Last Sunday, I had to work a 4 hour shift at the library, but I was off by 5pm. I rode my bike the one mile to our house, and was loving what a beautiful afternoon it was. We ate dinner on our front porch, and then decided to go for a bike ride together.
Normally, my husband and I spend most of our free time in the summer mountain biking. We have to drive at least 30 minutes to get to the nearest good mountain bike trails, and some of the ones we like are nearly an hour away (we don’t go to those very often though). We like really challenging trails – the steeper and rockier, the better. But when my husband hurt his kneein May on his unicycle, it put a bit of a damper on our mountain bike season. His knee is pretty much back to normal now, but he’s been actively rehabilitating it for 3 months. He can walk and bike just fine, but he’s still a little nervous about needing to come off the bike or unicycle in a hurry and put that foot down on uneven terrain. He’s afraid that he could undo all the work he’s done to get the knee healed.
So all summer long, we’ve been going for bike rides on the urban trails near our house. We’ve both been missing the mountain biking, but we’ve gotten to the point where we really enjoy our trail biking. At first we were just doing it as a rehabilitation for his knee, and for something to do. But then I started thinking about how much easier it is to actually go for the rides around here. We just get on our bikes and ride from our garage to the trail. There’s no loading bikes on the car, no extra hour spent in the car getting to and from the trail, no gas to buy. And the trails really are beautiful. They go past lakes and open spaces with lots of wildlife. We’ve seen some beautiful sunsets, since we always go in the evening. On Sunday, we took a detour through some beautiful neighborhoods that we had never seen before, and found a section of trail that went for miles and miles – we didn’t even know it existed, and we’ve lived here for 5 years!
We’re both still looking forward to the day when he can ride in the mountains again, but for now, we’ve found a new form of entertainment that’s free, fun, and good for us. Since we spent the whole evening on Sunday riding our bikes, there was no time to spend any money – so it’s a perfect budget-friendly activity.
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