Awhile ago we decided to rent bikes downtown and ride on the river greenway. John and I haven’t ridden bikes since our honeymoon three years ago and even then in my pre-baby state, I barely made it up the hills of Peter Island. We’ve been considering getting bikes, but I hesitate just because right now it’s not exercise for our dogs or Miles, so it feels kind of selfish. We figured renting them for the day would be fun though.

So in usual Betsy & John fashion, we jumped in, helmet first, and ended up riding probably like twelve miles that day. Ok, I have friends that do that in their sleep, but the most exercise I get is chasing Miles these days. So it KICKED our booties. Man, it was so much fun riding through Headwaters and riding the greenway. For Fort Wayne readers, we started at Wells street and went all the way past Johnny Appleseed park and back. To us, that was pretty far, especially with a two year old in tow.

Here’s some photos from my iphone. Sorry, no photos of me in my helmet, which John seriously thought I looked sexy in. Bless him. Perhaps it was the honeymoon flashback of the bikes or something.

You’ll notice we found ice cream on our trip. Getting ice cream ended up being a particularly adventurous (and stupid) part of our excursion. Let’s just say we got hungry and decided against our better judgement to ride down a not pedestrian safe road at all to get to an ice cream shop. John had decided to just push his bike so he wouldn’t take any chances with his life and Miles’, but me? Oh heck, I used to ride my bike down crazy country roads to get to the grocery store when I was a kid. I was sure I would be fine.

So stupid.

So I’m riding along, with oncoming traffic coming at me, not behind me and I was trying not to let it freak me out. I’m riding a very skinny ledge of the side of the road and here comes a big Jeep. “Oh God, here comes a Jeep.” I thought to myself. “Oh jeez, it looks like it’s really close!” I continued to freak myself out. Then I thought, “Chill out, you are fine….you are fine…oh man, you are wobbling a bit…oh man, don’t crash….oh man!!!” Then, just as the Jeep was getting ready to drive by me I freaked myself out and decided to not crash, but purposely bail out into the guard rail to my left. Even though I still to this day swear it was on purpose, I still felt like a total idiot. (And now I’m telling the internet how dumb I was.) As the friction burn started to flare up on my leg, I could just see the newspaper headline in my head that said, “Idiot mother dies and leaves behind beautiful family in her search for ice cream.”

John was FLIPPING out behind me yelling, “We are getting off this road! This is crazy!!!” I turn around and say, “Well, do you want to just levitate off this road? Were kind of stuck here and have to keep going.” John, not impressed with my logic, tried to use his iphone map to find another way, but to no avail, we just had to walk our bikes in the ditch to get to a safer road. Off roading wasn’t so great but Miles laughed hysterically at how bumpy the ride was for him. With parents like us, he is delightfully awesome at just going with the flow.

Once we were safe again with our banana split in front of us, we started to recount my “crash” which was really a bail and John said, “I saw you crashing in slow motion, it was so scary.” My reply was, “It wasn’t a crash, it was a bail. A…. controlled…..slow motion bail.” John says, “A slow motion bail, huh?” Miles starts to laugh and exclaims, “SLOW MOTION BAIL!” We all just died laughing and to this day, if you say “Slow motion bail” our whole family, Miles included, cracks up in laughter. It’s kind of our new family motto now if something is going wrong you just say, “SLOW MOTION BAIL!!!” If you hear that while on a shoot with me, you know things aren’t going well. Just sayin…

So we had a GREAT day, slow motion bail or not. It we an awesome afternoon of just getting away from it all after the crazy busy spring we have had. We totally got our money’s worth as Miles still can name all the things he saw sitting on the back of the bike and how great of a day that was. He’ll say he had a dinosaur on his helmet, he saw a baseball game, the skateboarders at the skateboard park, and of course the canoes at the bike shop. Oh and he still says, “Let’s go on a bike ride and get chocolate ice cream!” Yea, well, if we do that adventure again, we won’t be taking that path or better to say, we won’t be blazing our own paths. I actually am hoping that the next time we go will be on our own bikes on the brand new trails we have out here in suburbia where I can get myself in less trouble.

Thinking back to my bad judgement of riding on the dangerous road, it makes me wonder what other stories are floating out there like that. If you want to join in, feel free to comment a memory you have of doing something stupid and dangerous where when you came out of it you said, “Ok, that was dumb, thank god we survived and we won’t do that again!”