Sunday Night Biking

Sunday night, after a lovely dinner with some new friends from our ward, the kids pulled out the bikes to do a little exploring in our neighborhood. We just got this little trainer bike attachment for Luke, and Jess was kind enough to tote him around.

They warmed up first in our backyard, so if there were any spills, it would happen on the grass.

Lukie LOVED being one of the big kids.

Adam and Pepper coming back from their exploration. This is the street in front of our house.

Pep has always been the bide-riding pro in our family, and he has actually ridden his bike around the neighborhood several times on his own.  I never worry about him getting lost, because he has an uncanny sense of direction.  He has gotten me "de-lost" many times in the car.

Since today it was dumping rain, and the temperature was in the mid-60's all day, I think our days for pleasant evening bike rides are numbered.  You can see that we live in a very quiet part of town.  You can also see that when cars are parked on both sides of our road, there is barely enough room for me to drive our car through them.  The driving here can be very stressful, although I must say that Germans are much more considerate drivers than Americans.  I think they have to be, or else no one would ever be able to get anywhere.  On streets like ours (and there are MANY), when two cars approach each other from opposite directions, there is some unspoken rule that the one who has room to pull off to one side between the parked cars does so.  Then, they wait until the other car has passed before they pull back into the center of the road and continue on their way.  There is no playing "Chicken", which I think would happen in the States.    I often come home from driving somewhere needing a valium or something for the stress.  I actually have to THINK every minute I am driving to make sure I don't cause a wreck.  And, our poor new car has a big scuff on the side where I hit our front gate when I pulled into the driveway.  Since I only have about 6 inches to spare on either side of the car, it was bound to happen.  (Brad was surprisingly cool about the whole scuff incident.  I expected him to be bugged that I damaged our nice new Mercedes Benz.  I think the fact that we don't actually own the car helps!)