A Three Generation Bike Ride
My son Josh and I have been meeting each other in Florida every spring to ride different bike tours together. I come down from Richmond and he drives up from Miami. His son, Xavier, has been chomping at the bit to come along. This year he turned 14, and Josh felt he was old enough to join us. We all met in Live Oaks, Florida to participate in the Bike Safari 7-day tour.
Josh and Xavier arrived late having had several mishaps on the drive there. A flat tire, a dead battery, a canceled hotel room where they had planned to overnight, before arriving at Live Oaks in time for breakfast. When I called to check on them in the morning it turned out Josh had arrived at 3a.m. and parked in front of the main building at Bike Safari. He then blew up his mattress and slept for a few hours on the ground next to the car. Xavier had slept well in the back seat throughout this ordeal.
That was a pretty bad beginning, but everything turned out okay. We ate breakfast together and set up their tent. Then Josh, with only four hours sleep, insisted on riding the 66-mile route with Xavier. I, in turn, happily settled for the 34-mile route. The next day featured a 100- mile option, which Josh planned to take. Xavier and I set off to ride 34 miles together. (The rule was that a young person has to be accompanied by an adult.) Xavier really enjoys riding fast; while I average 10 miles an hour with luck! We agreed that he could ride his pace, and he would stop along the way and wait for me to catch up. Off he went whizzing ahead while I plodded along behind. I didn’t see him for what seemed a very long time and I was just getting really worried, when low and behold there he was sitting beside the road in a patch of grass.
“Grandma, grandma,” he exclaimed, “guess how many miles an hour I was going.” “How many?” I asked. “21, he replied.” “Wow!”
It turned out that both of us had missed the arrow indicating the route turning left several miles back. Once we figured this out, and it took a while, we biked back to the missed turn and headed for the rest stop. We were pretty hungry and needed our water bottles refilled. It was a miracle that we both missed the turn; otherwise I would have really been in a pickle about where he was. (If he had remembered to bring his cell phone it would have been much easier to keep track of him.) When we finally arrived at lunch we had biked 40 miles! They showed us a short cut to get home and our ending mileage was 47 miles.
When we finally returned we ran to the community room to savor the free Cokes and freshly baked popcorn. Then, after showering we headed for the corn roast where the band was playing. Bike Safari is known for its large supply of roasted corn which sits in crates beside a long table with gallon jars filled with melted butter. For some reason, the butter seems to adhere to the corn very well as you dip it into the butter-filled jars. There is free beer for the adults; just help yourself from the keg, and soda for others. Xavier really got into this, and managed to down two sodas and four ears of buttered corn. (He didn’t have his usual ravenous appetite for supper that night.)
On the other five days of the tour Xavier rode with Josh except for one rest day when he and I took the day off to enjoy swimming and kayaking in a lovely lake we were camped beside. He read his book and played basketball; we swam, and later in the day teamed up to participate in a throw-the-ball-in-the-hole contest.
When other bikers realized we represented a 3-generation team of grandmother, son and grandson we got a lot of attention. Xavier was by far the youngest rider on the tour, and I was probably one of the oldest. I guess it was kind of unusual for three generations of one family to be biking together. People on the tour were very friendly and interested in speaking with us. Josh and I had over the years ridden the Safari Tour many times. It was really fun including Xavier. He absolutely loved it and was excited about coming back next year. For me it was just super to spend so much quality time with my son and grandson.