My friend Kelly and I were talking one day about a bike ride dinner that Britton and I had done a few years ago with our friends Melissa and Alan. It was a progressive dinner where at each stop there was a different course of the meal, then you would bike to the next one. She loved the idea and said we should do our own which I completely agreed! So we set about putting it together.

With a progressive dinner you can have between 3-7 stops. For the most basic three stops there would be Appetizers, Main Course, and Dessert. We had four stops so we also had a salad course. To add more stops, you could do Drinks, Appetizers, Salad, Soup, Main Entree, Dessert, Coffee/Chocolate/Cheese. Each stop is meant to be a “tapas” size stop except the main course which should be fairly filling.

Frozen chocolate banana appetizer

Our house was the first stop at 4pm where we served appetizers and drinks. We had frozen half bananas with hazelnut chocolate and slivered almonds, deviled eggs from our chickens and some chips and nuts. We also served kombucha tea from Celestial Seasonings because we thought our guests would get a kick out of it as we did. Everyone arrived and enjoyed this snack and then we saddled up on our bikes. I think there 11 or 12 of us who ranged in age from 12-50 years old!

Leaving to our next stop

Then we rode about 3 miles to our friends Matt and Jamie’s house where they served the salad course which was a nice pasta salad with veggies from their garden and a homemade tuna salad. They just got a couple chickens in their huge backyard so it was fun to check out their set up as well.

Next was probably both the most fun and also the hardest leg of the bike trip to Kelly’s house about 5.5 miles away. There was a lot of up and down hills and one very fast downhill part. At Kelly’s we had the main course of homemade pulled pork sandwiches and drinks and played with her adorable new puppy.

The whole group with all our bikes

Finally we rode to Gina’s house (about 4 miles) for a dessert of fruit and brownie kabobs which were excellent! Afterward, Matt and Jamie rode (treacherously uphill) back to our house under the full moon where we hung out and listened to music and sat outside for a while. It was a great day and a nice way to take all of our minds off of the usual. We all agreed that we should do this more often. It was sort of like having four parties in one with a quarter of the work of one large house party. Plus we had people ride along just for the fun of it without having to be a stop. It was great night plus awesome exercise. I am definitely feeling it in my quads!