around the island

We went up to seattle over labor day weekend mostly to get M to ride her new bike that she got back in april. It was sitting untouched at her brother's house on Mercer Island. On saturday, we woke up to some fine seattle drizzle which quickly became rain and I could tell that M was not feeling the biking thing since she kept saying that maybe we should do something else because of the rain. I calmly replied that I was sure it would stop any second now. And once it became a drizzle again, we headed out to her brother's house with a first initial stop at her parent's house where we found a cruiser bike in the garage which was perfect for me. Then on to her brother's house (which is freaking amazing by the way - has a view of the water). So I was curious as to what bike she had gotten since all she could say was that it was blue. What we found was a very nice road bike from REI. I gave it a whirl and felt like a giant on it of course since it was a tiny frame.

So I had been wondering if M knew how to ride a bike since I never remembered seeing her ride one at stanford. But she claimed she grew up riding bikes all the time. So the big test came when she hopped on and tried to figure out how to start. It was a little dicey. After C and I watched her try to get on the bike a couple of times with difficulty, it was clear that she was uncomfortable with not being able to have both feet on the ground. So we quickly decided to just lower the seat from the "correct" position to a safer position for her. Once that happened, she was all better.

We did a nice little loop around the island which was around 13 miles. Unfortunately, there wasn't much of a bike lane but the car traffic wasn't so bad and C stayed right behind M to make sure she was doing okay. Can I dare say that we have a new cycling convert?