Our own public transportation

Oh, city transportation. It's convenient, yet smelly. Fast, yet running late. Costs only a few bucks, yet requires exact change.

Parking is a whole other story. Lots are convenient but expensive. Street parking is expensive and only lasts two hours. Free parking requires patience, flexibility, and strategy and is sometimes even available.

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One night a week the boys take swimming lessons in a lovely part of the city with terrible parking. There is a lot with meters, but you can only pay in quarters or something and it's expensive. There is metered street parking, but it's also expensive. The swim lessons are relatively cheap by Chicago standards, but when calculating the cost I hadn't factored in the price of parking. Doh!

Our solution is to find free street parking on the way to swimming. Now we leave early for swimming with the boys bikes or scooters in the back of the car. We park where it's free and get out the bikes or scooters to ride the rest of the way. It works out great. 

I will admit this: My kids fall asleep in the car on the way to swimming every single time. They are completely, limply, snoringly, droopingly asleep. I wake Jett up, and he groggily puts on his helmet and shuffles over to his bike, sitting on the seat like a lump waiting for Kai to be ready. He seriously breaks my heart every time he wakes up and agrees to ride his bike, immediately, for almost a mile. 

As for Kai, sometimes he's willing, sometimes he isn't. Sometimes it's 90 degrees out and I agree to carry Kai the whole way, which turns me into a sweaty pile of sweating sweat. A couple of times I couldn't take it any more and we took a bus for the last two blocks.

But usually they both ride and it's fun.