At long last I took my bike out to Chebeague Island, one of the few Casco Bay islands I had not yet explored either by bike or boat. I thought I'd share some photos from this recent bicycling trip around the lovely island. Also, there's something I didn't mention in my Sunday (Aug. 5) column.

So, since this is a blog, I get to offer my totally biased opinion about things, right? I got a press release about this Smart Cycle Physical Learning Arcade System by Fisher-Price. I can't quite put my finger on it, but something about this just seemed very very strange to me. The press release was from a hotel chain, which is now putting these kiddie exercycle arcade games in their hotels. Thoughts?

The Women's Ride for Heart Health was great fun and seemed to be a whopping success. There were well over 200 women -- of all ages and levels -- in Freeport despite gray skies and a slight drizzle. I rode with eight-year-old twins Brooke and Emily Papineau along the 5-mile route and they said they had fun on their first ever group charity ride.

I recently gave a talk and slide show about family-friendly bike rides in Maine and the rest of New England, as part of the L.L.Bean Bike Into Spring weekend. A Portland dad with two kids asked me a question that I was hard pressed to answer. He wondered if there are any family bike clubs, or bike clubs that organize family rides. I was stumped, and so were the other bike enthusiasts there.

Are there any clubs that organize family rides on a regular basis? If not, why not? If you bike with kids, would you like doing a group ride? I've heard rumors that a few organizations have started to talk about organizing family bike events and I'll be looking into this more, possibly for an upcoming column. Personally, I love the idea. Maybe it's once a month at a different place each time. Your kids get to meet other kids who like to ride, you get to swap stories and tips about places to ride, and, in my ideal ride, there's ice cream at the end.