Hitting the trail.

On Friday Scott and I were out doing some shopping.  We stopped in to a sporting goods store so he could look at some golf equipment and home gym stuff.  We had both of the girls with us which always makes shopping for anything more difficult.  As Scott was browsing the weights and pull-up bars, my eye was caught by a stroller.  For a few months now I’ve been looking for a double jogging stroller.  Our new neighborhood is perfect for walks and it’s a great way for me to get some exercise in.  Well I have previously attempted these walks with our tandem Graco stroller and man, it was a workout!  The stroller itself weights nearly 40 pounds.  Nora weights about 23 pounds and Brinley weights about 33 pounds.  So I was pushing nearly 100 pounds around my hilly neighborhood.  But I digress..

Anyway, I had been scouring craigslist and local tag sales for a jogging stroller, but just couldn’t seem to find one that was in pretty good shape for pretty good money.  So, I peered over to the double jogging stroller sitting near the bike display in the sporting goods store.  I could see the tag hanging from the handle but couldn’t quite make out the price.  All I could see was the last part of the price, $79.97.  I knew there had to be a number in front of the 79 but I couldn’t make out what it was from where I was standing.  So, I grabbed Nora and left Brinely with Scott to go and scope it out.  I walked over and read the tag:  InStep Safari TT Double Jogging Stroller with front swivel wheel, Price $79.97, You save $179.00.

At this point, Scott was by my side asking me if that could really be the price of the stroller.  I thought to myself, there is no way!  I kept thinking back to the insane deal that I thought I was going to get on a Britax Marathon car seat about a year or so ago on Target.com.  The car seat was listed for like $40 and it’s typically nearly a $300 car seat.  Of course I added it to my cart and thought I had scored such a deal.  A few days later I received an email from Target saying that it was a pricing mistake on their part but they could not honor the price.  I received a $25 gift card for my disappointment.  Again, I digress…

So now a sales person walks over to us asking if we need any help and we ask him if that is really the price for the stroller.  He says yes and it’s because they’re getting rid of them to make room for the new models.  He checks to see if they have any left in boxes but we find out that the display model is the last one.  I strap both girls into the stroller afraid to leave it where it is because someone else might snatch it up.  We decide that we’re going to buy it.  Scott continues shopping for his golf stuff and I take the girls to play with the balls.  But they’re starting to get antsy because it’s just about dinner time.  We head over to Scott and I tell him that I’m going to pay for the stroller and leave with the girls to get them dinner (we had separate cars).  When I got up to the register I was still worried that the price would be wrong, but lo and behold it wasn’t and I scored a $280 stroller for $79.97!!

Fast-forward to this morning…  The weather is beautiful.  The sun is shining but the humidity of the past, I don’t know, two weeks is gone!  It’s about 70 degrees and breezy.  Perfect for a nice walk.  One of the many awesome things about our town is something called the Rail Trail.  It’s a former rail road route that passes through 8 connecting towns.  When it’s complete it will be about 25 miles long.  It’s completely paved and lined with fencing.  It’s open for non-motorized use including jogging, walking, biking, rollerblading and skiing.  So this morning, I decided to grab the girls and go check it out.  We drove about 2 miles into town (I would have walked it but the street to get there is pretty busy and has no sidewalks).  I strapped the girls into our new stroller and started a route on the iMapMyWalk iPhone app.

It felt great to be out in the fresh air taking advantage of such a great feature.  Having the new stroller really allowed me to move faster but with more ease.  The girls were well behaved for the most part.  I worried a little that with them side-by-side they’d annoy each other.  They were perfect for the first 3 miles.  They just sat there and took in the scenes and ate their snack.  At about mile 3, Nora started nudging Brinley and Brinley started nudging back.  We still had a mile to go before we were back to the car.  So I did what any mom would do… I started singing!  Old McDonald, Itsy Bitsy Spider and Nora’s favorite (thanks to Mimi) How Much is that Doggy in the Window!  It took their minds off of bugging each other and they started singing along.  Passers by were looking at me a little funny but I didn’t care.  We were having so much fun and I got a great, brisk 4 mile walk in before 10:30am.

I’m going to try to make this a regular occurrence.  It felt great and now that I have the right equipment there’s no excuse not to!