May Bike Ride #1: HOT, need I say more?

Today's bike ride took us from T.C. Bunkey's on the west side of Durham to home. We dropped off our car to get the windows tinted, which was a definite must-do for the new car. Our new car is jet black, and the factory windows were not tinted in the least bit. And we live in NC, where it gets super hot in the summer, and climbing into a car that's been parked in the hot sun for an hour or more is not fun, especially with a baby. So anyway, we dropped the car off and pedaled home. Here's a picture of Eliza as we were getting the bike and bike trailer all set up to ride home:

I knew the weather forecast said it was going to be 91 degrees, and this was essentially our first really hot day of the year. I dressed Eliza in a cool, loose fitting dress and let her go shoeless in the trailer. By the time we were all ready to leave T.C. Bunkey's, it was high noon and very hot already. 4pm is usually the hottest part of the day, so I figured we'd be okay riding home with temps in the upper 80's. Here we are just leaving. You can almost see how hot it was.

An up close picture of Eliza at the start of the ride. I wish that bike trailers came with a sunshade of some sort. I did slather her with loads of sunscreen before the ride.

I'd planned to ride this route home - Click here for Google Map. Basically, take University into downtown and then meander through East Durham until we reached home. I saw the estimated time to bike that route was 1 hour. And with the heat, who knew how long it might take? So I figured it'd be best to cut our ride in half, and stop in for lunch somewhere air conditioned and with free ice water. I chose Local Yogurt to be our half way point. Here we are just arriving at Local Yogurt. She looks a little hot, huh? I doubt we'll be doing much bike riding this summer unless it's at 7:30pm or 8am when it's not nearly as hot.

Poor Eliza was so sweaty under her helmet! (These kids helmets just don't have as many vents as adult helmets do, I don't know why?) Check out how sweaty her hair is here. It looks like she just climbed out of the bathtub.

She looks so serious in that last picture. I should photoshop a bubble coming out of her mouth that says what she's probably thinking, "Can we go home, Mommy?" How about peanut butter on Goldfish bread, dannon yogurt with peaches on top, some Goldfish crackers and a medium sized peach frozen yogurt that I'll share with you? :)

She didn't want to eat her peanut butter sandwich, but she wolfed down her yogurt, which I made even yummier by mixing in some of the peach frozen yogurt into it! Yum!

After lunch and refilling my camelbak with ice cold water, we rode the rest of the way home. It was so hot, that HOT doesn't even begin to truly describe how I felt when I got home. FIRE is more like it! We played with the water table as soon as we got home. It was a great way to cool off quickly. I even brought out the hose and sprayed us for fun. :)

Well, that's all the report I've got for our first bike ride in May. Hopefully it will cool down a bit (91 is hot!) and we can go for a couple more bike rides this month.