Mommy and Zander are Going Up the Mountain

Mommy and Zander are going up the mountain!

This past Friday I had one of the funnest rides I’ve had in a while. I woke up early to sneak out the door before Zander was awake and get in a ride. Before I finished coffee, the little guy came stumbling out of his room. Since it was Friday, I knew that Brendan had a lot of prep to do for the shop. Thursday was busy and Friday would surely be, as well.

My first thought; no ride for me. On second thought, I’ll just take him with me!

I asked Zander if he wanted to go climb a mountain this morning. He said he wanted to go ride HIS bike with me and I explained that I’d be pulling him in the trailer for this one because it was a big mountain. He was on-board and ate his oatmeal so he could get energy for helping me up the mountain.

I told Zander that there would be steep spots in the road and he would have to cheer me on to help me. We loaded up and got out by about 8. We rode through town and I could hear him singing in the trailer. “Mommy and Zander are going up the mountain.” Even if I had to stop the ride here, it would have been perfect.

We started climbing the control road towards Pine Cove and Zander said he wanted to go home. It was too bumpy. I was bummed, cause I really wanted to get in a ride. I asked him if he could hang in there so we could go up and see the lake. I also adjusted his blanket like a pillow and he agreed to continue on for a little bit.

We got to a viewpoint in the road where he could see Diamond Valley Lake in Hemet. He stood up in the trailer and explained that he wanted to go fishing now. I told him that it was still a long ways away and we’d have to save that for another day. Ready to go back down, since that was the bargain, I asked him if he was ready. He said that he wanted to keep going up and “climbing the mountain.” That made my day. As we continued climbing, when we got to a steep pitch and I had to granny-gear it, Zander would help me get up by yelling “go! mommy! go!” I definitely had to make it without walking, then.

When we got up to Optimator and another viewpoint, he got out and was very proud of what we had done. He wanted to throw rocks for a bit and was stomping around exclaiming that “We climbed a mountain! We climbed a mountain!”

Now, we’d have to go back down, which I was somewhat dreading. The road was a little washboarded and he’d surely not like the bumps, since he complained about it being bumpy on the way up. We started descending and I heard him yelling something at me. I stopped and asked if he was OK and he began laughing like a crazy kid and shouting out, “Go faster, mom! Go faster! Go this way and go faster!”

Oh my gosh, what a ride it was going back down. We swooped the turns wide banking up on the sides and he had a blast and I could hear his laughter the whole way down. That’s my little guy. What a success. This was our first dirt ride in a long time and the longest and hardest I’d done with him. All together it was a couple hours and as soon as we hit pavement, he fell asleep. Good thing he got a workout, too!