Training Ride

The We Go By Bike family was cooking up something special: a Labor Day bike camping trip for the whole gang! It would be my (Katie's) family's first time bike camping with Fabi's family, and their first time bike camping, period. But with the campground just under 30 miles away, Fabi and I decided that we should squeeze in a training ride a week before the trip. We would ride the bikes we were planning to take on our trip (Xtracycles), and practice some hill climbing since our camping route involved an incline. And what better way to reward ourselves after a hard ride than getting to sit down and relax at a winery?

Fabi and I met up with our families at the local Saturday Farmers' Market, then peeled off from the dads and kiddos to begin our ascent. Well, we had a pretty general idea of what the cycling route to this hilltop winery would be like, but the steepness was even more than we had realized when there were a couple of stretches where we had to push our heavy bikes along.

Luckily, we had lots of water and took breaks, so moving slowly was not a problem. Eventually we crested the hill just above the winery, so after that it was a short downhill and straight into their gravelly driveway.

We definitely got some odd looks from the other winery patrons as we rolled up and parked our big bikes, but we were too busy catching our breath and taking in the scenery to worry about that.

After removing our sweaty helmets and belting down some water, we were ready to sit down with a glass of wine! Thankfully, the winery also sold small cheese snack plates, which we two hungry cyclists were happy to purchase.

All told, we spent almost three hours chatting and snacking and enjoying the lovely view. And when it was time to go home, we had a really sweet downhill descent to start off our journey. It was a trip we would definitely make again!