Bonafide Hack Hound

On Sunday afternoon, Jodie, Ella and I all went for a ride. At last. (By the way, we rode with full gear, and just snapped the photo before we geared up. We’re ATGATT riders — All The Gear All The Time.)

We started slow. Jodie got her jacket on and got in the sidecar. Ella hasn’t yet worked out how to climb in to the hack on her own, so I picked her up and set her on Jodie’s lap.

Then we waited. While I geared up, Ella gradually settled down, first kind of sitting on Jodie, then easing down into the floor of the hack, with her head on Jodie’s lap. A couple of minutes later, the Patrol was fired up and warming up to operating temperature. It took Ella another couple of minutes to get used to the vibrations under her rear-end, but soon she was relaxed as can be. Then we were in motion.

After about 5 minutes at slow speeds around the neighborhood, Ella was still doing fine. We pulled into a parking lot. Initially, we didn’t put Ella’s Doggles on. Her wearing them around the house had been one thing, but in the hack, the combination of the sidecar and the Doggles had been freaking her out. Now that she was understanding the sidecar was a good thing, the Doggles were no problem.

We rode for about half an hour. Maybe longer. It’s easy to lose track, isn’t it? Ella did great — relaxed as can be, head on Jodie’s lap, just enjoying the ride.

No UDF (Ural Delay Factor) today. However, we did stop in a parking lot briefly to check how Ella was doing. Across from us, a guy chaining up his bicycle shook his head and grinned. “You three look so cute,” he said.

We are so excited that Ella has embraced her destiny as a hack monkey, and can’t wait to zip around town, and farther afield, with all of us together on the Ural.