Not the zoo, sadly

 We slept in this morning. We love vacations. :-)

Jonathan got to work on some homework, I got caught up on emails and texts and phone calls with various family members.

Jonathan and I wanted to go to the zoo today and leave Mike resting in the hotel room. His knee is kind of sore, and we have a long travel day tomorrow. Jonathan and I also wanted to do the bike rental thing. So the two of them were supposed to work out well together. Go find a bike rental, find trails through the greenway and bike to the zoo, enjoy the zoo in a drizzling rain with the umbrella that we have to share. It would have been nice. But it wasn't. :-(

Firstly, we had to hike quite a distance to find a bike docking station that had available bicycles. They were close ones to us, but none of them had more than one bike at them. We needed two. So we walked close to 30 minutes trying to navigate these crazy diagonal streets and my lack of directions. It all looked good on a map to me until I actually started on the streets. But, eventually we did find the bikes. Renting them out was no easy task, either. I had the ap and it was supposed to be simple. It wasn't... It's a good thing that TWO brains are better than one, however, So eventually we did get our bikes. It didn't work on the app, however. I had to use the kiosk and my credit card. We practiced on the bikes a little bit before heading out. It was all downhill, and a little steeper than I had imagined. We did find the street we wanted, but unfortunately Jonathan crashed his bike shortly into our trip. He was not badly damaged. He did get a good scrape on his knee, though, and we were both a little shaken up. I thought I had killed my grandson! But he was okay. He kept wanting to ride in the street, because it was a handrail on a stairway that snagged his handlebar causing him to crash.  However, the streets here are very narrow. There are very few bike Lanes, there is parking on the street, and the cars are close and fast. So sidewalks it was! Plus, I signed an agreement that we were both over 16. I think I lied a little.

The route we wanted to take was through a green belt, and it was supposed to be a gentle downhill path eventually getting to the zoo. But when we finally found the head of the trail, it turned out it was a hiking trail only with no bikes allowed. And besides that, it was also fenced off and temporarily closed! That was a big surprise. So the street we were on was a dead end, the rain was increasing, so we just headed back to the hotel area and Metro where the next closest bike docking station was and we walked back the one block to our hotel in the drizzling rain.

Sorry, no pictures of THAT  failed excursion.