Clayton & Co.: Rent-A-Bike

We promised the kids before our trip that we would rent bikes. There were bike rentals just outside of Keukenhof which seemed perfect. What we didn't know was that they don't really rent kids' bikes. The smallest one they had worked OK for Alex (see below) but there was no way that Ruby could have held it up even though she is a great rider. So instead of Pete riding with Henry on back and myself going solo, Pete took Ruby and I was left with Henry as my passenger.

What you should keep in mind is that I was 24 weeks pregnant at the time. I'm not sure I should have been riding a bike, let alone carrying a passenger. Nevertheless, we only planned on a 3 mile leisurely ride, with a stop in the middle for lunch. It didn't seem like such a bad idea.

Problems arose when we took a wrong turn and our 3 miles turned into 6. Furthermore, the place we planned to stop for lunch was, for some mysterious reason, closed. Add into all of that the fact that about 30 minutes into the ride, I had to go to the bathroom. Because the restaurant was closed, there were none in sight and I was forced to press on. The last 20 minutes were unbearable for me. I felt like crying/dying and have never pedaled so hard in my life.

Fortunately I made it back to Keukenhof with no embarrassing accidents, although I must admit that I pedaled straight to the entrance of the bathrooms while Pete was left to explain to the park guard what was going on. It all ended well and we enjoyed a nice lunch back in the park.

5 on Bikes

Alex was the leader...

...while Henry and I brought up the rear

The first half of our journey Henry was all smiles.
They disappeared when he finally figured out he was never going to get a turn to pedal.

We passed lots of flower fields

Unfortunately many of them looked like this

Alex and I having a race-he won

Pete passed the camera back to Ruby and she took a lot of pictures.
Some turned out nice like the one above, although we did get a lot of the ground and the back of Pete's head.