Dad Bikes

On Saturday we made a valiant attempt to go on Kidical Massive, the Kidical Mass that was coordinated with others around the country. If you are not familiar with Kidical Mass it is an organized ride for families with kids. The idea is to get a big group of kids and parents together and go on a ride through a neighborhood. Some places (like Portland, OR) even get more adventurous and go on bike camping trips. You can read more about it here: http://www.kidicalmass.org/.

Our plans for the morning were foiled by nap time – R napped right up until Kidical Massive was scheduled to start and we couldn’t catch up with the group at that point. We still went on a ride through the Ballard Summer Parkways route and met some great family bikers at the parks, which was really nice. During the ride we ended up hanging out at Ballard Commons Park at the Sustainable Ballard festival for a couple of hours, had lunch there, and headed home around nap time.

This was the first time I’d seen a Kidical Mass in Seattle and I was bummed to have missed it. Nap time is more important though so I think we made the right choice. R was much happier all day with a good morning nap than she would have been had we woken her up to make it to the ride on time.

It’s been great starting to connect with other family bikers here in Seattle. There is a very active Facebook group that both Lurline and I have joined. It’s an active online community where I hear about events, can ask for advice, and can see what other families are doing. I really enjoy being a part of it. It’s also started to give me a sense of community I haven’t really had since grad school.
I’d like to transition some of that online community into real life community. I think it will happen gradually as I keep riding around town and meet other folks on the road. Every family biker I’ve met has been really friendly and willing to chat about their experiences and what works for them. It’s given me some great tips and a lot of inspiration.

I’ve actually found that Seattle in general has become a friendlier place since starting to bike with R. Whether it’s the interesting bike, the bike seat, or just the sight of a baby on a bike I get a ton more smiles than I have at any point in my six years here. People on the street will say things like, “what a cute baby”, “look at that baby on the bike!”, or similar things. They will ask me in the street about my Yepp Mini because they are thinking of carrying their kid on their bike. I met an older gentleman who was really interested in the StokeMonkey so we chatted about it for a while. He kind of reminded me of my grandpa with his enthusiasm over an interesting piece of equipment (for example my grandpa was super into our Volt when we visited last year, and I’m sure if he saw my bike we could chat for quite a while). It’s been really refreshing to get so many smiles and have so many random conversations.

R playing in the grass at Summer Parkways

John just emailed me the family photos he took for us on our Labor Day ride to Seward Park. Here they are! I think they are great. 
 

Riding home from Seward Park on the Burke-Gilman trail

On the way home from Seward Park on the Burke-Gilman trail

Yesterday was the Disaster Relief Trials. The ride was probably the most challenging bike ride I’ve ever done. Not the longest, but the terrain was the most varied and it took the most energy out of me of any ride I’ve done. I learned a lot about my bike setup and my current limits – very valuable information.

The fam at the first stop we made on the course.

We left the house around 10:00 AM, later than we hoped since the ride started at 11:00. Unfortunately, we hit traffic for the University of Washington Huskies football game. This made us even later. Luckily the ride hadn’t started yet. They were still having speakers from the local community. We had missed most of them, but the man we did hear had some great things to say about building community and encouraging random connections between people – simple smiles between neighbors, even conversations with strangers. He was talking about things I’ve wished for Seattle since I moved here in 2009.

The ride ended up starting at about 11:15, which gave me time to get registered and sign the release form before starting. I got my number – 311 – and managed to get it on my bike by clipping my panniers through it.

Lurline joined R and me for the ride in the “Citizen” class (the class for people who just wanted to ride between checkpoints and do the workshops without carrying anything). It was pretty special doing another big ride as a family in the same week as our first one.

I had originally signed up for the “Resilient” class, which involved doing the entire course with a moderate amount of cargo. That was before R could fit her helmet, and once she could I decided to switch to the Family version. It did also include cargo – two half gallon bottles of water.

So, off we went at 11:15. We had decided not to do the full course, since Family class was only required to do 10 miles and 3 checkpoints. We didn’t want to wear R out too much and I still wasn’t sure I was up for 30 miles of hilly terrain plus the ride to and from home. In the end it turned out to be a good choice. The battery on my e-assist was quite close to empty by the time we got home, and we had a climb over Capitol Hill, plus the climb up to our house at the end. If I’d been out of battery it would have been difficult, since I’m not sure I’m in good enough shape yet to do that last hill unaided.

The race itself was quite fun. There were a couple frustrating points that were less fun, but my own fault. We had some difficulty finding the checkpoints because the map provided by the organizers was quite small and we were having to go back and forth between it and the Seattle Bicycling Map. When they hold the next DRT I’ll prepare my maps in more detail ahead of time, either marking intersections and highlighting routes on the big map or printing out zoomed in sections of maps that are marked with the locations.

Each stop had a ham radio operator radioing in riders’ numbers as they arrived at the checkpoints. I chatted with one at one stop because I plan to get my ham license later this fall. That was kind of fun.

R was a total trooper. She squealed, yelled, blew raspberries, and, thankfully, napped on the bike. We got a lot of compliments on her and chatted for awhile with a man named Sai who wanted to start carrying his son on his bike. His story was great – his son likes to just jump up on Sai’s bike and say “ride, ride!” One of the things I love about this family biking thing is those random conversations with people that happen so often. I even had a woman chat with me while we were waiting at a stop light!

R napping while we eat our lunch in the background.

In all, between the bike ride to and from the start and the trials themselves we rode for 7.5 hours and approximately 30 miles (I say approximately because I forgot to reset my trip meter until about 1.5-2 miles into the ride). A lot of hills, including one block I couldn’t quite ride up and ended up walking, although pushing the loaded bike uphill was challenging itself. I have a really good idea of the hills I can climb and the ones I need to walk. I know better how long my battery lasts – it looks like I spent roughly half the ride on battery based on my computer readout. I’ll definitely do this again the next time it happens, maybe even doing the competitive version.

I also want to give a big thank you to G&O Family Cyclery for going above and beyond with a last minute repair to my bike. It had a breakdown the day before the trials and Tyler fixed it for me. It was last minute and I was worried he wouldn’t be able to fit it in, but he could! What a rockstar! Thank you!

Here’s my bike with my number attached, R hanging out in the front.

R on the bike ready to ride.

Family Portrait at stop number 2