Trail-a-bike

We went for a bike ride this weekend in Waterton Canyon. We haven't been on many bike rides this summer because of Curt's broken wrist. His wrist is finally doing better and he can ride with the brace on.

Curt always keeps an eye out for free things on Craigslist or good deals on the classifieds at his work. I think he secretly likes to shop. :) Anyway, he found a used trail-a-bike for $40. Jenelle can ride her own bike, but she tires out and complains about her legs hurting on every hill. If we want to do any kind of long distance ride, she needs to ride in the bike seat. Well, she is getting way too small for the bike seat. Her knees are up to her chest in that thing and her knees dig into Curt's back. So we have upgraded her to the trail-a-bike. She loved it. At first she asked Curt to go real slow. By the end of the ride she said, "Daddy don't brake. Pedal faster."

On the way down the canyon, Curt got a flat tire. We checked the bike bags for our spare tube and tools. My bag contained leaves and rocks that Jenelle wanted to keep from the last ride. Curt's bag contained a bag of carrots that had turned to liquid mush. Hmmm...I thought we were better prepared. All we had was a bike pump. So we're trying to figure out how to finish the last 4 miles of our ride without Jenelle having to walk the whole way. Finally I started asking "spare tube?" to other bikers whizzing past us. A really nice couple stopped and gave us a spare tube and they let us use their tools. Next time we will have everything we need to fix a flat.

Waterton Canyon is such a beautiful place to ride. It's a big horn sheep habitat. A bunch of sheep were grazing right off the trail. (See the sheep in the background behind Jenelle.) We saw some male sheep with the big horns, but we didn't stop to photograph them. I don't want to disturb the males. It was really fun to see all the sheep. Sort of a combo bike ride/zoo trip.