Confidence

I thought I'd be blogging daily, but there's a good chance I'll go silent on the weekends. We're all together and I have less time to be online. It's a good trade-off.

This weekend there was a music festival in one of the bigger parks in town. I wanted to ride bikes with the bigger boys, but we'd be coming back after dark and we don't have headlamps. I had my husband drop us off on his way to take the middle kiddo to a birthday party, planning on having him pick us up when the concerts were over. I wanted to be energy efficient, but it seemed far, and there's a big hill between the park and our house that daunted me. So we drove.

The number of cars parked in and around the area was insane. Rather than have my husband try to navigate through the hundreds of cars swarming the streets we decided to walk out of the main area of congestion and then call him to pick us up. We started walking, gauging our level of tiredness, prepared to call when we were too tired to walk any further.

We made it all the way home. :)

After seven hours in the sun, we were still able to walk all the way home. I mapquested the distance and it turned out that is was less than a mile and a half. I wouldn't have planned to walk that distance, even if I had known the mileage. In my head, that would have seemed too far, especially with a twelve-year-old and a nine-year-old. But when we decided to try and see how far we could go, it was easy.

It's suddenly clear that we've been underestimating our abilities, and we've been lazy. There are a lot of stores and places to go close enough for us to walk to, and certainly close enough to bike to, should we have the little guys with us. We've become so dependent on our vehicle, we don't have confidence in our bodies. That's going to change.

My oldest son is growing like crazy and has outgrown his bike. I gave him mine (it's a men's mountain bike anyway, so he's happy) and now I'm out a bike. I'd like a big old cruiser with baskets to go to and from the store with. I checked out Boise Bike Project but there weren't any bikes that hit my fancy when we went. I'll keep checking back. I'm also watching craigslist for any deals. I don't want to spend a lot of money, and I know I can find something gently used (saving on manufacturing/shipping!). Hopefully I find something soon, so I can start going to the store without the minivan.