A little troll in the woods has a umbrella on it's porch.


Had a great weekend with my family.  We enjoyed bike riding, working in the yard, playing Eartholopy, and more bike riding.

The weather has cooled and dried out and is starting to feel like fall.  This is my FAVORITE time of the year.  I hope to have many more weekends just like this with more photos to show.

Beautiful Day to Ride

Today was such a beautiful day and we just couldn't let this day go without riding. We added a twist though, we actually went caching too. Hadn't been caching in over a year and a half. We use to cache all the time but when we started bike, for some reason we stopped caching. I had to do some maintenance on a friends cache this week and it resparked the bug. We hunted for four but only found two. One thing I noticed though is that there aren't enough caches along the river trail. I don't want to put any more out but I might have too.

The ride was great but the wind was brutal. We parked at the submarine and headed west to the Big Dam Bridge then crossed over to the Little Rock side and headed back east to the River Market. We paused at the playground to let the girls run around. We met a nice family of 7 who inquired about riding the trail. Maybe we inspired another family to ride together. Then we headed back across the river via the new junction pedestrian bridge.

Biking Family

Marty and I have been biking all of our lives. We both learned when we were 7 or 8 and in elementary school rode pretty much everyday. Back then it wasn't for exercise or our health, it was because that was what kids did. You rode to school, rain or shine. You rode to your friends house. You rode to the local grocery store to pick up bread or milk for your mom. You rode to get away from your siblings. And most of all you rode to just ride.

Somewhere between the late 70's/early 80's to the present, riding has disappeared from most kids lives. There are a lot of boys still riding but not young girls. When you go to an elementary school, check out the bike rack. Or do they even have a bike rack? Ours does but there maybe 4 or 5 bikes in there each day. Most of the kids are driven by their mom or they ride a bus. They ride a bus in a subdivision that the school is in that there is only one way out of and the school is at the entrance. They ride a bus from the farthest point of this subdivision which is maybe 1/4 of a mile. What has happened that our kids don't ride bikes to school?

Mine do not simply because we don't live in a subdivision but instead we live on one of the busyiest two lane narrow shoulder highways in Arkansas and are three miles from the school with no back rodes that would be safe to ride because of all the speeding drivers.

But I degress. Because my husband and I grew up with bikes as feet, when our daughters got to the point they could peddle, they were given there first bikes. It was slow going getting them from bikes with training wheels to straight up two wheels but three years ago we were successful. We have spent the last three now getting them to learn to pick up their pace and go longer distance. Now we're not talking miles upon miles, we're just talking 1 or 2 along the River Trail in NLR. Well, this year their heights (because my girls are not going to be short women) we had to upgrade their bikes. We had upgrade Dad's from the Wal-Mart special to a GT two August ago and he had been telling me how much easier and faster it was but bikes are now expensive and I just knew he was full of crap. Well two Saturday's ago, after the girls had biked the 14 miles from the NLR submarine up to the NLR side of the Big Dam Bridge and back and my baby is complaining of how much her back hurts and I've watched my eleven year who is only 8" shorter then me with her knees almost up to her chin, my mind was made up. We were not going biking again until those girls had bikes that fit their frame. Both were on 20" tires on 9 to 10" frames. What in the world was I thinking. Well, we started looking at the lower end markets (Wal-Mart, Academy Sports and the like) but my husband was not satisfied with anything. We made our way to Arkansas Cycling and Fitness and both girls with in minutes had picked Trek's that they were in love with. The guy (and forgive me because I'm terrible with names) that helped us was a true doll. He helped us size the girls and made recommendations for them. The girls got exactly the bike they wanted but in their size. One is now on a 26" tire and 15" frame and the other is on a 26" tire and 13" frame.

Well, we had to take those for a spin, so we loaded them in the truck and headed out to the trail right then. The girls took off like rockets. Now Mom is still on a Roadmaster from Wal-Mart and Marty and the girls are sporting aluminum frames and gears that shift with a press of the thumb. I had to work hard to keep up. It was a labor of love but it was labor. The girls were all smiles and no complaints about my back is hurting.

Lucky for me, I'm the special girl in my husbands life, because he couldn't stand it that I had to work so hard to keep up. Saturday, he purchased me a Specialized bike from the same guy at Arkansas Cycling and Fitness. I'm not a high tech bike sort of girl. All I really care about is will it shift gears with ease, will it travel down the trail and what color it is. I've been looking at the bike and the adult women are just not appealing to me. Well my fabulous husband did great. This one has all the tech stuff he wants me to have and I got a color that I can stand (metalic baby blue) and gears that shift without throwing a chain or having to wait on them to change.

I had to pick the bike up yesterday because it wasn't even on the showroom floor. The awesome guy had to put it together for me. That's a first for me. Well the girls and I meet Marty at the Submarine after work and we hit the trail. Man, what a difference. Other then my butt hurting because of a different saddle, that was awesome. We cruised down to the bridge and back and it was just fabulous. I even passed Marty and Em going up one of the hills because they were going to slow. That is a huge improvement.

Wow. Thanks Arkansas Cycling and Fitness for helping get us on the trail even more. I can't wait until 5:00 pm tonight.

Go 88

If you're wondering why my page is presently black and white, well that is the color of the checked flag and race season is back. I love watching cars go around and the faster the better. My lucky number is 8 which up until last year was also my favorite drivers number. It is still my lucky number but 88 is my race number now. Marty doesn't have a favorite driver, which is good because we don't get cross that way. He just roots for certain guys to not win and the guys he doesn't like I also don't like so it's good.

I'll have to see if I can make a checker flag for my banner.

I love the engineering of racing. It takes so much engineering to get a car to go around the different tracks and win week after week or almost week after week. Each track is unique and requires different technology.

In other news for today - I'm ready for winter to be done.

Today it was close to 70 degrees. So Marty and I loaded the bikes in the truck and to the girls down to the river trail for a ride. We started at the NLR Alltel Arena end this time instead of in the middle at Burns Park like we normally do. Marty and I had done that trail but not with the girls. We got started and decided that twe would just see how far the girls wanted to go. The NLR side is about 7 miles from Alltel to the Big Dam bridge. We made it to boat ramp by the Burns Park golf course which is about 4.5 miles and then we turned around and went back for a total of 9 miles.

Marty and I hadn't had enough yet so we left there and went down to the county farm trail and did another 3 miles round trip out to the peninsula that you can see from I-440 looking toward Penicle Mountain. This is a flat ride and doesn't take as much effort. It was a great ride. Though I'm going to pay for it tomorrow. My knees are screaming at me now. I hurt them growning up and now it doesn't take much. I pray that as I get older that I will not hurt them to the point that I can't do what I love to do - hike, bike and camp.

I haven't gotten to down load my pictures from today yet but I will get them on line as soon as I can.

Family time

We've been having a very full summer and not much family only time so last night after SLUFY we went and had a dinner at Applebee's and planned to come home and have a family tv night. Well the best laid plans were not last night. Instead we came home to find this:

Meet Snowbell or Snowball. The girls had her named in about 10 minutes but keep going back and forth on which of these two names they like. If you were the "wonderful, thoughtful" person that left this precious gift on our doorstep, Mommy and Daddy would like to meet you so we can personally.... ahhh.... "thank you". She is a very sweet kitten and we're not sure what we're going to do with her. At the moment she resides mostly in the wash house with some trips into the big house. Mom isn't sure if the itchy eyes and sneezing last night are from her or being on the floor on the carpet. If they are because of snow then other arrangement might for sure be in the future.

Another part of our family time was getting up today and going biking. Daddy packed the truck yesterday so we could get an early start today but we were alll so tired that we sleep late. That's okay, we still made it to the county farm out by Maumelle Park and went for about a 5 mile ride. We found a new part of the trail that they've constructed and rode it.

It was a beautiful day and we really enjoyed having time together. We ate lunch at Maumell Park after the ride and just enjoyed the day. It was hot but the breeze from the river was really nice.
Then in the afternoon we went to the Launius' house and swam in the pool for a while. It was really nice to cool off and relax. Now were going to watch Mary Poppins before we go to bed. Family is a wonderful thing to have.