Dylan and I went out for a ride on the bicycle and trailer tonight, and it worked out pretty well.  My friends at the Fargo Moorhead Community Bicycle Workshop (FMCBW) assure me that winter riding can be done, and since the mercury was only a bit below freezing, I felt we had better get a ride in while the getting was good.

I was surprised at the small number of vehicles we met on the road, but that allowed me to concentrate on the terrain right in front of me, avoiding almost all of the obstacles in our path.  Dylan was on my side, reminding me to try not to fall many times while we rode from park to park in search of the perfect winter playtime scenario.  We crossed north Moorhead to our old neighborhood and caught our breath at the 5-9 Park, a place I remember better than he does.  This is the first park I took a one year old Dylan to when I first took on parenting as a full-time occupation, and used to be the extent of my running range at about 5 blocks from the old apartment.

Dylan was not interested in stopping, so we came to one of our favorites, Davy Park.  I chose to continue on across the pedestrian bridge to Fargo’s Oak Grove Park, knowing that Dylan would have been content to play for a bit then go home, but needing more out of our adventure now that my blood was flowing.  We stopped and discussed which park we were going to play at once again near Mickelson Park, and agreed that this would be the one.

Upon lifting his trailer’s snow cover, however, Dylan announced that we needed to go to a different park and we were off.  Across the toll bridge and into a new construction neighborhood, I contemplated the lack of mature trees and prominence of three car garage architecture.  Our house was built in 1926, and has been a long time holdout on the garage front.  It occurred to me that if the future brings less dependence on personal motorized transport, all of the houses dominated by their garages could be remodeled, turning the garage space into lavish parlor areas, or perhaps turned into living space as future owners modify the 2,500 square foot floor plans into duplexes.

At all rates, Bridgeview Park was not the panacea I had imagined, just another wild goose on our chase.  Dylan now insisted that we go back to Davy Park, so the wintry ride continued.  We were across from the razor wire of the county jail when a shape caught my eye near the river.  “Dylan, it’s a deer!”  I unbuckled my sidekick and we snowpantsed our way toward the deer, discovering that it was not one, but at least six deer ambling along the riverbank.  Dylan began to cry, saying that he was cold and hungry and wanted to go home.  We never did make it back to Davy Park, never really stopped riding except to watch the deer, and to talk about which park would be the perfect park in which to play, on a dark winter’s day.