The arrival of Spring Break for the Lyre School district was enough for many in Lyre and Animalia to enjoy a week off from school. It gave the Animalia Ambassadoria team the freedom for a week at Mieni Atoll to report on the developments there and to demonstrate everything beneficial Horizon Labs was doing to make the Animalia Virus into something more than just a virus and something that would benefit everyone, Humans and Animalians alike, which from what Clara had been told by Lyre's Mayor and in emails from some various state leaders that had been opposed to the recently elected President that if they could demonstrate success on Horizon's part and that it was working to benefit Humanity and not simply propagate something that could potentially destroy Humanity would under cut much of the President's plans or at least proposed plans to either remove or control Animalia.
Clara did agree with that decision and continued to have a great deal of private praise for Animalia's ambassadors. Now, there was some concern about them leaving the "safety" of Animalia on the part of parents, but Josephine Brown, Jessica's father, Sophie's mother, and Roland's father allowed for it, so long as they went as chaperones. Clara agreed to that, so long as they didn't interfere in the broadcasts while they were on Mieni. The chaperones ultimately agreed on that and that gave Clara some confidence as Lyre's Spring Break started and Clare was left to continue to work with day to day business, even while she also juggled her work with her pregnancy and her swelling womb with her four children inside it.
Her thoughts were interrupted when there was a knock on her door.
"Come in," Clara called as she looked up from her desk and some of the paperwork she had to work with to see a lone man in brown khakis and a black shirt with the word "Huffy" stitched in white into the shirt fabric above his chest pocket. He looked a bit nervous, but more that he was lost than anything else.
"Is this the right office?" he asked nervously and looked down to a clipboard he had in his hands, "I've been looking for a "Clara the Mountain Lion" with a deliver that Animalia requested for the IAC."
Clara smiled and looked to him with great interest. The IAC was something they'd hoped to be another event to show Animalia as something good. Humans liked competition and a sort of Olympic like event would give Animalia something to sell as something Humans could enjoy. It would also give Animalians of all kinds the opportunity to fully compete, which was something Clara had noticed was big among many of the predators and a fair number of the male "prey" species. The biggest hurdle the IAC had at the present time was that certain events required specialized equipment, particularly for the larger athletes. Sports like the Triathlon had created an issue that the large and well muscled bodies that Durga as an uplifted tigress and Abby as a human turned into an adult mare Animalian were enough that the bike rims made for humans wouldn't support their weight. The tires would rupture and the rims would bend and break as well. To top it off, their long legs were enough to make peddling on regular bikes to be near impossible as well. To get around this, Clara and Robbie and put out some requests to various bike companies for specially made bikes for the IAC that would suit the larger Animalians.
She got an answer from the Huffy company, with the promise to being making bikes special for Animalians of various kinds ranging from mountain bikes, to standard racing bikes, to the sort of trick bikes that X-Games fans liked. The first bikes to be delivered were the ones that were supposed to be working with the Triathlon so that those participants could train in all three parts of their event. The fact that the word "Huffy" was stitched into his shirt, that gave Clara enough hope that the first bikes had arrived.
"Yes, I'm Clara," Clara spoke as she stood up, "but I've recently gotten married... and obviously pregnant."
She then identified that she had taken on Richard's surname as her married name, but assured the delivery man that she was the same Clara that had contacted them when they got into the first orders for material for the IAC. As she explained, she watched the man give a huge sigh of relief.
"That's okay," the man spoke, "Just so long as I'm at the right office."
"I trust the first bikes we ordered for the IAC have arrived?" Clara asked curiously as she made her way around the desk and walked toward him.
"Yes," the man nodded quickly, "I have the first shipment in the back of my truck, with one even out of its box for you inspection."
Clara nodded and began to follow him. He walked back the way he came and ultimately lead her out the front parking lot and lead Clara to a truck that was about the size of a standard U-Haul truck. He fiddled with a latch and let the folding door slide up and into the roof of the truck. It revealed one bicycle that Clara could see held by various elastic cords, and as the sort of demo bike that the man had mentioned, she got a good idea on how it would work. The delivery man managed to get it down with no real problem, though Clara did hear him grunt a bit as he lowered it.
"If you're having trouble, I'm sure I could find someone to help you with the unloading," Clara offered to the man before taking a closer look at the bike.
"That would be fine," the man answered, "my truck as a ramp and I got a two whee hand truck up in the cab with me... if your workers have something similar, we should be able to move through this delivery quickly."
The man then looked to see the pregnant Cougar Animalian looking over the bike and inspecting it.
"Getting the design wasn't too hard," the man explained, "we've enlarged the rims and the wheels as a whole to improve the bike's ability to hold the added muscle mass some Animalians bring that overly strain a normal bicycle, not to mention improving its height to give them an easier time peddling. The big thing that is ultimately different is the tires. They are solid rubber, and could potentially wear down over time and will thus need replacement, but we also found that given the rim's constraints we can't swap an old bike tire for a car or even a lawnmower tire... and increasing the thickness on the inner part of the tire would limit its ability to inflate and could thus pose some of the same risks. We figured a solid rubber tire would be more sturdy and would save you on maintenance as you won't have to check for air pressure on the tires."
Clara nodded gave the bike a close once over. It was much taller than the bikes she'd seen normal humans using with thicker tires and material being thicker to improve the bike's stability and ability to withstand greater weight than what a normal bike could hold. She looked to the pedals, which she noticed were much bigger than what she expected.
"Will the peddles support our digitigrade feet?" Clara asked as she inspected.
"We think it will," the man said slowly, "They're large enough that those with pawed feet should have full support and we've included something a lip on each peddle's edge to help prevent those with hooved feet from sliding off. However, because Animalia is so new, I'm afraid our engineers aren't completely certain how well the peddles will work, as we haven't had to many orders for bicycles built for those with digitigrade feet before Animalia. You may have to test them and let us at Huffy know. If they work, we'll write that off as a success. If not, we'll know precisely what to fix."
With this Clara smiled. Summer and the IAC wasn't too drastically far off, but so far, things were looking pretty good in terms of preparing for it.