Family MTB

Yesterday I took the photo that you see directly above this sentence. It's one of my favorite photos I've ever taken of Clive. Recently, he's been obsessive over mountain biking. He's been on legit trails a couple times and, as seen in this photo, we just found a spot in out neighborhood where he can rip up some dirt. This is the best shot I got on my iPhone. But he continued to get some great air for a six year old on 16" wheels wearing flip flops. I'm a proud dad.

And since I had planned on taking today off, we woke up, ate some breakfast and headed back out on the trails again.

This was the first time my daughter has been on any type of dirt path on her bike. She did really well. But I have a feeling her passion for MTB will not be near as much as her little brother's.

And then, of course, I had the four-year-old on the trail-a-bike behind me. Jury is still out on this thing. Honestly, it's pretty miserable when being pulled by the LHT. It's better on the Troll. Much better. But it's not easy. It pulls all the weight off of the front wheel. So dropping into granny gear is impossible. I washed my front wheel out twice today in a granny gear. I finally gave up on gearing it low and just stood up and leaned over the bar to climb.

Another issue is the wobbliness of the whole thing. I will say that I'm probably spoiled by the Xtracycle. Admittedly, I've got a tasmanian devil of a child back there. But I never feel like I'm going to wipe out on the Xtra. This rig, however, requires a lot of attention and concentration. It's just really unsteady. On the other hand, I don't think the Xtra would be a good option in the woods like this.

We were out for over two hours today. So at the halfway mark we hung out at the creek and tried to catch minnows and crawdads in a fish net. That's always a good time.

Trips like this are great. They're not technical. They're not much of a workout. But being able to weave something I love into our family's lifestyle is pretty awesome. My dream would be to take Clive, the oldest son, on a bikepacking trip. He loves camping and out of the three kids that went today, he's the most into riding dirt.

It's nice to have some new MTB buddies!

Get out there.