Bicycle season has begun

Written by Gerard on Friday 20 March 2009

As the weather here improves, plans are afoot get a little more exercise into our routines. And possibly a slighty better diet, but more on that later.

It started as an effort to get the kids to school quicker - letting them take their scooters and bikes in the morning. Then last week, we gave the shed a clear out, dusted off the adult bikes, reinflated the tyres and headed back out on the road again.

Cycling is such a low-impact form of exercise. For me, after I've been running for a while, my leg starts to hurt terribly from the thudding about. Cycling avoids that.

Also, since Dan is still too small to keep up with the pack, he gets to ride along with me. We've been using the old mounted seat, but his weight means that it regularly bumps off the back tyre. So...today we're fitting a crazy gizmo that connects my bike to Daniel's little bike and makes a tandem. It's called a trailgator, and sounds like a bit of fun.

The best bit is not having to use the car to go for little errands around town. Want to go up to the park? Jump on the bike. Need to pick up a DVD, bread and milk, some essentials? Jump on the bike. After dropping the kids off to school this morning, Lisa and I did a round trip to the town, picked up some packages and got a few goodies for breakfast. It was a blue sky morning, nice temperature, and we were back home roughly ten minutes after we normally would have been.

I reckon by doing a bit more cycling and making use of the bike part of our routine, it should help in dealing with this premature middle-age spread I'm suffering from! I also want to get the kids out for a few cycles on the country roads, and I might even get to try a few of the cycle routes around Lough Neagh one of these days.

On a related note...a webfriend of mine, Ben Ayers, is involved a couple of social networking sites for cyclists: Cycle Social and meandmybicycle which may be worth a look if you want to get a bit deeper into cycling!