After a little dinner and an episode of Earl, I told the kids to get up–it’s time to go for a bike ride.
I asked Dylan which bike he wanted to take, and he started backing his red bike out of the garage. The red bike is the old one; and I think it’s hilarious, where some parents would get pissed–he always picks the bike I put together for him for Christmas last year, over the bike I bought him because it was “cooler.” I love it. He took off down the driveway, then Rain did, then I pushed the button to close the garage and coasted after them.
We rode up and past the baseball diamonds, through parents cheering for their kids on either side of the walking trail, towards a little sidewalk between the fences I had found. The sidewalk was pretty narrow, and you could see the scrape-marks on either side, assumably from uncautious kids’ handle bars. Not my Dylan–he stopped his red bike and pushed himself down the sidewalk with his tippy toes. Once out the other side of the fenced sidewalk, from behind the two of them, I hollered, “Left,” and they turned left down the sidewalk.
This was a neighborhood we hadn’t ridden through before, so we made sure from landmarks we could find our way back. We weaved around the cars parked in their driveway, in the way of the sidewalk, and oogled at the house that had all its enormous Halloween decorations out already. The sun was in that beautiful setting place where it kind of blinds you and kind of makes everything all sparkly, and I squinted as we turned another corner and headed straight towards the sun. “Can we go back down the hill?” Rain asked as we neared a stop sign. Sure, go to the end and turn around, I told her. They did, and I edged into the grass so I could get behind them again, and they flew by me silently on their bikes. “I feel like I’m flooooaaaaating!” Rainlin said from way in front of me, and I smiled.
Around a turn, and around another turn, and we were back near where we went down the narrow sidewalk with the fences on either side. We fell in line with another little girl on her bike, and a teenage girl on a Razor scooter, and the five of us went down that narrow pathway together, then split up like fireworks when we spit out the other side of the sidewalk and into the park where the baseball fans were still cheering.
Two kindergarten boys were brawling in a field as we neared it on the trail, and I chuckled. “Rain, look,” I said, and she looked up as I saw what they were fighting over–a ball. A coach was headed towards them from the infield, shaking his head and smiling, and one of the two boys held the ball victoriously up in the air. We whisked our bikes around the corner and were past the scene in an instant.
Back down our sidewalk, and back in our driveway, and Rain was pushing the button to open the garage. The sun was setting behind the houses in our ‘hood, and the great big two-story house across the way from us started to blot out the light of the sun. We pulled our bikes really close together to take up less space in the garage–big bike, Rain’s bike, Dylan’s bike–and headed into the garage.
“Mommy, can I have some ice cream?” Rain asked.
Sure, I said… and I thought to myself, summer’s almost over. It’s been a long, long summer… and it’s almost over. Finally.
Raymond and I spent my last whole day, a Monday, poking around Budapest. We got started a little late, and after taking a touristy walk through part of the city, we ducked into a little pizza shop to grab a slice. Raymond pointed to the picture on the wall, and I laughed–a giant piece of pizza with ketchup drizzled all over it. So they’ll serve you fries without ketchup, but you get pizza with ketchup you didn’t even want? I laughed. Raymond ordered a slice, and I ordered a slice with big round tomato slices on it (Marc would be proud). It was very good. Raymond drizzled ketchup on his in big zig-zag lines, but I didn’t follow suit. My tomato pizza was just fine the way it was.
