I spent the vast majority of my time preparing for Christmas, not the PE exam. I inconsistently read the FirstAid book for allopathic version of the test, USMLE Step 2 CS. But didn't get very far. Instead, Becky and I laid out the plans for Christmas and I got to shopping.
The big item this year ended up being mountain bikes. We are all having a rough time getting back into shape and definitely ate too much crap (me while traveling the last fours months). I haven't gone swimming or biking more than a couple times each even though Becky now has a road bike and the kids are old enough to leave them home alone for an hour or so. Moreover, the kids had gotten a little tired of swimming, and we of forcing them to go to practice.
So I decided that mountain biking would be something we could all do as a family on weekends an the boys could even do after school in the local "wash". That's a Phoenix term for overgrown drainage ditches. They are the size of a river to handle floods, but are dry 99% of the time, so coyotes, rabbits and human use them most of the year.
This was an expensive decision for us at this point, but Becky and I committed that we'd get our tushes out of the house on weekends and spent some quality with our kids. The boys and I visited the top local store, Swiss American Cycling, and the immediately fell in love with the idea of mountain biking. Probably more accurately, with the idea of getting new bikes. Colton had always had hand-me downs from his brother, so he was ecstatic about gettin a cool new bike.
We picked them up on Saturday before Christmas so the boys would have something to do other than start their two week break glued to the TV. We managed to get the bikes home and surprise them, only after realizing that we'd be getting a new bike carrier. After very minimal set-up the boys and I went out for a quick ride.
They were tentative, Colton less so, but really enjoyed it. On Sunday Connor had a head-over-handlebars crash in the street and hurt his wrist, so Colton and I went exploring. The following day all four of us went for an easy ride. I still felt the boys were excited, just not as passionate about it as I would have liked. That changed after Christmas went to some BMX trails by AZCOM with lots of obstacles, jumps and gullies. Now they boys are huge fans and can't wait to go riding every day. It's starting to feel like money well spent.
Our biggest hassle has been popped tire tubes. I'm putting on Slimes now, but we had 1-2 punctures per ride for the first week! That gets old fast.
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