Unseasonably warm

This last long weekend has been ridiculously warm for early October - 37 degrees today down the coast - so number one and I spent it at the beach. And we went swimming, even though the water is still freezing. It was a wonderful taste of summer just weeks after winter and we enjoyed ourselves very much.



Number one had been down with his dad the week before and they bought him a bike! Which is quite a big deal in our world, neither of the boys own bikes or have ridden them in the past. My husband never rode a bike as a kid, just walked or took the bus everywhere. He knows how to ride one but didn't see the need for our kids to learn. I spent my entire childhood on my bike - to and from school from the ages of 7 to 17 - and everything else I wanted to do between times like visiting friends. No helmets back in the day either, and I took some massive spills. But all good and I would have made sure the boys had this useful skill except that we live in a very bike unfriendly location - on a blind corner in a narrow road at the top of a steep hill. There is really nowhere around here to learn ... even our driveway is on a 30 degree tilt.

So I didn't insist (I'm a bit lazy too) and then before you know it we have a great gangly teenager wobbling around on his first bike. But he did wonderfully, and this weekend I extracted my old bike from the shed after ten years and took it down to the awesome bike guy at the beach for a service - and off we went, son and me, around the flat, gentle, traffic-free streets of our small beachside town. Very enjoyable, and you genuinely never forget how. It's not really exercise though, not the way I do it. My thighs were fine, but jeez my bum hurts.



I insist on wearing helmets, even though no-one else does. The typical bike rider at the beach is wearing a single item of clothing (board shorts) and is riding a 70s dragster one handed with a surfboard under the other arm. I'm afraid I am a bit more cautious, at least in the beginning. But we had some great rides - I go along behind shouting "hand signals! watch out for that toddler! car coming!!!" with this view.