Kidical Mass held its first "Epic" ride yesterday: a 13 mile roundtrip from one park to another, mostly traveling along the Sacramento River Parkway. The Sacramento River Parkway is beautiful but less continuous than the ARP and it's much less intuitive because of the "private property" sections and detours. Still, it's carfree and passes along the levee with a great view of the river and going to through the park detour offers a shady route dotted with playgrounds.
Big Brother rode the entire route, plus the sections to and from our house with an added stop at Nama and Gampa's for ice cream, a 24 mile day! He was thrilled that this was the second longest day he's had so far. Little Brother happily rode on Smurfette's deck because HaD #2 is getting an oil change for the Alfine 11 hub and to replace the crankarms we stripped out. The only downside to Smurfette is that we don't have any wrap around bars for it so LB had to hold on the whole time, including a touchy time about a mile from home when he fell asleep and I had to hold him up as best as I could while still riding.
This afternoon, I decided to pick up Big Brother from his day camp with the Bike Fioday Tandem for it's first test run with a passenger. My friend Neil had fixed the broken spoke and I was able to get the wheel back on. We're still needing to get the cable splitter for the drumbrake but since Sacramento is so flat, it's not really necessary around here. The ride was a success! Even without a stoker, it still rode smoothly and comfortably. With the kiddo on back was a bit wobblier but that's mostly because we don't have crankarm shorteners to make it easier for him to reach the pedal. When he was helping, I could really feel the added speed.
We have some work still to do for the bike: new bottom bracket, drumbrake cable, bar tape, pedals (plus toe cages for the small stokers), a new saddle, and a few minor adjustments but I'm pretty excited about this new addition to our fleet.
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