first long bike ride
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This morning, Mari and I took Kenny back over to the park where he can splash around in a fountain. He enjoyed it, but at one point I found myself pulling some strange child off of the spout for the central column of the fountain because the kid had been sitting there blocking that column of water for at least ten minutes. No other kids were able to play with the main part of the fountain thanks to that. Enough's enough!
In the afternoon, Mari was gone for a hair appointment. I had Kenny for the day, but thought about things that needed doing. I decided that I would need a guide book and map for the trip to Shanghai, and that the giant bookstore in Shinjuku would be the best bet for finding English materials in this city.
It would be a long bike ride, and though it was uphill, I'd have to sweat it out with Kenny in the backseat. A good challenge for a hot Summer day indeed. And good practice not only for cycle trips in Tokyo but for the planned motorcycle tour of Shanghai. I worked out an itinerary and dove in.
It took quite a while to get up there, at least 80 minutes by my reckoning. It was more or less the same trip I'd made every morning for my Japanese classes in the final few weeks, and I'd done that in under 50 minutes. But with the child it was different. Especially when the child's drifted off to sleep and his dead weight keeps shifting from side to side.
When we got to Shibuya I noticed that he'd slumped out of the shoulder harnesses and was hanging too far over in his sleep. Sorting out the harnesses woke him up, but he seemed content so we carried on. He made noises and pointed at things we passed, and was otherwise without complaint.
We got to the book store and I quickly found what we needed. Ken's great behaviour kept up throughout the visit to the store, which was welcome indeed (And perhaps because he sensed that the trip was something special?).
We then went to a park and played on the swings and slides and so on for maybe an hour. Kenny delighted in the one large concrete slide, and squealed in gleeful terror every time that we got to the top and he looked down at the steep view.
The ride home was a quicker thing since it was all downhill, but it was also a much bumpier ride down the eastern side of Yamate avenue because the sidewalk there has been torn to shreds by construction. I'd decided not to take my route that follows inside the Yamanote line through Ebisu and Takanawa despite it being considerably quieter, and came to regret my choice. Yamate is just not child friendly.
We made one stop along the way for groceries. I noticed Mari's bike parked in the grocery store lot while we were there -- the lot's a great place to leave a bike for free when using the trains adjacent to the far side of the store. Then we were home.
We headed straight to the bathtub and I washed what seemed to be half of the city off of Kenny's tanned limbs. It was a fine outing, I was pleased at how well it had gone.