Bike ride to a destination...

Last weekend, we took a family bike ride for lunch. Bike rides have become an integral part of summers ever since our, then, five year old transitioned out of training wheels. And now our daughters love biking around the block when we work in the yard or go on extended bike rides with us exploring new trails through known neighborhoods.

If you are a parent, you might know how tough it is to teach kids about healthy habits and the special challenge is for them to make the right choices when they are surrounded by tempting unhealthy choices and parents aren’t around to guide them. So I try to device subtle ways to educate them about energy consumption, bodily or otherwise and how each little choice matters.

It took some cajoling and coaxing but the girls agreed that biking to a local restaurant for Sunday lunch would be a fun thing to do as a family. So, since I had run the distance during one of my stints to prepare for a 5K, I knew the bagels shop is about 3.25 miles from our home and there is a managed trail all the way through. Except the part where you get off the trail and traverse over grass to walk into the parking lot that housed the said lunch destination.

This ride instigated wonderful conversations, about the time it took to bike versus how fast the car can get us there. The fuel that the car uses and the fumes that it exhales, the fuel that we’ll be putting in our bodies and how we chose to consume them. We discussed perhaps going a longer distance next time and that might warrant an ice cream or a blizzard for the choice of fuel for our bodies.

It was just a regular morning; I don’t think this particular bike ride would make a separate imprint in little minds apart from all others that we take around the lakes and to friends’ but the conversations that we had did create their own hierarchy in the neurons of developing minds and I see it peeking through in other conversations that we have about recycling and switching off the fans when we leave the room and the protein that needs to accompany the carbohydrates… At seven and nine, I think the girls are on the right track to discovering their own body and mind connection.