Vacation adventures

I have been in full on vacation mode.

My mom came to visit for the first two days of my vacation.

On Sunday we used the new Minneapolis bike share program, NiceRide. I've been wanting to rent a lime green bike since they showed up around the city a month ago. We biked to the Lyndale Farmers Market and ate at The Magic Bus Cafe because The Grateful Dog is my favorite summer food. My mother is shocked at my meat eating habits. After all I bike a lot and I eat vegetables, how can I possibly want to eat meat. I didn't really point out to her that this meat consumption is like a once a week thing but whatevs.

On Monday we rented pedal boats at Lake Calhoun. Wow. Pedal boats are much harder than I remember from the last time I was on a pedal boat when I was a kid. While we were struggling to move our cumbersome water craft through the lake we decided we wanted to get a closer look at some lily pads. There were a pair of ducks by the lily pads and one was stuck and the other one kept quacking and trying to help her duck friend. While my Mom and I were trying to pedal over to save the duck (an idea that would have taken at least five minutes and might have gotten us stuck in the lily pads) a guy in a kayak swooped in and saved the duck. Which made my mom want to rent kayaks today. We ate lunch at The Tin Fish.

So today back to Lake Calhoun to rent kayaks. After renting the kayaks I'm never renting pedal boats again. Also at $11 an hour what a great way to use use a kayak without actually owning a kayak. Not that it wouldn't be fun to own a kayak but I live in a condo and don't have the storage space for a kayak and at $150 for the season renting a storage spot by the lake makes the $11/hour to rent a kayak pretty reasonable. Being on the lake, out in the water was great and I think I need to spend more time doing this.

Vacation adventures continue tomorrow. I'm bringing some notebooks and pens and maybe I'll write. Or maybe I'll just swim, bike, kayak and whatever.

Next week I'm taking a writing class at The Loft. All week. All day long. Some people might not think of this as vacation but since many of my childhood and teen summers included a week long creative writing class at College for Kids I think this is like my grown up version of that.