A sunny afternoon off work = Family bike time.

The weather today was beautiful out, and to capitalize on that I took a half day from work and came home to get Terra and Kai and head outside. We figured this would be another good time to put the Ute through it's paces a bit more and also to get Terra out on her bike for the first time in quite a while.

Our first order of business was to take Kai to the park, so we loaded up and off we went. Before stopping at the park that we normally would go to we decided to go explore the bike paths a bit and wound up finding a slightly smaller park that was perfect for Kai as it had equipment that was more sized to her. It was a bit more off the beaten path and as a result wasn't quite as crowded but there were still a handful of kids for her to play with.

After some park time it was off to the Library for some new books for Kai. We wound up with probably a dozen books, obviously there was more than enough room to haul those on the bike.

Our next stop was at Fred Meyer for some shopping, this would be the first time I have really loaded the bike with any sort of capacity so I was interested to see how it would go.

Here are some pictures of us loading up for the trip home:

So that is a load consisting of both a shopping trip and a library trip, I was also carrying Kai of course and really the bike performed amazingly. I may wind up figuring out a way to stabilize the kick stand even further to make loading a bit easier as things tend to want to tip a bit but once I was loaded up and on the bike it was no problem.

Having all of the weight in the rear does make the front end a bit light which changes the feel of things, but the ride itself didn't seem to be affected much it just felt different.

As we arrived home we stopped by the office and picked up our package of Keurig coffee as well, which Kai sort of hugged on the way home, it sat on the deck in front of her with her reaching around it's sides and grabbing her handlebars. Granted that was just for an 1/8th of a mile or so but it still counts right?

So after getting everything in the house I decided to snap a photo of our complete haul:

1lb Can of Similac (x8)

18oz Honey Bunches of Oats (x4)

64oz Juicy Juice Berry (x2)

Skippy Peanut Butter (x2)

Frozen OJ (x2)

Dozen Large Eggs (x2)

Whole Wheat Bread

Strawberries

Oranges (x4lbs)

Coconut (x1)

Peanut M&Ms

Gum

Nail Polish (x2)

Library Books (x13 I think)

Keurig Shipping Box

I like to think that is enough to make your standard person think I am nuts, but really it was no trouble at all. Most importantly it was one more time that we could have used the car and didn't. It was a great couple of hours with the family.

Until next time...