A few weeks back my son and I decided to go for a walk on the Stone Arch Bridge after we dropped my daughter off at her guitar lesson. I remember it was a blustery afternoon and even though the sun was shining, the wind stung our cheeks and more than once it threatened to blow my fedora straight into the river.

It wasn’t so much a walk as it was a desperate scurry to make it across the Stone Arch Bridge before we were sucked up into the air like Mary Poppins.

My son was chilly…his little arms pebbled with what we call Chilly Bumps. (Later we can discuss what you called them growing up and I can put you in the Goose Pimple column or the Goose Bump column and then move on.) It was then that a man approached us.

“Sooo, I have a weird question for you,” says the man with the camera.

“Lay it on me,” I said while pulling my own hair from my own mouth while the wind twirled it around.

“Do you have a bike?”

“Like a motorcycle? My husband does.”

“No, a bicycle. Do you bike around here?”

“I do have a bicycle. And I do bike around here but I must tell you…I will be worthless to you if you’re asking for directions,” I said while my human was actually trying to crawl into my mouth to get out of the wind (so you can imagine how awkward this little bridge conversation was for everyone involved including the passersby).

“Great!” he said, “because I am looking for a bike model and I  just noticed you have this funky style and your kind of hipster style is just what we’re looking for.”

(Here is where I resisted telling him I am a model.)

He continued despite the fact that I was halfway through swallowing my youngest child right in front of him.

“I’m working on a big, cool bike campaign for Minneapolis to showcase all the many ways we’re making it easy and safe to bike in the city. And we want to show that you don’t have to wear Tour de France gear to bike here.”

This immediately reminded me of my husband’s favorite summer saying: Spandex is a privilege, not a right. (You will never not think of this the next time you see Spandex on someone.)

In looking back on this exchange I was kind of in my most fashionably hipster mode:

Skinny jeans with red suede pointy-toed, knee-high boots + a steam punk cardigan and gargoyalesque tank + a cream velveteen fedora. I was a dead ringer for Urban Hipstress. Plus I was tooling around with my human who happened to be wearing skin-tight pajamas with basking sharks and hammerheads swimming all over them + red galoshes + chocolate brown eyes + long blond hair.

I was like, “Oh totally, I’m in except I don’t have like a super amazing new bike. I have a super amazing vintage Schwinn with three gears. And can we walk because my son is trying to curl up in the cavity of my torso for warmth.”

At the words “vintage Schwinn” I think I saw a tear roll down my new friend’s cheek like he’d won the lottery. Okay, okay, maybe not like he won the lottery but something big, like he won a pizza. ANYway, we exchanged contact info and then I ran back to my car with Harold and blasted us with heat.

Two days later my daughter, Gloria, and I are biking down Park Avenue on a cold, sunny Saturday to meet the photographer at the Stone Arch Bridge for our photo shoot. Fun! Did I bring a change of clothes? I sure did…and Gloria reminded our photog numerous times that I’m always lugging clothes around to our shoots. But, seriously, it is hard to explain that certain undergarments only look good under certain kinds of materials or that accessories matter (especially for someone like me who does not have her ears pierced. My cache of clip-on earrings have saved me numerous times from having naked lobes on set). So I packed our bike trailer with a suitcase and 5 changes of clothes.

It was a blast! Crazy cold, but sunny. There was no hair and makup crew on the set but Gloria and I are well-versed in behind-the-scenes crew work so we came prepared. The only thing we didn’t have was someone from wardrobe to pick outfits, but we came up with good recommendations for our photog. We changed in the back of his SUV and pedestrians nearby were none the wiser.

Here are some of the photos from the shoot.

We started off just walking and talking:

It was cold in the shade, but we tried not to show it…

I did a little helmet adjusting between takes:

We biked down a hill as slowly as possible (we did this about 15 times):

My scarf turned into a blanket:

Outfit changes!

How slow can you bike?

Gold Medal Flour!

It was a nice pre-Easter egg dyeing adventure on a Saturday morning. Modeling is fun especially when I get to do it with my favorite girl. Minneapolis is a super great city. What can I say?