Today is my birthday. Enid bought me new bike shorts and a CamelBak, so I'm equipped to ride. She actually gave me the shorts a day early so I could use them for yesterdays ride. I also received some gift money, so I'm looking at buying some clipless pedals.

We drove to Rick's house this morning and he let us through his neighborhood to jump on the Indian Creek trail. We rode 8.1 miles and I took an extra 1.5 miles reach the end of the Indian Creek trail.The trail goes by the Nazarene college in Olathe where it begins to cross roads at awkward crosswalks. It can be difficult to follow if you don't watch for the road signs which are not posted to face those riders on the trail, but rather the traffic crossing the trail.151st street is the busiest crossing and everyone ...

Ora 5 passed the 10-mile mark for the first time tonight as we rode an 11.4-mile ride. When we stopped for a bathroom break part way, so I pulled out the GPS and saw that we had gone 5.6 miles. Ora 5 still seemed strong so we briefly considered going farther, but decided to turn back and not push it. We're glad we did because he began to wear out the last 3 miles, but we are still amazingly proud of him.

We celebrated Ora 5's birthday today with a Wall-E party. I had asked him if he wanted to have a Wall-E birthday or an Indiana Jones birthday, those being this summers kiddie memes. He thought about it for a moment and said "Let's do Wall-E this year and we can do Indiana Jones for my 8th birthday." So Wall-E it was:We bought him biking shorts, gloves and a jersey:

We were sleeping in this morning and Ora 5 and Aspen came into our room this morning. Ora climbed into bed into between Enid and I and then Aspen looked at me and asked "Are you going to get out of bed?" Thinking that she wanted me to get up with her and make her breakfast, I said "Yes" and got up. Aspen promptly laid in the spot that I had vacated and pulled the covers over herself!

Today was our second milestone ride: 20 miles. Instead of driving to Longview Lake, we biked to it, around it and back. It was 2 hours and we had a moving average of 12 MPH.At one spot a snapping turtle was trying to cross a busy road. I stopped to move it off into the grass, but I was in for a surprise. I was thinking it would be like picking up a box turtle, but larger. I approached him from the back and picked him put by the back half of his body; however, he immediately took ...