Yesterday boy and I went to church, and came home with little idea on what to do with a very nice day ahead of us. A bit hot perhaps (upper 80's), but I'm not one to let a good weather day go to waste. I first asked about riding bikes in Chicago, which he wasn't too keen on. Looking back, probably a wise decision since the Lakefront Trail is simply packed with folks and quite dangerous too. After a bit of thought Sam wanted to bike ride in South Bend. For some reason he likes this town...really likes this town. Maybe because it's small enough for his young mind to figure out. He also has an old friend (Griffin) who lives near there and maybe that's the attraction.
With the idea of visiting South Bend in our minds, I began the task of trying to fit our bikes into my car...which wasn't as smooth as I thought it'd be. Had to remove the front wheels off of both bikes...mine is easy...with his I needed tools. Anyway that was figured out and we hit the road about 2:30pm. Being late May we knew we had plenty of daylight left, and I wasn't too sure on how extensive the trail system is in South Bend. Although I am the "Trail Czar" of NW Indiana, I'm not all that familiar with systems outside my region...need to study up.
We arrived in SB about 5pm EST, and located the north end of what they call the East Bank Trail. I glanced at an online map before I left and knew this route followed the east bank of the St. Joseph River for quite a few miles, so off we went. It turned out to be a great ride that took us downtown, although the path narrowed quite a bit (might as well be a sidewalk) towards downtown, and the lack of signage was annoying. Very unclear how to make out where to go when you got downtown, and the only reason I knew where to go was my familiarity with the city. We stopped downtown for an ice cream at the SB Chocolate Factory (yum), and toured some other sites that interested Sam. We did make it as far south as the IU-SB campus where we crossed a huge bike-ped bridge to some student apartments on the other side of the river.
On our way back we made another visit to downtown via another bike-ped bridge (impressive!), and then began to lose energy. We visited Covelski Field, where the minor leauge Silverhawks play baseball, and then wound up back on the trail to our car. Sam was getting quite worn out, and so was I. We got back and I read 12.9 on my bike odometer. On telling Sam that, he wanted to ride around the big parking lot until we hit 13...so we did :) Sam commented quite a bit on how much he liked the day, and I was very happy to finally take a bike trip with boy...something I have yet to do. After folding the bikes up for the ride home, I resolved to buy a real bike rack...and soon!
Before we left SB, we made a quick trip back downtown to kick a soccer ball around the College Football Hall of Fame. That was very enjoyable, and strangely enough we found a diploma left by a student who graduated a local high school that day. We took our time coming back home, and stopped in Valpo to catch a movie - Shrek 3-D. That was a very nice end to another great day with boy!
