Here’s our little Poogie, biking the Moab Trails! And good job pleasing the parents by sporting a helmet (safety first!). It doesn’t seem all that long ago when Paige was on the back of my bike cruising around La Jolla. I remember biking over to visit teach Sister Clawson when Paige was a newborn and nearly gave her a heart attack (Sister Clawson not Paige). Apparently Sister Clawson thought if I had to roll baby blankets every which way for padding maybe Paige was too small to be a passenger. Oops!
Truth be told, I had a new bike and wasn’t going to let a baby stop me from taking it for a spin. Luckily, Paige survived our early rides together and now she’s big enough to handle the terrain all on her own. She’s gone from being slumped over in the baby carrier to serious mountain biking, ala, the Slickrock Trails in Moab.
It’s fun to see Paige get out and enjoy the wonderland and beauty of Utah. As a youngster myself (a waaaay long time ago), we’d visit national parks like Canyonlands, Arches, and Zions and just assume everybody had spectacular spots like these nearby. We had no clue of our good fortune to live in a state surrounded with beautiful nature.
The Canyonlands/Moab area where Paige spent the weekend was once described nicely by the author, Edward Abbey (a frequent visitor), who called it: “the most weird, wonderful, magical place on earth - there is nothing else like it anywhere.” Take that, Disneyland!
Thank goodness Paige made it through her early months when I had no business strapping her into a bike carrier before she fit in the seat! She’s clearly much safer now (solo) than relying on my biking prowess and lack of good judgment.
As I note some of the dumb things I’ve done in my past (such as cycling with a brand new baby in tow), a refrain I keep coming back to is the common but accurate question: What was I thinking?!
