100 Mile Bike Blog?

My good friend, Mel, has started a challenge for herself to bike (instead of drive) for 100 miles this summer. She even has a blog dedicated to her progress.
I'm not huge into biking, but I really don't like driving. So I take you up on your challenge, Mel. She nicely gave me permission to count every time I walk or take the bus - so far I'm up to 13.1 miles not using the car. Andrei and I have biked to Mel's house, we walked to the video store, and we took the bus downtown. I also walked to the grocery store and pulled Andrei's wagon, since my bike did not have baskets on it - but now it does - hurray!
Yesterday we took a real adventure and biked to the movie theater. It's not super far, but the roads are kind of busy, and biking with Andrei is a challenge. He just got on a bike for the first time this past month, so he's still using training wheels. It's an older kid's bike and he can't work the hand brakes, and still falls sometimes. So he rides the sidewalk, and I go slowly on the road, coaching him across streets and asking him annoyingly why he had stopped again (he wanted to pick a flower for me - oops).
So here I'd like to say thank you to Google Maps - especially satellite view. We couldn't very well ride to the movies on Taylor Drive, so I looked on Google to find an alternate route, with sidewalks and was nice and slow paced for us. I even found a shortcut walkway from a dead end into a parking lot. So we rode up behind the bank on Taylor and Wilgus, and then walked our bikes the rest of the way. Andrei did great, even though it rained a bit on us. And I hope I'm making the habit for him to think of biking or walking first before hopping in the car.

I would love to bike to work, if I didn't have to be there in the middle of the night. Brent and I have joked that if we ever move downtown, I could canoe in. :)

I have to admit that I don't have a helmet yet. (Andrei does - don't worry) I'm partial to this one - what do you think?