Today I took a bike ride through the nearby Johnson Park with Mme F. She is about to enter the 7th grade and is one of M D and Mme D’s children. I can tell she’ll become a DH rider for sure since, like sensible people, she likes going down more than up.

Except for the few blocks getting to the park, the ride was on car free paths and even took us past a petting zoo. As it was 94, most were doing their best in the shade. She was a great tour guide.

We stopped at a two steps high concrete thing with a platform where I had fun getting my bike up and manualing down. One of the Ryan Leech videos is of him at a concrete barrier going up and down, over and over; this served as the impetus for the practice. I was happy I actually made more of my attempts than not.

Going down was instructive too. While I can go off drops ok with enough speed, I’ve struggled to keep my front wheel up long enough to land with both simultaneously going slower. It seems I wasn’t using the pedals to lever up, another thing I picked up from the aforementioned video.

We’ve been graced with seeing Mme F and her sister Mme S develop since the beginning. What we all decide is and is not interesting, the way we express and interact, and how our paths diverge and line up I find fascinating.

Let me tell you, I was regularly underwhelmed that all most people could say to me is I’ve gotten larger.

This household has three cooks! How about that?