SURVIVED the midnight bikeride!

Every year, in June, there's a benefit bikeride AT MIDNIGHT that starts at the Garden of the Gods, goes through town then downtown then Old Colorado City, and ends back at Garden of the Gods. You can choose to go either 16 or 20 miles. There's a big pancake breakfast afterwards (3am??). It's crazy! If the people are actually awake along the streets with houses that we ride by, they are often yelling out to us "WHAT THE HECK?? WHAT ARE ALL OF YOU DOING?" There's usually about 1,500 riders, and it's totally a blast! The bicycle ride benefits the Trails and Open Space Coalition (they're awesome!).

SO - for last year's bikeride, we snuck out and left Kate at home, and our friend/neighbor came over & watched her/slept. This year, WE TOOK KATE! (My mother's day present was an awesome bikcycle trailer!) So we stuffed in a pillow and blanket and woke Kate up at 10pm and off we went -- to the Garden of the Gods! She was pretty much in a daze during the music and fun stuff that precedes the bikeride...then she slept about 2hours in the trailer while we road around. She woke up around 2am to see what all the hype was about at one of the fun break stops (she wanted to get in on the fresh fruti, pretzels, and peanut M&Ms!). Well, she stayed awake for the rest of the ride, the pancake breakfast, the car ride home, and about 30 minutes after we got home -- that rascal! We were EXHAUSTED -- kept saying "go to sleep lil Kate"; "time for sleepy sleepy". Poor thing was pretty confused. [Remember we just returned 2 nights earlier from our 14-hour road-trip back home from Arkansas! Got home about 2:30am from that trip! EEK]

I've rambled enough -- but the pics below show some of our team members -- Carolyn's little sister, Tiana (she did GREAT on the ride), and our friend Brian (Noah's dad -- you've seen Noah in blogs before; he was born exactly 1 month before Kate).