See...you just need a sippy cup of milk and a few toys, and you've got 1 happy biking baby.
Today's bike ride was 1/3 fun and 2/3 errands. We rode west from our house to downtown Durham (via Liberty Street, instead of Holloway), where there is a drive-thru Wells Fargo ATM that we go to quite often. It's really designed for cars, but it works just as well for "ride through" service on a bicycle!
After depositing my paycheck from swim coaching, we rode east to a park I've been wanting to check out for years. East Durham Park, located on E. Main Street, in, you guessed it, East Durham! East Durham...gulp! Was Eliza outfitted with a bulletproof vest? Was I packing my just-for-security handgun? (No, just so we're clear here, we don't own any guns, I'm just being silly here, playing into the media hype that this neighborhood gets!) I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the neighborhood of East Durham gets such a bad rap. Some of you reading this might even be thinking, "Oh, that's the bad part of town..." or "There's no way I'd ever visit this park, even in broad daylight!" I'm sure you've heard of East Durham in the news, and yes, it's true, there's more crime in this section of Durham than say, the Woodcroft area of Durham. But with my blog post today, I'm going to present to you all the wonderful things about this park, and perhaps you'll want to schedule a visit or attend a playdate here with me sometime.
"I wouldn't take my kids to play there, it's not a safe neighborhood..."
East Durham park sits at the corner of E. Main Street and Gary Street. It's adjacent to Y.E. Smith Elementary Museum school. The houses all along E. Main in this section of the neighborhood are well cared for and none are currently boarded up or falling into disrepair. Heading north on Gary Street from the park, you will go through a section of public housing, but it seems to be for older adults, I think, because of all the times I've traveled through here, I've not seen a single kid playing outside. In fact, I hardly ever see anyone outside of this community. Oh, and another thing about this public housing community - it does not have clotheslines outside in between all the houses. That's an odd thing, as all the other public housing sites seem to have them. I suppose all of these have washers and dryers in each unit. Well, anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. Back to the cool things about this park!
The playground is fairly new. I think it was completed about 3 years ago, when a lot of the older playground equipment at many city parks were being updated. This playground has ADA accessibility with a wheelchair ramp that leads into the middle of the "big kid" play center that's directly off of the sidewalk on Gary Street. You can see this ramp (and a big portion of the "big kid" playground) in this picture:
There is a big swing area, with 4 big kid swings and 2 baby swings.
Eliza loves swinging, as you can see here!
Next to the "big kid" play structure, there's a little kid play structure. This is where Eliza ate her afternoon snack. Goldfish crackers, cheese cubes and milk, yum!
After Eliza finished her snack, I slid down the slide with her. It's actually kind of a steep slide. I tucked her feet in while she sat on my lap (so that her feet wouldn't get caught on the side of the slide and potentially break her leg) and I pushed myself off. It's steep, but short, and the landing of the slide literally plops you down on your butt, safe and sound, but boy is it fast! Eliza squealed as we went down, and then started laughing after I landed on my butt and I said, "uhhh" - either she was laughing because it was fun, or because the "uhhh" sound I made must've sounded funny to her?
Underneath the handicapped accessible ramp on the big kid play structure is a little play area that Eliza thought was neat. She crawled over here to check it out. She spun that little wheel a hundred times before she grew tired of that area!
When we first got to the park, we were the only people there. Snack time was quiet, playtime on the little kid structure was quiet, and Eliza was having the time of her life. This is a very safe park. Never once did I feel out of place or threatened in any way. There were no scary people just hanging around doing nothing, rather, this is just a neighborhood park in a low-income, high minority area.
Just as we were moving over to the swings, a large bunch arrived at the park coming from the houses near the park on South Benjamine Street. There were probably 12 kids and 3 Moms, pushing strollers and talking to each other. I said hello, but they just smiled and waved, and I realized that they didn't speak english. This is a largely Hispanic neighborhood, so that's to be expected. A few minutes later, a couple of Mom's came in to the park from a minivan that they parked on Gary Street in front of the park. 1 of them had a baby that looked to be about 9 months old in a stroller, so of course I struck up a conversation with her. It turned out that her baby was actually 16 months old, but she was born 2 months premature and was small for her age. I asked the Mom if she came here often and she said she tries to come out here at least once a week, since her older elementary school-age son has "lots of energy to burn, and we don't have a big backyard to run around in!" I was about to ask her if she wanted to meet up sometime and have a playdate since her younger daughter was close in age to Eliza, but then she got a phone call and excused herself from talking with me. And it was around this time when I was planning on leaving the park and heading to errand #2 anyway, so oh well, maybe I'll see her here again some other time!
So we said goodbye to East Durham Park and rode to Food Lion on Holloway Street. This is my local Food Lion, but it's not where I always shop for groceries. Typically, I go to Lowe's Foods on Holloway/Miami Blvd, Food Lion on Holloway (I call it "Ghetto Food Lion") and Food Lion out east on Sherron Rd (I call it "Nice Food Lion"). I needed to pick up a few essentials, so I parked my bike and the trailer next to the shopping cart storage area.
As I was locking up my bike and trailer, many people were going in and out of Food Lion and commenting about us, or directly to us. One young woman in her 20's asked me, "You rode your bike here?" and I answered her really matter-of-factly but with a sweet smile on my face, and her response was, "ohmigosh, you so crazy! I wouldn't ride my bike down Holloway St!" and then she walked off, amazed at my stupidity of biking somewhere I could drive or take the bus to, I guess! Other people just walked by and waved at Eliza in the trailer.
We went inside for a quick shopping trip. This is one of the smallest Food Lion's in Durham, and in fact, it's the oldest one, too. About a month ago, I happened to ask a manager-looking'ish employee about a certain food item that I used to always buy there, but it was no longer available and I wanted to know when I could expect it back on the shelves. It turned out that I was asking the district manager! He talked to me about why certain items are no longer offered (because no one buys them, duh! I really should refrain from asking truly dumb questions like this in the future!) and I was flabbergasted - I mean, come on, the item I'm talking about is Lender's Bagels, the basic cheapie bagels you buy that come in 3 flavors - whole wheat, blueberry or cinnamon raisin. Who doesn't like those? Doesn't everyone eat those?
I guess not. The district manager informed me that at this Food Lion, 80% of their business is food stamps. And people who shop for groceries with food stamps tend to not buy "healthy" things like whole wheat bagels. They do buy, however, bagels that are labeled "Cinnabon" flavored, because I suppose Cinnabon means yummy to them, and so they buy them. However, with that said, the Cinnabon flavor Lenders bagels are way more expensive than the regular non-Cinnabon flavors ($3.99 vs. $2.39 for a 6-pack of bagels), thus, the reason for my complaining to the Food Lion employee who turned out to be the District Manager. His last statement, "we only keep things on the shelves that people buy" which of course I responded, "I bought them!" His reply, with a giant smile of course, "so it was you who bought the 36 packs of whole wheat bagels last year!"
Yup, it was me. Sigh. I guess I won't be buying bagels here at Ghetto Food Lion anymore. So I grocery shopped and picked up some yogurt, milk, bread, coffee creamer, cheese...you know, the essentials of everyday eating around our house! I'm just happy that this Food Lion carries Eliza's brand of milk we are choosing to buy her: Horizon Organic Whole Milk with added DHA. It's not cheap for sure, at $4.09 for a half gallon. I hope that I'm not the only one buying this milk because I don't want them to take it off the shelves!
Here's a picture of our groceries loaded up in the back of the bike trailer:
I rode home, put groceries away, fed Eliza while doing general house clean-up chores, gave her a bath, put her to bed and that was it for me! Exhausting, but fun day in East Durham!
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