Author Archives: arletelouise
Thursday at Merrilyn’s
American River Bike Trail
Window shopping
Riding the Silverado Trail
Billie from Roanoke VA arrived yesterday.
Today we drove to Calistoga and rode one of the routes from the Breathe Bike Trek.
The weather was perfect.
The leaves are beginning to turn color.
All the good grapes have been harvested with smaller clusters left behind.
Miles = 30. The Silverado Trail has long stretches of riding with no stop signs or lights, a wide bike lane, and less traffic than the main road through the Napa Valley – therefore Billie put today’s ride on her list of Top 5 Rides. 

Avery’s soccer game and birthday party
Project Ride Smart – final week
Hurray! Classroom instruction and blacktop drills have been completed. Students were divided into skill groups. I worked with those students who needed more practice riding on the bike trail with minimal on-street instruction. In this group, the three students to the right LEARNED how to ride a bike for the first time after coming to both after-school coaching sessions. The young man at the left made an excellent “sweep” rider and assistant coach.
Most bicycle crashes are the result of driver error … Tristan didn’t quite make the turn and landed on the rocks. His classmates quickly went to help him – it was great to see how encouraging they were.
Gina and I combined our yellow and red groups when we were short on volunteers to ride with us.
You can never tell what children will think the highlight of the day was. After this class, several happily proclaimed they drank “doggy water”. The fountains for humans provided not a drop, but the doggy faucet worked great. Some kids were surprised they could cup their hands and get a pretty good drink.
A big thank-you to Bike Hikers Becky, Joyce, and Kathy who came out on Thursday to ride with us!
A special thank-you to Kathy for being so gracious to observant ten-year-olds whose mouths dropped open when she rolled through the first stop sign. She apologized to each of them.
Another successful Project Ride Smart.
Sophia’s soccer practice

Meanwhile, Avery and a few friends played a version of tag. The “it” person stays on the ground and throws a ball at others who can go anywhere on the play structure.
Deciding who would be “it” first took quite a while. Eeeny meeny miney moe with feet – the longest version of the poem I’ve ever heard … and only one start-over to get the desired result.
Halloween costume #1
Delivered! Avery wanted to be a specific dinosaur – a carnotaurus.
But a blue one. He picked out the fabric himself, making sure it was the right shade of blue. Growling fiercely:
Chasing his tail:
Dino down. A word about all those spikes: they are about 3 inches long, stuffed with fiberfill, and hand-sown on.
Sunday Social
Because of rain, we moved inside the Dry Creek Ranch House for the meeting. A tad crowded but it all worked out.
The guest speaker was Maceo Hart-Kapic. When RLEHS first met him two years ago, he was a junior in high school and managing a farm of about 2 acres at Gibson Ranch as a high school project. Currently Maceo is a freshman at UCBerkeley, living in the dorms, and coming home a couple of weekends every month to keep an eye on his 23-acre farm. His mother, interns and volunteers work the rest of the time to keep things going.
Maceo estimates he’s met about 150 people at school so far – just 2 have ever been on a farm. “They just don’t get it,” he said. The Throwdown key ingredient was pumpkin. I won with Pumpkin Pie Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting.

















