what a great day!

I just have to blab a bit about what a great day we had.
To start with, I got on the new bike we bought for me a few weeks ago FOUR TIMES. Four times! Matt wasn't even home for a good chunk of today, yet I took four (okay, of varying distances, but still) bike rides!!
The 70-degree weather didn't hurt a bit. I told a couple of people that, to me, this would probably be remembered as the best weekend of the year, weather-wise. Still too early for almost all of the bugs (but they're comin'), nice and warm, but NOT TOO HOT. Really, that's all it takes.
I meant to rave about how great it feels to have a bike again back when we bought it -- three weeks ago now -- but just haven't gotten the chance. I last had a bike five years ago. It was a yellow mountain bike with front shocks that I thought were spiffy. I bought it in Germany, at one of the military bases there. As my dad pointed out, it was probably a bit too big for me. My neck got sore sometimes from riding it -- I had to lean over too far, and tilted my head too much. But I rode it a lot in Germany. There was a back route through spargel fields to the next wee town. Then I'd ride back along a bike path next to the street. How I love Germany for its bike paths. And spargel fields! Sometimes, I could hear a cuckoo who must've lived in a nearby tree when I'd pedal past. A cuckoo! How cool is that.
Anyway, I put a lot of miles on that bike, and liked it quite a lot, whether or not it fit quite right. And then, someone stole it. From my apartment building in Rosslyn. Shortly after I'd decided that, now that I had a baby (and a bunch of baby stuff), it would no longer fit in the smallish one-bedroom apartment I had there. So I put it in the basement, but unfortunately all of the good spots to lash it to were taken by other bikers. (railings, etc.) So I just wound a chain through the frame and wheels, and took the seat off. But that wasn't enough of a deterrent, turns out.
Matt believes he even saw the guy who took it. That's a funny story in and of itself, but it's a bit too un-PC to tell here. Ask me sometime.
Anyway ... I've been mourning that bike ever since. Not the bike, actually; but I've been bummed, and rather bitter (as it was stolen -- stealing is one thing that REALLY CHAPS MY HIDE), not to have a bike for this amount of time. I do invest in a certain amount of self-pity since I've been a mom. Hello -- not much is mine anymore. My body still isn't yet all mine from this last go-round. I don't have much money, even less time, etc. etc. ... okay, enough about that. But I certainly didn't have a bike. And exercise opportunities are painfully hard to come by.
So this tax season, Matt decided that the one splurge we would make would be bicycles, and enough kiddo stuff to make them usable. This took the form of a decent bike from a bike shop for me, and a lesser, but (we hope) still serviceable bike from Target for him. We gave Craigslist a shot for a bike trailer (Maddie) and one of those copilot thingies where it makes the grown-up's bike a tandem of sorts, with a kid seat on the back (Lizzy), but we kept getting beaten out, so we said, you know, okay. We'll just buy them. Ugh. So, we did.

This is the first weekend that we've had all the pieces in place. Out we went! Since Matt had a music practice to get to, Lizzy opted to squeeze into the bike trailer with Maddie, and amazingly enough, it worked. First time out, we went a fair distance, and when we forgot to bring a pacifier and Maddie started squawking (she was tired), Lizzy sang her to sleep. Sweet big sister!
The downside to biking today was, we've still had so much snow on the ground until yesterday (or, in some cases, today) that the ground was still quite wet and squishy and, in some places, muddy. I don't have a mudflap on my back tire, so at one point, I looked back into the trailer to see a big mud splotch on Maddie's cheek. Whoops!
Mighty fine day, I tell you. Tomorrow looks fairly promising, too!