This is half-pie.

The girls have both started really getting into riding their bikes lately. After they get home from school they’ll get them out and take it in turn to ride down the narrow concrete ramp at the side of the house and on to the lawn.

In fact, they’re so keen that we thought we’d better get a tow bar fitted so we could put their bikes onto a rack and cart them about with us.

Rebecca had suggested that we two should also get bikes at some point soon. I hadn’t thought too hard about this, until last week, when I strolled into a bike shop, you know, as you do, just to check out the prices.

This is the result.

Yesterday I rode it home from the shop. It was the first time I’d been on a bike in any meaningful way for nearly 20 years. It was scary. It was fun. It was also bloody hard work, and I had to push the bike most of the way up Wadestown Road. But coming down the other side was GREAT. And afterwards, I had the weary glow of exercise-having-been-done. I am not used to that. It was good.

So now I have a bike. Rebecca’s arrives in a couple days. I’ve been scoping out rides and paths across Wellington and wider afield for little family field-trips, and for other slightly more taxing adventures for me when my fitness levels improve.

Because that bike needs some mud.

Sadly though, it’s never going to be that easy to get all the bikes out our gate and up the steps to the road. But I can pretend this is part of the exercise thing, right?