Dad Bikes

I touched on this in an earlier post: next weekend I am participating in the inaugural Seattle Disaster Relief Trials. The DRT, while partially a cargo bike race, is primarily an event to increase disaster preparedness in the city. There is a route through several neighborhoods in South Seattle with six way stations along the way. The way stations are meant to simulate community hubs – a place to distribute supplies and share emergency information via volunteer ham radio operators. 

The race version of the event is meant to simulate a disaster situation as much as possible. The course includes obstacles, and the racers are required to carry and distribute up to 100 pounds of cargo. There are five classes of participants:

1. Responder—30 miles, 100 lbs of cargo, all checkpoints/no workshops, race
2. E-assist—same as Responder, but with an e-assist on their bike, race
3. Resilient—30 miles, up to 20 lbs of cargo (water and food for volunteers), all checkpoints/all workshops, not a race
4. Family—10-30 miles, up to 20 lbs of cargo plus at least one child, minimum 3 checkpoints/workshops, not a race
5. Citizen—free, no cargo or checkpoint requirement; enjoy as many workshops as they want, not a race

Initially I signed up for the Resilient class. At the time I registered R was not large enough for her helmet and we didn’t have a bike seat for her yet. I wanted the challenge of participating, especially since disaster preparedness has been on my mind lately. Then, a couple weeks later, R had grown enough to fit her helmet. I’d put on the bike seat and she started riding. I really liked the idea of having her participate in this, so I changed my registration to family. While I may not make it for all 30 miles of the course, especially with a 16 mile round trip to the event, I am certainly looking forward to whatever I can handle.

Next year, when the event happens again, I hope to be in shape enough to do the full, competitive race. I’d love to enter the e-assist class and compete. This year, though, we’re making it a family ride and Lurline is bringing her Soma to keep us company. I’m really looking forward to it.

Past years we’ve spent Labor Day Weekend listening to amazing music at the local major music festival, Bumbershoot. I’ve found two of my current favorite bands going there the last two years. Why didn’t we go this year? Well, not because of the baby. I have to admit it was my own fault. I kept forgetting to buy the tickets, and then Labor Day was upon us. No new bands for us this year I guess. 

Missing Bumbershoot does not mean the weekend was a loss by any means. We fit in plenty of fun together, including getting together with some friends from the new parents group we participated in last winter and having some fun playing one of our favorite card games one evening. The highlight of the weekend, though, was our first big fun ride as a family. 

I’d been working on planning this ride for about two weeks. Part of the impetus is that I’m participating in a big event next week that involves up to 30 miles on my cargo bike, plus 16 round trip to and from the start (more on that later). I knew I wanted to get in at least one major ride before that, since I’ve hardly been on my bike since last August prior to these last three weeks. Added to that, the rainy season is headed our way and my wife’s work picks up big time on Wednesday. This was some pretty good encouragement to make sure we got out this weekend. 

We’ve always liked going on rides with our friends John and Rachel, so naturally I coordinated with them. The thought at first was to do the approximately 45 mile route to and from Red Hook, one of the major breweries in the area. I started thinking about that, and really evaluating how I was feeling while riding, and frankly I wimped out a little. Plus, it’s Labor Day so every third person in Seattle will be doing that ride. It would be so busy we’d never get seated to have a beer. And if you can’t have a beer on a ride to a brewery, what’s the point?

So, instead of Red Hook I suggested Seward Park. It’s just over half the mileage of Red Hook, and the ride is, honestly, prettier. So, I may have wimped out a little, but it was still a significant ride for me. This marks only the third or fourth time I’ve biked over 20 miles in one day in my life, so I was prepared for a challenge. 

The ride was as beautiful as I remembered. A significant portion follows the edge of Lake Washington and most of the rest goes through a lovely residential neighborhood. Lots of good scenery to appreciate. The park itself is wonderful, with sweeping views of the lake and abundant trees. 

We left the house right at nap time, Hoping R would sleep on the bike as she did last week on our errands. She did. Unfortunately, after only ten or fifteen minutes we noticed that her helmet was slipping badly. Not wanting to leave her in a dangerous situation we bit the bullet and stopped to adjust it. She was not happy when we woke her up and proceeded to scream the entire time we were adjusting the helmet. However, her helmet now stays firmly in the right place, essential for everyday biking on the street. 

R was awake for the rest of the ride to the park, but in much better spirits than when we woke her up. She laughed, babbled, and squealed most of the way. Once there we sat and ate a leisurely lunch, enjoying the view and chatting about life.  We hadn’t seen John and Rachel in awhile, so it was really great catching up with them. 

The ride back,felt faster than the ride there, as is often the case for me on outings. I’ve never understood that quirk of travel for me, but it happens when hiking and horseback riding as well. I don’t complain, since I’m usually getting worn out by the end, so having it feel shorter is quite welcome. This time R fell asleep and we didn’t have to wake her. She dozed for probably thirty minutes. Not enough to be a proper nap, but enough we were less concerned about bedtime getting disrupted. 

Just before John and Rachel split off from us to head home John was so kind as to snap some pictures. These are our first, but not last, real family biking photos. I’ll definitely cherish them. 

In total we rode 28 miles, had one diaper change and one meal for R, and had a ton of fun. I hope we can make this into a regular part of our life, even once the rain starts in earnest. 

When we got our bike back from the shop we were excited to start biking with the little one, but unfortunately she wasn’t quite big enough for her helmet. So, in preparation, I started biking on the cargo bike to get used to how it handles before carrying such precious cargo. I spent about 10 days biking to and from Aikido practice, down to the coffee shop to write and study for my ham radio license, and on short rides around the neighborhood. This practice both felt great because it increased my exercise, and made me much more confident on the bike. I got the hang of going from a dead stop to a powered ride, refreshed myself on how the longer bike handles after around 9 months since I had last ridden it, and generally just boosted my confidence in riding it.

I decided shortly after getting the bike back from the shop to start checking the fit of R’s helmet. At first it was still a little sloppy, but I put it on her anyway to help her get used to it. At first, she screamed and cried and just hated it. So, I started singing silly, made-up songs as I do when she is upset (or even when she’s happy just to pass the time and make her smile – you can see the Murray Sampson original “Rosamond in her Zebra Shirt” on YouTube). She quickly got distracted and stopped thinking about her helmet so much. I’ve heard some kids take a long time to get used to wearing a helmet, so I was really pleased it only took two or three times wearing it for her to stop minding.

Soon after the helmet stopped seeming so sloppy. When we bought it the tag indicated the circumference of head that it fit, so I decided to use a piece of string to measure her head to see if she officially fit. She did! So, her helmet fit, we had the bike, and all I needed to do was buy and install a seat. A quick Craigslist search turned up a nearly new Yepp Mini for sale for 2/3rds the list price so I emailed, then went straight to pick it up after a stop at the ATM.

Installing the Yepp Mini on my Mundo was pretty straightforward, once I found directions that had more detail than the included instruction sheet. You just remove the handlebars, pull off one spacer from the stem, place the adapter in, replace the spacer, then reattach the handlebars. You then use the supplied U-bolt to fix the adapter in place so it won’t shift left and right. Some bikes do use different hardware that clamps to the handlebar stem rather than slipping over it.

My wife really wanted to be part of R’s first bike ride, so we waited a few days to go out. I made the mistake of waiting to install the seat until the day we wanted to ride, so our original plans to go get the Sunday family-style chicken dinner at our favorite restaurant went out the window. We still had about 45 minutes until bedtime though, so we altered our plans. We took a short ride up the street to the neighborhood pie shop and picked up pie to take home for dessert. Although short, it was a ton of fun. R squealed and laughed the whole way and it had the added bonus of tiring her out for a better bedtime.

As a side note, my title for the first draft of this post was “First Time Out”. When I went in to revise I saw that title and thought, “She’s not old enough for time-outs.” I quickly decided I may want to save that title for a couple years from now, because I imagine the first time-out will be a bit of a big deal. Of course, then I’ll have to give her a time out on the bike someday and the problem resurfaces. Ah, well.