The best laid plans of mice and men....

So Spilly hurled herself on the bed this morning, armed with books and questions about the words she had been deciphering by herself in her room, and that's how the day started. It progressed through oatmeal and sucanat and then turned into Biking Plans.

We are getting into biking, our little family. We all have bikes, and of course we also have the cool trail-a-bike thingy that turns an ordinary bike into a tandem bike. We now have a hitch for the van. So....we decided we would drive to the Elora Cataract Trailway (here it is: http://www.trailway.org/) and then enjoy a bike ride that would include a good look at the Elora Gorge.

With great high spirits we headed out. When we arrived at the trail, Spills and I got hats and things out and helped in our not-very-useful way to assemble the trail-a-bike. Then, while DH was putting the finishing touches on the assembly (which really means, doing most of it himself), we capered around and pretended we were on top of Mount Vesuvius. That's when Spills got the idea of taking the trail-a-bike flag (bright orange) and waving it at passing motorists, yelling, "I'm Sanjaya Malakar, and I'm going biking!" We did get a few honks. Crazy four-year-olds with bike helmets and orange flags who are shouting indecipherable things at passing cars do sometimes get attention.

So, after a lot of grunting and growling, hubby got us up and running. We headed off along the trail. We had a great time looking at the gorge. Then we started getting our speed up.

And the rain started, slowly at first, and then harder.

We ignored it for awhile, till it was actually obscuring the view up ahead. Finally hubby slowed down, stopped, and said, "Hmm."

"It's raining, I think," I said, dripping.

"Turn around," said hubby regretfully.

We turned around and began gloomily back along the trail.

The rain stopped. The sun peeked out.

"Did you notice it's not raining now?" I asked after awhile.

"I noticed."

"Turn around?"

"Turn around."

So we laboriously got the trail-a-bike turned around again, and we beamed at each other, and off we went.

And the rain started again. And the view disappeared again.

Hubby stopped again.

"It's raining," Spills said.

"Turn around," said hubby grimly.

We turned around. Off we went, back toward the car.

The rain stopped. The sun came out.

"It's sunny," I said.

"Till we turn around again," said Hubby.

"It might stay sunny."

"The question," said Hubby, "is if it will stay sunny if we go to Flapjacks for eggs?"

That, we realized, was the question that REALLY needed to be answered. So off we went for an early lunch.