onemomtwokidsnocar

Riding in the rain to daycare sucks, as we found out today! The Weather Network called for a 40% chance of 1mm of rain, and it had rained and the sun was out. So I thought: Let's go! The three of us hop on the bike and we set off. All through the parks and bike trails were fine, but as we turned onto a main road about 10 mins from the daycare, it started to rain, then downpour. We were caught in it, and got pretty soaked before stopping under a tunnel bridge to see if we could wait it out. But it kept coming, the kids got bored, and M started nagging. When it eased off a bit we took off again, and then it poured some more and we arrived literally sopping, dripping wet, with both kids freezing. Nice.

And it turned out Z's favourite teacher, whose last day it was before transferring to another centre, had called in sick. Plus they had chaos with too many kids and too few teachers and were frantically calling around trying to change kids to other rooms. So I decided the heck with it, all the chaos and the missing favourite teacher was going to defeat the purpose of Z getting acclimatized happily, which is the purpose of taking her to daycare this week (we have all been off for the summer). So I decided I would just take her back home with me. M pointed out that this meant it was a useless trip. Uh, yes it was M, thank you!

I piled them back on the bike, this time post-rain, and wrapped Z as well as she would tolerate in a towel for warmth. She was crying, from all the chaos of arriving wet, then going into daycare, then leaving with us. I was thinking all kinds of bitter thoughts about being carfree and about the Weather Network's lack of reliability. We set off, quite a spectacle, as we always are on the Xtracycle but I find if you're going to be a spectacle, you'd better be doing it right. I feel like a sore thumb when I am doing something odd and somewhat eye-catching, and it's going badly.

So I was in quite a bad mood setting out. But Z's crying stopped after a minute, and at the first small decline, I heard her little voice exclaim: 'Wheeeee!!!!'

And the fun was back. We had a lovely ride home. Next time I am bringing rain gear though, or at least towels!