We had a really fun and interesting day today; it was the kind of day where things happen that you don't expect and weren't really planning for, but it ends up being really cool and you're glad you decided to roll with it.

The plan was to head down to a friend's house on the south side of Richmond to pick up their old bike trailer that they weren't using anymore. This would be the kind of trailer that your kids can ride around in. For a couple of weeks now, we've had visions of doing family bike rides, and last weekend I got our bikes out and fixed them up.

After that, we were going to meet some friends and head to the folk festival. Then we were going to go home and start getting ready for our trip to Texas next week.

We went down and loaded up the trailer; they also hooked us up with a bike they weren't using anymore. Which is awesome, because it turned out that my old bike needs more work than I thought - the front shifter is missing, and the chain broke on my first ride out. So now I have something to ride until I get the other one fixed.

By the time we got the bike lashed to the top of our car, my daughter was having a blast playing with a couple of other girls. They were all going to a harvest festival at Riverside Outfitters. Our other friends hadn't called yet, so we decided to go over there with them.

The festival turned out to be pretty awesome; there were lots of kids there, and some interesting activities; Riverside Outfitters does tree climbing camps, and they were set up for people to climb an enormous pine tree, probably fifty or sixty feet. It was incredible; at the top, I could see the Carillon, and my arms are still burning from working the rope.

Also, I got to check out our friend's new espresso cart; he bought it on eBay, and he's going to build up a coffee cart business. He brought it out there and set it up. The coffee was excellent, and the cart was really cool - completely self-contained, fully equipped.

We had a great time meeting various people and hanging out. The guy who belayed me during my climb talked with us about how he wanted to offer their climbing programs to more underprivileged kids. We stayed for five hours. It was nothing at all like what we were planning, but it ended up being really outstanding. You have to abandon your plan sometimes…

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Kids and parenting, Richmond and Virginia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.