A Weekend Without Bikes

I didn't know it was possible, but last weekend --Easter -- I went the whole weekend (5 days) without riding. It's not that I didn't want to, or I didn't have a bike, I just couldn't.

We went to the Oregon Coast for the weekend with my brother and sister in law. We met them in Portland where I had a new bike rack for the van waiting for me. I was quite excited about the rack -- I would be able to open the back door of the van with the bikes and rack still attached -- something I wasn't able to do with my Swagman. I decided to put the new rack on and try it out for the weekend. So in the pouring rain on Saturday I fumbled away trying to get our two mountain bikes and a trail-a-bike on the new Softride Access DX. Bloodied cold and soaked I was finally victorious and we were ready to hit the Coast.

It's a couple of hour drive to Manzanita from Portland. Quite nice actually, though the mountains and then down to the Coast Highway at Canon Beach. We followed the Coast Highway south to Manzanita, a small sleepy town with, I'm sure, good riding in the hills behind.

We had to endure storm after storm until finally I thought we could get a family ride in with Tessa on the Trail-a-bike and Aiden on his own bike. I even talked my brother and sister-in-law into bringing their ancient mountain bikes. We were all ready to go so I went to get the bikes off the new rack. Now what did I do with that key? Well in my bloodied, cold and soaked condition when I was installing the rack I put the key to the lock, that held on all the bikes on, in my brother's living room in Portland.

ARRRGH!

So not only did we have a weekend without riding -- I had to suffer even more because I saw the bikes hanging on the back of the van all weekend long!
It wasn't so bad though. There was lots to do. We played soccer and frisbee on the beach. We jumped in the sand dunes. We walked a lot. We even went crabbing and caught our dinner.

It was really a great weekend, even though I didn't ride. Imagine that!