Ride Report #6

Today was the big day… the day I’ve been waiting for for over a year! Today was Jack’s first ride!

I got going early this morning and I told Jack that he was going for a ride in the Hack. He gave me a puzzled look until I said “Ready to Load Up!”, then he got very excited and I had his full attention!

I had already prepped the bike by removing the extra weight, seat and by placing a mat on the floor of the hack so we headed out to the rig and Jack jumped in and got comfortable.

I made sure to give Jack loads of praise, as I always do, and strapped on his Doggles in preparation for our first ride together. He doesn’t seem to mind them at all which has been a bit of a surprise to me… though I’m not complaining. I did opt for the clear lenses and will probably stick with them until we go on long rides in the middle of a sunny day. By then I think Jack won’t care whether the lenses are tinted or not.

With Jack ready to go, and the garbage set out on the curb like the note I found on the kitchen counter requested, we were on our way. I don’t have any photos of the ride itself as that would have been quite the feat to pull off, but I can say it was my favorite ride to date. Jack sat as quite as could be with a massive smile on his face the whole time. At every stop I gave commands like “Stay” even though I didn’t see any signs of him going anywhere. We passed several dogs, squirrels, and loads of birds and they may as well have been a rock on the side of the road to Jack.

Since it was our first outing on the rig together,  I stayed within South Orange and kept the speed between 25-30 mph, which is actually the speed limit anyway. I took every turn nice and slow and talked with Jack as much as possible. I think Jack is going to become a mini-celebrity in town because he got loads of attention today. There wasn’t a single person we passed that didn’t wave or do a double take. We we’re stopped at a red light and a garbage truck pulled along side us. The driver rolled down his window with a giant smile on his face and said “Now that is F’ing cool!”, as he gave us a thumbs up as we drove away.

After about 45 minutes of tooling around town I dropped my hack monkey off at the house so I could get in some more practice at higher speeds. Here is one of my favorite pix of Jack right after the ride together… Just look at how happy this guy is!

I enjoyed my solo ride but not as much as the ride with Jack. I have to pick up a friend from the airport today but I’m hoping to get back out on the road with Jack later or if that doesn’t work out we will definitely be riding again together tomorrow. Until then I’ll leave you with a few more images of my Soviet Steed…