Another nighttime bike ride. Eager to mix it up and strike out for more varied environs than just the greenway, I headed south to the Minnehaha trail and turned west for Harriet. This seemed like the bicycling equivalent of a slam dunk, since I love the trail and figured it would be sublime at night.
It turned out that it's actually quite treacherous at night. Dark is fun. Pitch dark, not so much. My piddley little Serfa headlight really didn't cast much light around, and that trail heads into some surprisingly - given the dizzying array of affluent houselights all around - woodsy areas. Transiting the echoey dark underbelly of 35W is notably sketchy, what with the trail actually turning to dirt and the 8,000 places from which anyone could jump out to mug the bike out from under you. Even heading around Harriet and Calhoun is astoundingly dark at times.
Ah, but it's not a bike blog, is it? So let's talk children. Ours are madcap lunatics.
They had a good day. From the looks of it, they have settled nicely into the daycare drop off routine. Last week, it was a rough go every day. Today, no sooner had I eased Lily to the floor than she was shooing me away with her hand. "You go now," she said. With her eyes.
Way back before daycare, during the morning routine, Lily stunned us all by singing for what we think might be the first time. We were playing a cow/music box (what a wonderful world we live in), and Jen and I were singing along to the tune. "Doo do doo doooo," we sang. In no time, she was singing along with us, and solo after we'd stopped to listen.
Abby is ridiculously realistic with her roars. I asked her what the lion says right at the outset for our drive to daycare. She roared the entire 3 miles there. "Rrrooaawwwrr!"
Tonight was the annual Powderhorn meeting. We spent the entire time chasing the kids around, but it was okay since there were lots of other kids and it was in a gym and everybody seemed like they were enjoying the spectacle of Lily wandering up to them and babbling nonsense.
One of the highpoints came when councilmember Elizabeth Glidden asked me to watch her kid while she got up to talk. "Sure," I told her, now making myself in charge of Abby and her 11 month old girl while 10 other kids played around us. During her speech, Lily managed to put some distance between her and Jen, and ended up 2 feet away from Elizabeth, staring at her during the entire speech.
Lily was great. She loves watching people give speeches.
Abby was great. She liked to walk around and grab random people's pants.
Day two hundred and thirteen.
This reminds me of last year after the Ragnar Relay. We ran for 30 hours or so (one at a time, of course) and ran all through the night. I had never run at 2:00 am before and was completely enamored with it. The quiet, the stars, it was fabulous. Afterward, I got geared up to do my first night time run (much earlier than 2:00 am) did the run, got totally spooked, and from then on ran only during daylight hours. Can't wait to do it again!
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