The holiday bike trip

Today was a holiday celebrating the end of the Soviet Union. The weather was beautiful and 5 of us planned a bike trip to the lakes just to the northwest of the city. According to Dmitry, the great thing was that there were sidewalks and then bike paths the entire way there. Sounded like a plan!
I didn’t really want to ride my bike with no gears on unfamiliar bike paths, so Ravil, Albert and I met at 10 at our favorite bike shop and we rented bikes with gears. The shop owner remembered me from last year because I think I was the only one who ever checked the tires before I took a bike and made him put air in it. Plus, I’m probably the only American who has ever rented from him.
It didn’t take us 10 minutes to get three good bikes and we were on the way. I had already bought cheese and rolls for the picnic but Albert and Ravil had to stop at the store to pick up some fruit and munchies. And we ALL remember to go the the bathroom at the shopping center before we really started out.
We got on our way then and everyone was at the meeting point right on time. Besides us three, Claudia and Dmitry came along. After maybe 2 miles of sidewalk riding, we did actually arrive at a bike path. Keep in mind, Kazan is not as bicycle friendly as much of Europe,  but the bike path until we got to Lake District was certainly adequate.
At the Lake District itself, they are working on improving the infrastructure of the recreational area. So first we hit a travel covered with sand, then 100 feet of boardwalk, followed by sand, flowed by boardwalk all the way down one side of the first lake. We cross over a sandbar to ride down the side of the other lake. Almost at the end of that lake, we look across and see a beach where we want to have our picnic. We think maybe we should just go back and across the sandbar to the other side but Dmitry wants to show us a path through the woods which will get us there. It takes a little longer but it’s scenic. Ok, we’re game.
Accept that Dmitry couldn’t find it and had to stop and ask people two times. Once we got one the path, it was up and downhill on sand 3 inches deep!  Ravil took a header going done one incline. When he fell, his leg got caught between the handlebar and the frame. If the angle had Been 5 degrees sharper, it would have snapped his leg. I pushed most of the rest of the way.
We finally found a pleasant spot on a beach at the old gravel pit lake. The only problem here was we had to push the bikes down a steep incline of nothing but sand for 100 feet. (It was a real bitch getting them back up!)  We found a little shade, Claudia spread out her Lufthansa blanket and we dug in to all the food everyone had brought along. Then the others went swimming but since my bathing suit is already back in the States, the most I could do is get my feet wet.
The picnic was fun and everything tasted so good, even though the sand blew onto everything. The Camembert cheese liked as if it had freckles! It was so nice and relaxing until a group of students who had just finished there exams decided that this was the beach they were going to celebrate on. We had a great time observing them and commenting on there behavior for a couple of hours. And, as we were such a multigenerational group (Ravil is 27.), it was really interesting to here the varying viewpoints and opinions.
We finally left there about 3:00 p.m. because it was starting to cloud over. Dmitry said he knew shortcuts through the woods. Right! After struggling through lots of sand again, some guy finally pointed us in the right direction. When Dmitry suggested still another shortcut, we all said no and finally got back to where the trail back to town starts.
When we got back to town, everybody headed in his own direction, and we took the bikes back to the bike shop just as it was starting to sprinkle. I caught the subway then and was home at 6. I even had sand in my ears. I jumped immediately into the shower and it was one of the most refreshing I’ve ever had.