If there’s something better than riding my bike to work on the Farmington Canal Trail on a beautiful day, it’s taking my son to school on my bike on a beautiful day. Pull in all the clichés you want about how great it is to be with a young child and see things newly through their eyes, and I’m a sucker for every one on a day like today. When I take him to school, I don’t notify my occasional morning riding partner, because I have to leave much later than he needs. But what conversation I lose without him I gain back in talking to the boy in the child seat on the back of my ride. We greeted the birds, the grass, the trees, the bushes, a rock, a fence, and so on. Since it’s only a four mile transit, we don’t get to the point when even a sap like me would get tired of the game of “What’s that?”
It’s a little unfortunate that if we get going at a good clip (and if we aren’t moving smartly, what’s the point?) I start to be able to not hear what he has to say, what with the wind in my ears. His diction is not what it will be in a few years, either, but that’s not his fault.
What’s also a bit unfortunate is that we don’t see that many people out on the trail, so he may be internalizing a greenway trail as something that doesn’t get much use. However, I don’t think that’s going to maim his psyche terribly, just skew him a little bit back toward car culture. What will push him that way a little more is also that he won’t be on the trail in all conditions. We’ve got just a back seat, not a trailer, so no chance of him going out in the rain with me (once I get up my own stomach for doing that). Little steps, though, and hoping that we are moving faster than the oncoming climatic calamity.