A Longer Bike Ride

Today we were heading over to a friend's house to play.  This was going to be our first trip riding bikes over there.  Our friends were expecting us around 10:30am and I planned to take all of the time before that getting ready.  I had to pump up my bike tires since I haven't ridden in probably a year or more.  And with summer, we haven't been getting moving too early (even though the boys have been getting up WAY early every morning).

The boys went into the garage around 9:30am to start waiting until we could leave.  I kept telling them that I still had a bunch to do but they didn't really care.  They didn't want to do anything else expect wait until it was time (sitting on their bikes with their helmets on).

I've warned them many times that they need to treat each other nicely while I'm in the other room brushing my teeth and getting ready.  But it usually happens that they end up fighting a bit.  Sometimes if I have to take a shower, I assign them the task of staying separately in their rooms so they're not fighting.

Well, today while I'm brushing my teeth I hear a scream or two from the garage.  Not enough that someone was hurt.  Just someone upset.  When I go to check it out, both of the boys start telling me the various versions of why each of them screamed.

The bottom line for the story was... they were both sitting on their bikes (not even moving) in the garage pretending to have a race.  Peter said he crossed the finish line first.  Grady got mad and said that Peter didn't.  Peter screamed because he did.  Grady screamed because he didn't.

And me... I stood there and just started laughing.  I told them, "how do you expect me to take this seriously when it was a pretend race with a pretend finish line and you're fighting over who won?!".

Peter smiled when I was laughing and Grady was calm enough.  Then Peter thought about it and said "wait! We can both cross the finish line at the same time!".  I guess problem solved for now.

Our bike ride there and back turned out fine except it was SOOOO slow for me.  I was surprised that I could balance as well as I did with barely moving.  The boys race up and down the street for an hour at a time, but a 10 minute ride to a friend's house has them leisurely pedaling the whole time.  Hopefully with a couple more times, they'll get the hang of getting somewhere a little quicker.