I was disappointed to end July without having accomplished a bike overnight. I had been planning on doing one each month for the year but knew that July was going to be tricky. This is my busiest month with the exchange student program. I had been hoping I could still squeeze in a very short ride but never got to it. The exchange students are wonderful and although it's a crazy time with little downtime, I love it all the same. While I wanted to reach my goal, I'm not about to sacrifice the small amount of sanity I'm retaining. August will put me right back on track. 

Instead of dwelling on the lost month, I decided to recap what we've done so far this year.

• January: Big Brother and I rode to Chico (day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4)! 
• February: Sacramento to Ione (day 1 and day 2)! 
• March: Our group camping trip to Negro Bar! 
• April: Riding to the local KOA with my mama! 
• May:  Anniversary trip to the Ryde Hotel (day 1 and day 2) and backyard camping! 
• June: Boys and I rode to Beal's Point! 

Even though I am dying for another overnight, it's been a blast running around with all these awesome kiddos. Big Brother and I just spent 4 days in Southern California with them, going to Hollywood, Disneyland, Universal Studios, and Santa Barbara. It was almost an entire week without a single bike ride! 

I'm sure we'll make up for it in August. Where shall we go next?  

I feel so American these days--rushed, busy, frantic, lazy, tired. I've been able to ride a few days during the program but I gave up a bit these last few days. We were hosting one of the students for a couple of nights and it's difficult to transport an extra person that you don't know very well. He would have actually like riding bikes, especially since he has been getting really carsick, but it was one extra thing that I just couldn't manage right now. Then, as soon as I dropped him off to his real host family, my phone was overloaded with calls about a sick student in the hospital. More driving needed to get to him quickly and deal with that situation. Then today was a driving day because I needed to run a bunch of errands on opposite sides of town. Tomorrow, I'll finally get to ditch the car for a bit but it's only temporary right now. 

Today, I realized that I'm so normal right now. I "don't have time to ride." It's an excuse I hear every where I go. "I would ride, but..." Then they go off and list a bunch of things: too far to go, not enough time, too much stuff to carry, too tired, too many people depending on me, there could be an emergency, etc. I realized that I'm ticking off every one of those excuses. Because of that realization, I made myself take the Bullitt to pick up the kids from daycare. It was only a 4 mile trip but I decided to extend our time out by bringing dinner with me to the park. Yes, dinner was only yogurt, blueberries, and graham crackers but it was the best I could do today. We all needed it. 

I did end up doing the cardinal sin of biking with children by clicking Little Brother's chin with the helmet buckle. A few too many of those and you risk losing your child's trust completely. 

This little ride gave me the perfect amount of time to slow down and remember the journey. I'm lucky to have a job where this schedule is a very small fraction of my life. I can put up with 2-3 weeks of disruption to my usual biking routines. It's not always about doing it all, sometimes it's just about doing what you can. 

I have to remind myself not to look at all the reasons I can't ride and instead look for all the excuses that I can. 

Last week, I rented a car to drive to SFO. It was two hours of white-knuckle driving. This week, I was better prepared an am taking the train. It takes a bit longer and I am set to their schedule but instead of getting exhausted and nervous, I am relaxed and getting work (and reading) done. It also cost about half as much, $40 for the train and BART ticket together instead of $110 for the car, $5 for toll, $15 for gas.

This is definitely a more efficient use of my time than driving! I have wifi, an outlet, food and water all at my disposal. I can answer emails and calls without endangering lives. And even more important--continue book 3 of Game Of Thrones!

Today we ran around a ton. We started off at coffee to fuel the day and locked up at the new bike rack they installed at Old Soul 40 acres. Jose and I trucked that bike rack over from our house, about a 1/2 mile away. Since it wouldn't fit on my bike, and almost squished Little Brother in my attempt to get it on the bike, we decided to push it down the sidewalk on two skateboards, with the boys in tow...literally. It was rough. We only managed to totally mess up as we were crossing the busy street in full view of everyone in the coffee shop. Fun. I was so excited to see it up this week and even more excited that it directly benefits our family and caffeine habit. 

Both Big and Little Brothers rode their respective bikes for this ride. At home, Little Brother went down for a nap while Big Brother couldn't sleep so Jose took him out for another ride, about 4 miles round trip, to go play baseball. Mama got a nice little nap in and Little Brother was out like a light. 

Later, we made plans to have dinner at One Speed with my folks and our friends. Big Brother decided, again, to ride there. I took the Bullitt with Little Brother and Jose rode his skateboard. 

Dinner was wonderful but the place was busy and it was too slow for the boys. They melted down. It was quite a mess. We managed to get through dinner (and dessert, yum!) but we were sure that Big Brother wouldn't make the ride home. 

He proved us wrong! Out of nowhere, he found some energy to go another 2.5 miles home. Towards the end, we could tell he was starting to bonk, he couldn't hold his line anymore, but he kept calling himself Mark Cavendish and cranking down on his tiny pedals. This kid is a beast! I count 9 miles of riding for the day! At 4.5, I think that's pretty awesome! Part of the rides were on the street and part on the sidewalk, depending on the location and who was with him. He's starting to understand the rules of the road, obeying stop signs, and looking out for obstacles. I'm really curious to see how he does on a single long ride. We'll have to test it out on the bike trail one day soon. 

Here's a video of our morning ride: The boys battle it out in a ride to the death! Big on the cupcake bike and Little on his Strider. Watch until the end for a nail-biter finish! Enjoy! 

The Bullitt box was even more full on the way to work this morning. I was so grateful for the ride home after a looooong day at school. I moved slowly but steadily, the perfect decompression after a crazy day. I brought home the rements of the welcome party. About 100 students are now home with their host families for the next few weeks. I look forward to a quiet weekend (fingers crossed) and getting to know these kiddos more.

One cool thing I noticed yesterday at the airport were these cool bikes locked up. Is it a bike swap? Anyone know what they are?

The blog will be a little quiet for the next month as I will be neck-deep in exchange students (although not literally). They arrive on Thursday and I am busy running around trying to get everything in order (or at least as much as it can be). Sadly, I've been driving more than I'd like, but at the same time, this job only requires a moderate amount of driving 1 month out of the year. While it is still 1 month more than I'd like, I can handle it. 

Some funny things happened recently to make this crazy time just that much more crazy: 

• I obviously bragged too much about never getting flats and my ability to change them because in the last week, I've gotten two (I'd only had one since the beginning of the year). One on the Mobic and one on Oscar the bike. Time to upgrade some tubes and add liners to all my tires! 
• I got an infected bug bite on my calf that swelled my gastrocnemius to roadie status. Too bad the antibiotics took it away (although, thankfully, it also took away the pain...). 
• While I was showing my ID to the bank, they noticed that my license had expired two months ago! Guess who got to spend the entire morning at the DMV--yep, me! 
• I also spent a couple days off the bike, perfect timing to heal my leg, while celebrating my cousin's wedding near Santa Cruz. We rented a 7 passenger van, filled every seat, and drove down with my parents and uncle. I suppose if you're going to drive, that's a pretty efficient way to go. 

Now the next four weeks are going to be a blur but I am still hoping to get some riding in each day. The cargo bikes are  really going to help with all the hauling of stuff that I always seem to have to do, whereas previous programs ALWAYS depended on car trips. As you now know, cargo bikes are the "new station wagon," I guess that means we're becoming mainstream! Super exciting!