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"?

Bike Lights

Lately, we've been riding a lot in the dark-- just because it's winter and the sun sets earlier and we're often still out and about. I've never been too concerned about doing that. All you need are lights and to be a little more attentive to whether drivers have seen you at intersections, driveways, etc. The past week or so though, night-riding has been a pain. We have two bikes with front and rear dynamos-- the Breezer bike and the bakfiets--  and one bike with a front dynamo-- the Japanese bike. Lighting for these bikes is easy and requires no forethought. The rest of the bikes (and the back of the Japanese bike) depend on battery-powered lights and we've had all kinds of little problems-- lights that have fallen off while riding, lights with dead batteries (kids mess with these and they'll get left on in the garage), lights that are poorly attached to handlebars, and lights that get moved around from bike to bike and aren't where you expect them to be. Yesterday afternoon, before leaving on a trip to Rancho San Antonio with my girls, we spent a good fifteen minutes making sure the girls were outfitted with working lights (and that they weren't stealing lights that Jeremy would need when he'd meet us later that afternoon!). I thought everything was great when the girls each had a front light attached to their handlebars and a red blinkie attached to the backs of their helmets (something I saw on a cyclist while driving-- more visible than a light attached low on a kid's bike, I think). After our final stops of the day (or by then, night) at Trader Joe's and a bike shop, however, Daniella had somehow managed to lose part (the part holding batteries!) of her back light/ helmet light. Jeremy and Gabriella were ahead of me and Daniella, so I just had Daniella ride in front of me, since I figured cars would see the back light on my bakfiets. For some reason, being in front made Daniella uncomfortable and I had to coax her toward home. In retrospect, I guess we could have just bought yet another light at the bike store (duh!), but Nathaniel was close to getting fussy, and we were close to home anyway, and I don't think I really would have wanted to shell out more money for another light we'd probably break or lose. Nothing dreadful happened on the way home. No car hit us or came close to us. No cop stopped us for Daniella's lacking light (and no rear reflector either). There's no real point to this post, except to express my opinion that seemingly small convenient things like dynamo lights make a huge positive difference when herding a posse around on bikes. And at the rate we go through lights and batteries, they're probably a lot more cost effective too! Does anyone else have reflections on riding at night? How do you keep you and your kids all lit up? Any recommendations for good after-market dynamo systems?

More Psycho Donuts

Today, our ten year old had a doctor's appointment. It was only a dozen miles away, so of course she wanted to bike - on her own bike. Alas, I had the water bottles set up on the triple, so we were "water free". Luckily, urban routes tend to have a large amount of water sources (parks). We set out early, with a large packet of x-ray films in the pannier.

The doctor happened to be in the same direction as Psycho Donuts, so of course we had to make a stop. (We picked up a "crazy eights" reward card on our maiden voyage Saturday, so we just had to get an extra punch.) Since we were there earlier, the donut selection was better and we were able to both get "Canadian Morning Squeal Meal" donuts aka "bacon donuts". (Yes that was real bacon on top!)

Based on our experience Saturday, we avoided the "Prospect-Campbell" route that maps (and google bike directions) recommended, and instead went down Cox and Bucknall as our primary East-West route. It was a much more pleasant ride. We avoided the large retail intersections, and had plenty of quiet roads, with easy lights crossing the major streets. This also had the bike overpass over San Tomas expressway, eliminating one of the major road crossings altogether. When retracing the route, I had to work hard to convince Google maps that we really wanted to keep going on that street. (It tried to have us return to Campbell every chance it could.) Campbell does have a bike lane, but it is narrow. It is also filled with retail intersections and traffic lights. Bucknall is a quiet, low-traffic tree-lined street (that looks especially colorful this time of year). Alas, these details are not self evident from the maps.

From the donut shop, we went down the Los Gatos Creek trail. She said the trail was "boring" and she preferred to take the road on the way back. So, after a very long doctors visit, we headed back on the road. First, we took the "secret bike bridge" over Highway 85. The neighborhood was filled with "too-big houses", including some that we thought looked like mini-castles. We had to check them out.

View Larger Map

We stopped briefly at a park in the neighborhood. While there, I noticed my tire was a little flat. Alas, I couldn't seem to get my cheepo pump to get any air in. Oh well. We continued on our way, going a while down Bascom, one of those "wonderful" 6 lane roads that are symptomatic of contemporary suburbia. She much preferred this to the trail. (The road itself was not all that bad today.)

From there, we passed by Tread Bike Shop. They were kind enough to let us borrow their pump to fill the tire. (This worked much better than the cheapo!) We asked about a "touring" style bike for our daughter. Alas, there doesn't seem to be much available. They did mention that a couple came through a few days back. The were on their way from "Alaska or someplace" down to South America. They were looking for Schwable tires, but alas, none were in stock. We also passed by State Bicycle Shop, a fixed-gear bike specialist. Not quite our style.

And we were soon back at Psycho Donuts. We got the donuts for the rest of the family and tried some noses and eyeballs (custard filled donuts holes.) We also had a chat with the founders. He was a tech guy who just decided that donut shops need some invigorating. They are also considering expansion. Perhaps they can have one close to us. (As an aside, I first heard about this donut shop when I saw a Groupon offer. I didn't buy the offer, but we have now ended up there a few times. I wonder how often this "free" publicity helps lure in customers?)

We continued on home via a similar route, though this time we decided to try to go through a neighborhood near Saratoga Creek. Alas, there was a big hole in the bike map right in that area. However, it just "felt" like an area that may have a "secret bikeway" nearby. We eventually found a "back entrance" to Prospect High School. This took us around the edge of the school and out to Prospect, bypassing Lawrence and the retail area (yeah!). Perhaps it was a good thing we didn't have a map, because this was not listed on the map. Google also doesn't have it listed, though from street view you can make out the entrance.


View Larger Map

On the trip we passed schools in a number of different school districts. Almost all had the whole week off. (The exception was Fremont Union, which actually had school today!) We happened to pass by her school right as the morning bell rang. (A day off school, and we end up on the same schedule. Go figure.) On the way back, we were at the school right at early dismissal time. So, I guess it was like a school day. We saw her teacher busy typing away on the computer in the classroom. So much for a day off!)

We made a final stop at Trader Joe's to get some things to make smoothies. (We had only one pannier, and plenty of other stuff, so we couldn't get much.) It was packed with the pre-Thanksgiving Day crowds. There were also free samples of pies in front, in addition to the samples in the back. Yum! The parking lot was also a zoo. Luckily, we could sneak out a side ways on our bikes.

Later when we got back, my wife went off on a grocery store run with the Bakfiets. With the parking lot zoo, it probably ended up being much faster than driving. Go figure.

The 30 mile bike ride we did was not quite enough for our daughter. Later that evening the three big kids all wanted to bike to the library. It was chilly and dark, so I was inclined to stay home or drive, but they were insistent. (They absolutely detest cars!) So we went on the triple (with plenty of lights) and the Japanese Bike (with the generator.) Alas, my wife had adjusted it for her trip yesterday, and had accidentally made the seat too low for her. I'm 5 inches taller, so I was nearly kneeing my chest as we were going - and the adjustment tool was in the other bike. Going there was not too bad (downhill, with the wind.) The return trip? Well, it felt like pulling a trailer while kids were pedaling backwards. It is amazing what a workout you can get with a poorly positioned seat!

10 miles to donuts

Last Saturday, I was itching to go out on a family bike adventure. I had in mind a hiking area about 5 miles away up in some hills. The rest of the family was interested in the bike riding part, but not so much the destination. Jeremy suggested a visit to Psycho Donuts instead. Despite the seemingly tons of candy and junk food we've been eating lately, I acquiesced. The kids were pretty excited and got dressed and ready pretty quickly. Gabriella even French-braided Daniella's hair:

I had no idea she could do this and it came out pretty well- -much better than I can do.

As is the case with bike adventures, we saw and stopped at lots of interesting things along the way. We saw/did:

1) Picked up Jeremy's new glasses (with transition lenses that turn dark in the sun). Here is Jonah happily waiting (holding a fan Daniella decorated last summer):

2) While stopped at an intersection, we saw a guy spray-painting fluorescent orange markings on the street. The little kids really liked this. (Sorry, no photo.)

3) About a mile from the donut shop, the girls insisted we stop at "Dolphin Pet Village". The girls have a thing for dolphins. There were, of course, no dolphins in the store (the girls, I think, understood this going in), but there were tons of fish and a few parrots.

4) Our third stop was the original destination of Psycho Donuts (about 10 miles from home). This was a totally weird (and a little pricey) store, but fun and yummy. Donuts had names like "headbanger" and "cereal killer" with all kinds of strange toppings/ fillings (like cereal). The lady behind the counter was dressed up in a 1950s era nurse outfit. When we walked up to the counter, she handed each of the kids a little chunk of bubble wrap to play with (very cool). There was also a little "insane asylum" area with a pile of dress-up clothes and all kinds of other wonky "psycho" kitsch.

The kids liked this sign.

5) After stuffing ourselves with donuts for lunch (it was about noon when we finally made it to the store), we spotted another bakfiets way down the road. A traffic light momentarily stopped us, but as soon as it turned green, Jeremy insisted we go "chase the bakfiets". We couldn't catch up and Nathaniel wanted to be held, so I stopped on a quiet street in a beautiful neighborhood full of fall colors while Jeremy and his two stokers (Joey and Joshua) and the girls on their own bikes went around a few blocks to see if they could find the bike. They couldn't, but had a nice look around anyway.

6)With the bakfiets chase over and a still fussy Nathaniel, we stopped at yet another park we've never been to before.

Leaving the park via a pedestrian overpass (over an expressway). 

7) And then we stopped at REI. At this point, the kids were a little cranky, but we really wanted to get a few things for Daniella's bike. We decided to just get the repairs done there while we waited.

Joseph watching kids on the climbing wall while we ate a snack in front of the store.

8) Since we never had a proper lunch, we stopped at Trader Joe's for real (as in, not donuts) food.

Big kids in front of Trader Joe's.

9) We brought the food and picnicked at a park we've been to several times.

Rainbow Park. It was getting chilly!

10) And, at dusk, we rode peacefully home-- enjoying the gentle downhill.

It was a wonderful outing. It wasn't about just getting donuts, but about the stops and sights on the way there and back. I'm wanting to go on more adventures. I'm still eager to try out some real hills with bakfiets and to see how I do!