We like our Mike

There is a page in One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish that goes

We like our bike
It's made for three.
Our Mike sits up in back you see.
We like our Mike and this is why:
Mike does all the work when the hills get high.

This weekend we were out riding a bike built for two at Mary's Loop, and I got a chance to play Mike. We were having a great ride. The weather was perfect, just a hint of chill in the air but wonderful warm sunshine. Technically, the ride was going well - we were clearing a lot of the obstacles, we weren't making the dumb mistakes that so often plague early season rides, which was amazing considering this was our first ride on the mountain tandem since November.

We got to a kind of tough stretch of trail, where the trail is narrow and rocky and has several short but steep climbs. Here's a picture from last September of me on my single, just before this section of trail. The trail drops pretty sharply in the foreground of the picture.


So on Sunday, we were going up that steep part. We knew it would be a tough climb on the tandem, but we charged up it and things were going pretty well. Chris was managing to pick lines between the rocks that we could actually maneuver the tandem through. Then we came to a narrow chasm, with large rocks on both sides. I hit my right foot on one rock and came unclipped from my pedal. It seemed like the bike was stopping so I unclipped my left foot as well and put my feet down, so that my feet ended up atop rocks on opposite sides of the trail.

I was quite surprised, as I stood up, to watch the bike inching forward out from under me. Chris, now alone on the tandem, was muscling over the rocks and up the hill. I was running along behind the bike trying to catch up. He went about 10 feet up the trail, then turned around and said "Are you okay back there?"

No, I wasn't okay, because I had collapsed on the trail from laughing so hard. In almost 10 years of riding an off-road tandem, we've never pulled that stunt before, and I don't think we could do it again if we tried. But the really funny part was a bit further down the trail, when we met up with some folks who had been watching from behind as we tackled that hill and had seen my rear dismount. They thought I had jumped off the back of the bike in order to push it up the hill!

Just call me Mike.

*****

The rest of our weekend was great, also. Saturday we painted the dining room, finally covering up all the spots of colors that we tried but didn't like, and Chris and I are both really tickled with how it came out. We also worked in the gardens, putting in new landscape timbers at the edge of the garden by the driveway and building a path of pavers to get between the driveway and the front porch. Sunday after the ride Cailan and I made chocolate chip cookies. Here he is after eating one fresh from the oven.


And here's Cailan, showing us how he squints to see the laser lights.