our slightly off kiltered kid.
Big however has scored the best vote with wearing a baseball helmet.  Yup.  That's right.  We rode for an hour and half with him wearing a StarWar costume that is three sizes too small and a baseball helmet.  I just nodded and smiled politely at all the people we  passed as they starred three seconds too long at our kid. 

We own the phrase, "let you freak flag fly."

Middle is attached to Paul.
Big rides alone.
Little rides in the buggy attached to me.

Within the first few moments, Big says, "Don't worry mama, I will stay in the pocket."  Pretty great memory since we haven't done this in two summers.  If you want to know more about the pocket, you can read that blog here.  http://danitietjen.blogspot.com/2011/05/pocket.html

Then as our hour continued, we were rewarded with the following:

In the matter of 20 minutes, I smelled fresh flowers, someone grilling, burning tires, which always takes me back to Haiti, and the stench of the sewer.

We rode down to the Mississippi where we watched a bunch of young men come back from fishing.  Half of them struggled to walk with their pants around their knees, the others just had a look of getting away with something.  We crossed under the bridge and there was the beautiful river.  Then we noticed the bank littered with garbage.

I heard four different languages in five minutes.

An African American Luau decked out with full figured ladies dressed in grass skirts and shell bra's playing games with the music blaring.

A field fight where Middle couldn't understand if they were talking or fighting because it all sounds the same to him.

Riding next to the river on one side and a graffiti train on the other.

Biking through 7 basketball games in the street and one battle scene where kids were using sticks as swords and baseball plates as shields.  It was hilarious.

Little singing Happy Birthday to everything she sees and thinks of.  And I mean everythingg.
"Happy Birthday to my toe, to my shoe, to my umbrella, to my bike, my clouds, my jammies, my tree, my wheel, my keys, my fingers, my hair." You get the idea.   It was unbelievable.  If she wasn't singing, she was pointing out every bump I hit, every smell that was weird, she noticed every dog and animal we passed, and she greeted everyone we passed.  It was non stop chatter.  I am a little concerned with when both boys are in school.  I thought there would be some peace and quite, but I have been proven wrong.  Ms. Chatterbox will apparently love being heard and not fighting for my attention.

We stopped and surprised some friends the night before their first day of school and took the nice parkway all the way home.

We biked through pounding music blaring from cars, scandalously dressed girls, kids riding bikes, and animals aimlessly wandering around.

Every turn we made, there was something new to see and something that didn't make sense.  It was nature and the hood all wrapped into one.  Everything had an opposite and we were never bored. 

We laughed, we wondered and now we have lots of stories of our new bike adventures.

We're back biking in the hood, but we need helmets.