Biking Home to Morgan Hill
2016-12-20
The Older J's were still in school, so a group of us took a day off work and went out biking. I hauled 2-year old Little J in the rear rack baby bike seat. Since I didn't think I could haul both Little J and a bike trailer up the mountain, DK was nice enough to haul his trailer to carry Little J's balance bike so that Little J could also bike some of the way.  It was tough climbing up the mountain to IBM Almaden Research Center (ARC), especially hauling Little J. I was crawling along at 3mph, huffing and puffing, and Little J says to me, "Mama, are you tired?"  I said,  "Yes, you're heavy so it's hard to bike up this steep hill." He didn't say anything, and after a while of me still slowly struggling up the hill, he said, "Just walk bike, Mama.  Just walk bike!" Sage advice indeed, hah! I made it all the way up though! Coasting down ARC hill was also more difficult than usual due to the extra weight of the baby seat throwing my balance off. My bike was carrying precious cargo today, so I was braking the entire way down. Both my arms were stiff by the time we got to the bottom of ARC, haha.
TD and VL had their cars parked at the bottom of the hill on Bernal and met up with us to bike since they didn't want to bike up that hill. From Bernal onwards, it felt very much like we were biking in to work, haha.
After almost 10 miles of biking, Little J kept asking to get down and bike, so after we got onto Coyote Creek Trail, I let him down to bike on his little balance bike. Â He biked almost 1.5 miles down to Sycamore Picnic area where we stopped to eat lunch, and then he biked another 1+ miles heading back.Â
I was originally planning to just hitch a ride in TD's car once we got to the bottom of ARC instead of going back up to ARC on the steeper side, but Little J fell asleep in the baby seat before I got to the bottom of ARC. I didn't want to wake him up to plop him in the car, so I decided to just go up ARC anyway and see how far I could make it. The rest of the group decided to take a restroom break first, and I went ahead figuring I'd be the slowest. Partway up ARC, my bike chain fell off when I tried to shift to a lower gear :/ Â I had to carefully use one hand to balance the bike with Little J still snoozing on it, and then use my other hand to put the chain back on. I'm surprised I somehow managed it, haha. It was a pretty tough climb hauling Little J up the steeper longer side of ARC. Several times I dropped below 3mph, but found I couldn't maintain balance at that slow a speed so had to keep pushing to maintain 3mph. I made it all the way up though!!! Â
Then I biked as fast as I could directly to school to pick up the older boys, and made it just in time, haha.
Whew, that was a good workout and left me sore for a while :P
Pictures & Videos
Following are some pictures that we took:
