Gavin's new ride

G has a thing for trains. Train sounds, train tracks, wooden trains, passenger trains, freight trains, steam trains, diesel trains, MAX trains, Zoo trains and Thomas the train. Not so much to watch the show hosted by Ringo Starr, George Carlin, or Alec Baldwin, but to play with his toy Thomas, Percy, James, Emily, and Toby. He builds tracks, rotates who hauls what cars, and which train crashes in whatever scenario he has concocted in his mind.

In the midst of winter as we skied around Trillium Lake most weekends, I pondered the eventuality of spring (which has still yet to materialize) and the days warm enough to go for bike rides but too wet to have a kid sitting in an open row boat. My conclusion was that we needed something with a windshield and a roof for theBullitt bike.


Just after Christmas we got started. What I had on our side this time around vs. building the boat was experience and time. I wasn't in the same hurry to finish for his birthday as I was two years ago. Experience was a double edged sword in that I knew not to make some mistakes over again, but I dreaded the actual process of the project. So it was decided the best option was to descend upon my dad's shop an hour or two, a couple times a week for as long as it took. What took an entire Saturday, much beer to calm my anxiety and a poor selection of power tools and work space in my own small, cluttered garage; I could get done in a mere 60-minutes at the old man's. Besides, my mom has a never ending supply of gluten free cookies which meant G and I could always have treats in hand while cutting, sanding, gluing and hammering.









As completion got closer, a local group ride to celebrate the spring classics of Pro Cycling grew near. This gave me enough of a goal to push through where many projects fall dormant. My dad, being retired, truly has time to watch paint dry. So after a coat of primer and a first base coat of blue, and the tedious taping for the pin-striping, he handled the top coats that truly make the colors pop.

We finished on Thursday evening and the big ride was on Sunday. Saturday was a test run on the waterfront before the sun actually came out for the homage to the punchy, cobbled climbs of Flanders. For the day, I wore my old Gentse Velo Club jersey but to be honest, the ride itself, abbreviated for weighty bikes and young boys, led to little thought of the roads I raced and trained on long ago.





Ronde photos courtesy of Dave Roth

Instead, I watched G as he busily turned knobs and "drove" the train up hills and down. Pushing Thomas onward with morale support up the hills and giggling through his calls to go faster as we went down. We did most of the ride with friends Seth and his son Max. A well timed break at Washington Park to play and eat lunch gave us both the reprieve to blast to the top of Council Crest before descending home to other chores and obligations.