Ever heard of a Pedalounge?  Me neither.  Which was partly what lured me out of my writing cave earlier this summer — despite the unfinished manuscript, and that it was still freakin’ cold out!

You see, my family’s pretty fun.  Crazy fun.  If-you’re-not-careful-you-could-end-up-in-trouble fun!  But at least I’d be in good company.  🙂  So the fact we began my cousin’s birthday celebration with a pub crawl on this bad boy wasn’t a surprise to me.  (Notice I said “began”?  Yeah, we partied most of the weekend.  Natch!)

Powered by twelve lucky peeps who pedaled between stops, we made our way to three different pubs within a five-block radius.  (I think.  Lost count after awhile!)  Those of us too short to reach the pedals (yeah, that would be me), had to sit it out.  (Boo!)

There was a pretzel necklace for each of us (in case we needed more fuel to get us to the next pub), and the Pedalounge was wired so we could play cool music off an iPhone.  “Cousin” John — adopted after our second pub stop when we discovered he was the only child of only children (coming from a large extended family, we all thought this was soooo sad!) — safely maneuvered us through traffic and coached us on the appropriate hand signals to use when making turns.  (Yes, they were clean.)  It was a blast!

In addition to learning about the Pedalounge, we also admired the artwork at one stop (how many dog paintings are there in this world?), the scientific nature of beer at another stop (that would be the educational portion of the crawl 😉 ), and the scenery of our gorgeous city.  (Pothole Hotline?  Seriously?  Who knew?)

But the best part of the day was just being among the people who mean the most to me in this world.  (Don’t tell them I said that, ‘kay?)  We laughed, we toasted to good times (boy, did we ever!), and despite the distances that separate us, we were reminded we are still family — we share a bond that time and space don’t easily break.

Which goes to show, even when you’re lured out of your writing cave, it could be a good thing.

As long as it doesn’t happen too often. . ..

-Melia