Adventures on the Rail Trail by Girl Kyle

Since I picked Plimoth Plantation last week, it was boy Kyle's turn to pick what we were going to do this week. He came up with the idea to go biking down the rail trail. I have done it before but it was quite awhile ago so I thought it would be fun. We rented a tandem bike and went our merry way down the bike path. About 5 minutes later I decided it was a pretty awful idea to rent the tandem bike. I was sitting on the back seat so the only view I had was of Kyle's back. Now, I'm not saying that he doesn't have a nice back because he does. It was just going to be a really boring ride if that was going to be my only view. And I felt like we were tipping over the whole time and I couldn't let go of the handlebars at any point in fear that we would fall over and crack our heads open. So I insisted we go back and rent regular bikes. The one I chose had a very wide seat which was awesome.

Once we started going I felt like I was a kid again. When my family used to go bike riding, my dad and I would have mini races and then my mom would scold us for going too fast. I forgot how great it felt to go really fast on a bike. It's very freeing (I'm not sure how else to explain so if that's not a real word then I hope you understand what I mean). Kyle had mapped out our trip so that we could stop at a general store that was about 8 miles from the starting point to have lunch and then turn around and go back. About 4 miles into the 8 mile we came across a little rotary where you could either go towards Harwich Center or Wellfleet Center. Kyle chose what he thought was the right way and off we went. About an hour later Kyle figured out that we had gone the wrong way. And here is me complaining about it.

I got cut off from making the video so here's the rest of it:

Of course after riding a bike for about 10 miles without having lunch and then realizing you've gone the wrong way can be a little frustrating. Thankfully we got a hold of Kyle's brother and he told us that there was a Sweet Tomatoes about a quarter of a mile down the path from where we were so at least we could eat something. We sat down for as long as possible because we knew that we had to do the whole thing over again. That's the only problem with biking a trail, well not the only problem but maybe the biggest one. You have fun but then you realize you have to get back to you car which means all those fantastic down-hills will turn into horrible up-hills.

After biking 20 miles (we calculated it when we got back and realized we went from South Dennis to Chatham) and very sore legs and butts, we made it back to the car. I got a pretty bad sunburn (why would I think to put on sunscreen on a really sunny day?) and Kyle got ridiculous looking hair from the wind. The positives: the weather was gorgeous, we ended up with pretty decent bikes, and we got to have beer halfway through the trip. The negatives: the wind, going the wrong way, a bad sunburn, the wind, and the wind. So I would say it was a success.