What do you know. Cycling to school from my house is actually very ‘doable’.We don’t even have to hit the road, it’s almost cycle path the whole way. I’m afraid Mr 8 taking too much liking to this (hopefully) one-off new way of going to school that he wants to cycle to school everyday. I know it is a common thing, and a good thing actually, to ride to school every day. But I grew up in a city where we take cars anywhere we go. When I was at school my mom drove me, I took the bus most of the time in high school, and drove myself after that. Very rarely had I chosen the merry pedalling way to help me move from one point to another. Pollution and crazy drivers in traffic were a strong deterrent at that time.

Today was the National Ride to School Day in Australia, where schools encourage their students to come to school riding their bikes (supervised by their parents) and they will have bicycle related activities and everything at the school. Coincidently, building up to this day Mr 8 has been practicing to ride on his bike so hard that he actually enjoyed it and cycled almost everyday after dinner time. So missing this opportunity he would not; he was up and ready at a crack of dawn (7AM in my house), shaming us parents who still enjoyed the last minute of sleep in the warm bed.

It was sunny but really cold and windy, but nothing could stop us. All went well, because it was basically downhill all the way to school. Are we going to cycle to school everyday, ask you? If you ask this question as we arrived at school I would answer yes. This decision was highly influenced by the easiness of downhill pedalling or non pedalling, more likely. But as I was huffing and puffing and lost the feeling on my thighs while listening to hubby scream “low gear! lowest gear!!!” going uphill, I would say no. Sigh. I don’t think cycling is in my blood.