Weather or Not

My new bike is more than a ticket to ride

Celebrating the holidays on the Four-Mile Creek Greenway in Charlotte, NC. Photo: Author’s archives.

I bought a bike last month. Yes, it’s was the middle of November, but I guess that’s the point. I used to be quite the bike-aholic back in the day. That would be from the time I learned to ride, right on through college. And then I moved back to my native corner of Northeast Texas. And it just seemed too much, even for me. As in So. Damned. Hot. I put aside my two-wheeler for cooler pursuits — anything involving the AC was preferable to getting out there and pounding the pavement.

I went back to biking when we moved to D.C. So many bike trails, so little time. We cruised down the trail that runs along the Potomac River to Old Town Alexandria more than once. I learned how to negotiate Capitol Hill — the incredibly steep promontory — especially on the Senate Side — upon which the U.S. Capitol sits, and near where I lived for 12 years — on my bike. I biked to work at the congressional office where I worked, all the time.

But then I had kids. And I was afraid to put one of them in a plastic seat on the back of my bike, or in one of those trailing buggies that you hitch up to the back — where I couldn’t see them and who knows what could happen, especially if I were bumping along the historic brick-lined streets of my neighborhood, or if I happened to hit one of D.C.’s equally historic (in urban bicycle…