New Troop Bike Ride

 

    Ever since my mom and I received the news that my old troop was going to come to an end in December, we had been looking for a new troop in Claremont. Darren was also looking for a good troop, and his mom was the one who found a nice unit for us, which was Troop 403. The first troop activity we had was last Sunday, a 16-mile bike ride in the Azusa mountains.

    Magically, when we first heard about the bike ride, my mom immediately signed both of us up.  Then the following afternoon, she bought a bike from the village bike shop and somehow fit it into the mini SUV of hers. She even got a cute little basket to go with it.

    After we switched the small SUV for a van, we fit the bikes in snugly in the back, and set out for the Azusa mountains. In less than 40 minutes, we arrived at the parking lot of our trip’s starting and ending point. About 10 minutes was spent waiting for everyone to arrive. At around twelve, we started the ride.

    The first hour of the trip was pretty uneventful. Darren and I just chatted about our accounts on Clash of Clans. It was during our lunch break when things got a bit interesting. I had control over my mom’s phone at that time. With a downloaded app, I started playing random songs like Gangnam Style, and The Fox. A younger scout called Anzo asked, “Do you even have any good songs that one can enjoy?”

During a 1D song, Darren and I simultaneously started to dance to the music. Everyone in view cracked up. Soon I couldn’t resist the laughter, and joined in. After the One Direction song finished, Gangnam Style started playing again, and Darren suddenly did the dance move I remember very well from the movie Internship. As everyone chuckled, I literally started choking on my own sobs of laughter. Then, without warning, I suddenly lost my balance and tumbled to the ground. As I tried to push myself up, I only succeeded in rolling over on my belly. Finally, a kind scout helped me up on my feet.

    As we started off on our trip again, I let the songs I had play randomly. When the phone reached a song we knew, Darren and I would sing purposely off tune and as badly as possible. Some the scouts would stare at us in a funny sort of way and I doubled over in laughter so much, I almost fell off my bicycle.This continued until we reached a steep slope and did not have the breath to sing anymore. Luckily, I made it to the end of the uphill only with my legs on fire. Even more luckily, we were turning around to head back the way we came, and that meant we could go down the steep slope now.

Darren, Wesley, and I hurriedly made an agreement to see who could get back to the end the fastest. Darren got a head start, yelling, “SEE YE!” over his shoulder, leaving Wesley and me scrambling on our bikes in hot pursuit. I turned my bike’s gears up as high as it could go and zoomed down the hill, leaving Wesley on his little wheels, and singing, “What does the fox say?”

In the end, Darren won our unofficial official race. I got last, although all three of us were really close together. Worn out, we returned our bikes to the cars.

         This was probably one of the best activities I have had with Troop 403 so far (of
course, it was the first one). This memory of the first activity with this troop will stay with me for a long time.