I hate to exercise. Yes, I know it is good for me and that I should be doing it at least three times a week, but I can always find something else that I would rather do. We used to ride our bikes almost everyday, except weekends, and I really liked doing that. But for the last two years, it seemed like the weather wouldn’t cooperate. It would rain further into the summer than usual, and then the temperatures would soar into the hundreds. Well this summer was no different. Another excuse that we used was that they are building a trail directly behind my house. They have been working on it for over three years, and it’s still not completely opened. But yesterday, three of my grandsons came over to cut our grass and help in the garden. They spent the night here so they could get an early start. What we hadn’t planned was my son saying that they were training for the sports that they played, soccer and baseball, and that they would need to run. The oldest ran while the middle grandson cut the backyard. I was not going to run, after all, I didn’t want to end up in the ER, because I haven’t run since I was a kid, but I decided to ride my bike alongside him while he ran. He ran for two miles without as much as breaking a sweat while holding a conversation with me the whole time! Then he started cutting the rest of the yard, and the other two younger boys ran a mile with me on the bike following them. They were both tired but did a great job of running. That is when I realized how much I missed our daily rides. So last Friday, we got up and decided to ride. We rode on the right of way to where the new trail branches off to the lake. We took that branch and rode around part of the lake, turned around and came home on the same route. However, because the right of way is on an incline, we decided to take the new trail to about 1/4 mile past our house where we can easily get up the hill and ride in the alley back to our house. By the time we did all of that we had ridden 5.4 miles, not too bad for two old folks.

I made two observations on the ride. First, there were more egrets out sunning themselves than I ever remember seeing before. Second, dragonflies were everywhere. I was so excited to see them. I could hardly look anywhere without seeing them flying all around.

Thankfully, the weather has cooled a little, although we weren’t able to ride on Monday because my granddaughter spent a few days with us. We will ride two days this week. Today we rode 5.7 miles on the new trail. It was nice because there was more shade than the route we usually take. We had to go around several barricades because the whole trail is not officially opened, but other people were going around them, and the workers were not saying anything to them; so, we went around them also. The only disadvantage is that we are not riding directly around the lake, and we can’t see all the wildlife. There are several routes that we can take so we will be able to see the lake on some rides.