Yee-Haw! Ride 'Em Cowboy

I am convinced that now, not only are we getting our kids around town by bike, but we are setting them up for numerous wins in the mechanical bull riding contests in bars down the road.

OK, let me explain.

Yuba came out with a Rumble Strap. What's that? It's a rather simple, yet very clever idea that solves a problem we've been discussing, but doing nothing toward solving. Gotta love me some Facebook because one of my Fb friends is Travis of bike, noun, verb who posted photos of this sweet Yuba accessory that had previously been unknown to us.

We need the Yuba for two passengers. With one passenger we are good with the Xtra Radish, but when we need to take out two fellows, or three if we are both riding, we rely on the Yuba Mundo. The front passenger has the stoker bars to grab onto, but the back passenger hasn't been so lucky. If his brother was feeling generous, he might get to hold on the front guy's shoulders or waist. Since that wasn't always the case (feeling such generosity), the back rider might grab the back of the longtail frame behind him with a hand or two. Truthfully, more often than not, our back passenger just held on with his thighs, keeping his hands in his pockets or sometimes waving them around when his mother wasn't yelling at him to stop.

Of course, I was worried about how safe the back rider was. We always make our younger guy sit up front and continually nag the back rider to move his bum up on the seat to make sure his tail is not hanging over the longtail. I have to admit that while I've been pretty confident in my boys' ability to hold on, even with no hands and just a good thigh squeeze, I am always aware of how the no-hands-hold-on thing for the back passenger opened us up to yet more criticism by outsiders concerning how unsafe our choice to ride our sons by bike is. I know I should not care about this, but I am sensitive to it, so often when riding in busier parts of the city, I will say to the guys, "Well, at least make it look good, like you're holding onto something."

And now they have a something to hold onto! I know there are also sorts of wonderful problem solvers out there that jerry-rig their cargo bikes in cool ways so both passengers are set up well, but we hadn't gotten that far. We are glad that Yuba did. And now, our back passenger has a strap to hold on to, attached to the frame of the bike so it is strong and secure, but small and soft enough that it won't get in the way of any non-kid cargo we may need to strap to the longtail while say, moving furniture or perhaps huge bags of chicken feed and screen doors (I kid you not).

So here are some shots of P attaching the Rumble Strap to the frame (we didn't even need to take off our Freeloader side bags, just unclip one part):










And here are shots of the boys testing out the new Rumble Strap:







I didn't manage to get a shot of S doing the full rodeo bull riding thing-- one hand holding onto the Rumble Strap, the other hand up in the air while gleeful shouts of "Yee Haw!" emanated from his mouth-- but it was happening. Yee Haw!