Why I like my bakfiets...

I like my bakfiets because it can hold all these groceries... plus the smiling toddler, plus Toddler's collection of sticks from the park, plus Toddler's blanket, plus the carseat base for the baby, plus an extra jacket, plus a bunch of little things (map, bike tools, Ironman figurine, scarf, etc., etc.), and I can still ride comfortably and smoothly along. Amazing!

Towing a bike

It's been a rough past few days for my kids. The four oldest all came down-- successively-- with a stomach bug. That means I've been driving sick kids around while bringing the healthy ones to school, etc. I like bikes, but in such times, I appreciate my car. 

Anyway, after several days off the bike I was itching to get back on. Daniella was too and was disappointed when this morning-- despite everyone finally being healthy-- I shepherded everyone into the car. I needed to get Joshua and Daniella to school and then get Gabriella back to "science camp"  (a special week-long nature camp that fifth-graders attend) after missing some of it because of being sick. The camp was 10 miles away, the last part very uphill and poor Gabriella didn't want to miss anymore than she already had.

If I'd been thinking, I would have dropped Daniella's bike off with her at school, so she would have it to ride home. But distracted by getting everyone ready to go to school and then the camp, I didn't. So this afternoon, I managed to rig a towing set-up. I removed the front wheel of Daniella's bike and the fork fit nicely through the rack on the bakfiets. I wrapped the parts of the fork touching the rack with a a few rags to keep them from getting too scratched up and used a bungee to secure the fork to the rack. The front wheel-- of course-- went into the bakfiets box. It worked well-- much better than just strapping the bike to the rack and then trying to remember you have a really wide load. On the way home, Daniella rode her bike, Joshua sat on the back rack, and the three littlest were in the box. It was a little stressful getting out the door (when is it never?) and riding there. Nat was fussy and I thought we'd be late (we weren't; my legs are getting strong!). The ride home was wonderful though. Nat slept and we made an impromptu stop in the park.

Here's the bike attached to the rack:

And here's another photo as we're getting ready to go. I put my new, cool Cleverchimp panniers (birthday present) back on after attaching Daniella's bike:

And that's all for today... Hooray for crazy bike contraptions!

Wiggling Along to the Library

This evening, my two girls and I rode two miles through the dark to the library. We rode on our Bike Friday Triple. After riding my bakfiets nearly every day, the triple felt both strange and uncomfortable. It was squeaky (needs a tune-up!) and it took a lot of arm strength to keep from wiggling all over the road (just the way it always handles, but I'd forgotten). To top it off, the shifting is opposite as on the bakfiets-- twisting toward you puts the bakfiets in a higher gear, but puts the Triple in a lower gear. And... I've gotten used to shifting after stopping (the bakfiets has hub gears), which you can't really do with the Triple's derailleur. On the bright side, the slight uphill on the way home was barely noticeable. The girls are strong enough to really get the bike moving and the Triple is probably about 5 trillion pounds lighter than the bakfiets. We've also figured out that lights attached to helmets (including headlamps meant for camping, etc.) are nice and visible! Tonight's ride just reminded me that there are tons of different bikes that do lots of different things ("duh", I just have to look in our garage), but that I do like my bakfiets best right now.

The girls and I had a nice time chatting on the ride. I don't get a lot of time alone with them. They were getting kind of silly toward the end and giving me a hard time for being a little uneasy on the bike and for asking them to not pedal so hard. "Don't you know that the national bike speed is FAST?", Daniella asked, which then turned into something about the "national size" being  FAT, which then eventually turned into a comment about "true Americans", who-- according to Joshua's definition from several days ago-- are people who "drive their SUVs, watch TV, and go to McDonald's". Oh, sigh. Not sure what to say or think about all the chatter.

We arrived home happy. The girls asked to have a piece of chocolate when we got back. Since they worked so hard laying off the pedals and telling me I was slow, I figured they deserved it  Ha. Anyway, here are my two silly girls-- all ruffle-haired-- eating chocolate:

And that's all... because photos of the dark aren't that interesting, and I didn't have a camera with me anyway :)

Biking News

Here's the biking-related news around here:

1) Yes, those were avocados that the little kids and I collected on a bike adventure last week and they were yummy!

2) Jeremy and I (and now the kids) have this crazy idea (daydream?) of biking from California to southeastern Idaho this summer for a family reunion. Thinking about hills, we found this really cool site that shows a graph of elevation change for any route you plot on googlemaps: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/

3) Also while thinking about hills, we decided it's finally time we put a drum brake on the triple. Even if we don't try to get to Idaho, there's enough hills here and there, that it'd be helpful. We waited too long on this, though. The Arai drum brake we need is no longer made. A local bike shop specializing in tandems has none and can't get any from Bike Friday or anywhere else. We did find one online... for $500! Is this really how much a drum brake should cost? Maybe we really don't need a drum brake after all (unless we really do go to Idaho...).

4) I had another little fall with bakfiets. It was from a standstill. I was on the side of the road fiddling with the saddle height and should have put the kickstand down before doing that. Jonah and Joseph were also leaning over the edge of the bakfiets putting stickers on the outside of the box. I just lost my grip on the handlebars. No one was hurt. Nathaniel stayed asleep through everything. Joseph was a little upset.

5) Jeremy and the girls have seen another bakfiets parked at their school some mornings. Jeremy finally met the owner, who hauls around his 1st grader and preschooler in it. That's a lot of weight!

Baby and Milk

Yesterday evening, Nathaniel and I went to the grocery store. We bought four gallons of milk. Don't they look cozy on the bakfiets bench (right by Nat cozy in his carseat)?

Not biking to school

Our oldest daughter had ear surgery. For 6 weeks after the surgery she is supposed to avoid physical activity. Since she is never one to "take it easy" biking, this means no biking to school. She vehemently turned down the option of riding the triple. The pride of watching her sister ride her own bike has too much for her to bear. Though I am not sure I would be comfortable with it either - she would find a way to over-exert herself.

We also offered her a ride in the bakfeits, but was a non-starter.

So, we are stuck driving the three and a half miles to school.

Well, its actually closer to three miles. We usually park a ways away from the school and walk the final stretch in. The kids constantly beg us to park further away, but there is the matter of actually leaving on time. (They have threatened to get up at 5:30am to walk to school, but sleep almost always beats out the convictions.)

On Friday, we parked a couple blocks from school. As we were walking in, we saw an SUV in the driveway. Two kids jumped in, and the SUV drove off - right to the school! At that distance, walking was faster than enduring the "drop-off" traffic at school, but I guess some people really like to drive. (To be fair, there are also plenty of people that leave further away that walk to school every day.)

The kids also joke about the large traffic jams they see near some neighborhood schools on the way: The kids are only allowed to drive if they leave early enough. If they are running late, they have to bike.

Luckily, most of the "recovery" period for our daughter's surgery will take place during the Christmas vacation, so its only two weeks of driving - and endless complaining about cars.

Looking for animals, we found avocados.

Jonah has been asking for several days to go "see animals". We've made a few trips over the past few weeks to Rancho San Antonio's Deer Hollow Farm and he thoroughly enjoyed watching/chasing the goats, chickens, etc. Today, I decided to go explore Blackberry Farm and the neighboring McClellan Ranch. I visited several months ago and remembered a nice walking/biking trail in the area that went by fenced-in farm animals.

It was a beautiful winter day-- in the 50s, sunny, barely a breeze. Here are my three youngest boys all ready to go. They have sand toys to play with at Blackberry Farm's playground:

The ride there was pleasant, but-- because of the mostly slight uphill-- quite slow. With three boys plus car seat, diaper bag, etc. and a 100 lb. bike, I figured out I'm probably pedaling around 200 or more pounds. Whoa! That doesn't make me feel so bad when nearly every biker I see passes me.

After riding around a little bit to find an entrance to the park (I was going by my not-perfect memory), we rode the little bike path by the farm. Looking closer I learned that it's actually part of a 4-H club and not open to the public, but we were able to kind of see a few goats and a donkey through the fence. Even that little glimpse of animals made Jonah happy. After the animal viewing, we went back to the playground where we settled in for a few hours of play and snacks. Nathaniel took a long nap in his car seat in the bakfiets. I moved around from picnic table to picnic table to stay in the little bit of sun the wooded area provided. While enjoying the calm and quiet of one kid sleeping and two happily playing, I kept noticing something falling from a huge tree behind me. I poked around the ground to investigate. I'm 99% sure they were avocados falling from an avacado tree. Here's the tree:

And the fruit:

I stashed some in the bike pannier and will let it ripen on the counter and-- maybe with another opinion confirming what it really is-- eat it! I noticed a couple of older women grabbing a few fruits as they walked by too. I didn't get a chance to ask them if the fruit really was avocados since I'd moved to the other side of the playground by then; bummer! The thought of finding free, yummy fruit is wonderful-- like a little secret that few others care or know about. While living in Chicago, we ate juneberries from the park across the street and mulberries from another park. I looked forward to doing that each summer, but-- considering that the berries were never totally picked-- most of the rest of the city apparently didn't.

After a while at the playground, we tootled around on a bridge over a creek-- dropping leaves into the water, playing with sticks, etc. We then headed over to the sunny sand-volleyball courts and Jonah and Joseph put their sand toys to good use while I nursed Jonah and took care of his leaked-everywhere very poopy mess.

I really needed a peaceful, outdoorsy morning like today. I was only sad that the rest of my family-- at school and work-- weren't there to enjoy it too. I especially thought of Gabriella. She had ear surgery last week and must not run or jump for five weeks in order for everything to heal (biking should be okay-- soon). I am extremely grateful for the good surgeon and modern medicine that have prevented what would have eventually caused total hearing loss and possibly neurological problems, but it just breaks my heart that something so pleasant as freely running about in the wild (or as close to that as you can get a few miles from home!) has to be temporarily restricted.

Our return trip was mostly uneventful-- a little fighting between the big boys and a sand toy (old yogurt container) dropped in traffic that I refused to try to retrieve, but a wonderful downhill on the home-side of the pedestrian bridge over the freeway.

And, as a finale, here's a few more photos from our morning:

Lots of sticks to play with.

This was actually pretty tricky to climb up on. Joey is proud of himself.

Very fast slide!

Sandbox fun.

Joey saved the chocolate pieces from his trail mix, and proceeded to make little designs with them. Here you also see the wonderful marker tattoo he adorned himself with this morning.

The boys spent a while looking at/dropping things in the creek. This evening, Jonah asked "see water?" (meaning,  "I want to see water".) It may be his new request, replacing the daily  "see animals"?