Let the Games Begin!

I was excited to read about Dottie and Trisha's Summer Games over at Let's Go Ride a Bike and decided that, of course, the five of us would participate. This first series of challenges look like this:

May 17- June 6: Social Cycling

• Go on a group ride
• Leave a nice note on a bike or say hi to a cyclist at a red light
• Schedule a bike date with a friend or partner-- dress up!
• Recruit a non-biking friend for a ride
• Ride with your family

I can happily report that we've already completed a few of these items on the challenge list. It's been lots of bikey fun around here lately. I haven't yet written about our new commutes now that we are in our new home. A lot of local folks ask if we are still riding since we are further away from work/schools and I am happy to report that the answer is a resounding yes. Both P and I are riding daily. Before, P could walk our youngest to school but now cycles with F each morning to preschool on the Xtra, which F has dubbed "The Rocket Bike." I am still on the bakfiets with the twins, but our ride is about double what it was from our apartment and it goes through a far more-trafficked route. I realize that I am full-out city commuting now and recognize that I benefitted from riding for over a year before we moved to this neighborhood. I suspect I may have been far more intimidated to take on bike commuting if we had started over here when we first moved to New Haven.

A huge advantage of our new location is that we are closer to a number of friends. I am not sure what constitutes a 'group ride,' but we now have our own little bike bus a few days a week as our friends with the Madsen have joined us riding to school a couple of times this past week and plan to do it regularly this spring, and we rode together to music lessons on Saturdays since we've been in the 'hood. It's been a delight to ride along with them, especially when M rides the Madsen in front of us with her son, O, facing backwards as I pedal behind them with my guys facing O! The boys wave, call out, laugh, and give each other high fives when we reach red lights. We've always been quite a spectacle around town before, but as we link up and ride together-- it makes us that much more of an rolling attraction, and we all do a lot of waving to kids in school buses and folks walking on the sidewalks.

We were able to hit the monthly "Bike to Work" breakfast yesterday since we now ride close to city hall where Elm City Cycling sets up and hands out free coffee, juice, and food for all cyclists who stop by. One interesting note is that our stop caused a bit of a stir with friends at school who had driven past us in the first part of our commute but hadn't realize we had stopped for the breakfast. When we rode up to school 20 or so minutes after our normal arrival time, we were greeted by an anxious parent who was convinced that we somehow had gotten in trouble along the way. She and another parent had compared times and locations where they spotted us and wondered together why we weren't at school yet. Our bikes make us very noticeable! While I found their concern quite sweet, I couldn't help but wonder if they would have been equally anxious for our arrival had they passed us while we were out in our minivan and didn't arrive at school at the expected time. Just a thought with no judgment or conclusion, there.

Then yesterday, we agreed to take two friends with us after school who live a few blocks away. Their mom dropped off their bike helmets and P rode over to our school at 3:00pm. All four kiddos strapped on their helmets and we divided and conquered: two on the Baks and two on the Xtra. We rode across town to a playground where I stayed with the four and P rode off to pick up our youngest at his school. After they returned and F got his time on the much-loved tire swing, we loaded ALL FIVE kids in the two bikes and hit our favorite local ice cream shop. Riding home with the crew after cones, I felt lucky that we have friends who trust us to ride their kids. Our new passengers were big fans, and it made me think that we should keep an extra set of helmets around-- just like having extra booster seats in the trunk of our car-- so we can invite a friend or two along on other impromptu adventures.

While our buddies rode in the bakfiets for part of the afternoon, they were both eager to try out the Xtra. I rode with our three boys in the Baks & it was fun to ride behind these guys watching the kids' maiden voyage and feeling lucky that their parents trust us.

Finally, this morning on the way to the farmer's market, we met another new neighbor who rode up next to us on his bike (at a red light, I must point out). Paul is car-free and we've seen him a bunch of times running along our block. One time he called out from the sidewalk, "Hey, I like your bikes!" as he jogged on by. It was nice to put a name to the compliment and it was cool to learn that he is car-free and looking for a good family ride set-up so he can eventually get out on a bike with his young son. When he learned that we had moved out of our old neighborhood-- a place he recognized had more daily bike commuters-- he commented that he was glad we were over on his side of town since he felt it important that more bikey folks "colonize" this part of the city.

Later in the afternoon, we rode over to Open Farm Day at Common Ground, one of our favorite spots in New Haven, to hang with the chickens and goats, meet up with friends, watch sheep get sheared, and practice our hula-hooping skills. We always get an awesome reception at Common Ground when we pull up on our family bikes, and we were jazzed to see some of the high school students making mango and kale smoothies using their brand-new bike blender Xtracylce rig. P made some mention of Gilligan's Island that went way over our guys' heads. We think it may be time to add some of those shows to our Netflix queue. Too bad we couldn't convince the boys to give the smoothies a try....

The Ethicist on a Bike

I love this guy's column in the NYTimes so I was intrigued when I heard he made this short film with Streetfilms about bike riding in NY. I can't help but be supremely envious of NYC's bike paths that run along the inside of car parking areas. Damn, that's genius! Now that our new commute brings us into a far more heavily-trafficked route, I must say I am starting to wish louder and harder for more bike-friendly infrastructure around here.

I like hearing what Randy "The Ethicist" Cohen had to say about riding the wrong way on a bike path/street (don't do it!) and interested in his take on bikes and red lights. While I do appreciate the "Idaho Stop," I still am in the camp that I must always stop for red lights-- mostly because the majority of the time I am biking, I have at least one kid, if not two or three, in/on the bike with me. I am aware of the modeling I do for them and I always want them to stop at red lights while crossing streets and wait for appropriate traffic signals to walk, bike, or drive. When they are older, I am happy to have the discussion with them about the "Idaho Stop" and risk assessment, but at the moment, we'll stick with the simple-- we stop at red lights.

Wind & Pedal Power!

Just a block away from our school is a new wind turbine. From my understanding, it is Connecticut's first commercial wind turbine and every time we ride up to school or I step out of the school building and catch a glimpse of it, I get supremely jazzed. Structurally it is just cool looking, and I love thinking about the power it is generating as the blades spin. It has been a really great topic of discussion with my kids and all the students in the school. The company that owns it and has been really responsive to our queries and each of my boys has gotten to visit the turbine with their classes and learn more about how it works.

The company recently announced a competetion to name the wind turbine and both S & C jumped at the chance to participate. Each boy came up his own name and then had to explain why they suggested this name and what he likes about the wind turbine.



What does this have to do with bikes you ask? Well, just ask C:

I hope you are able to click on the photo and see C's drawing up close.

Rock to Rock 2010

This year's Rock to Rock ride was as fun as we expected. The weather was tremendous and the energy of the participants was palpable. It was a treat to ride with friends and to run into more folks we knew along the way. It was fun to wave to people who called out from the sidewalks, to whiz through intersections as motorcycle police stopped the car traffic, to feel safe and free riding with all these energized, excited people. Most wonderful, for me anyway, was to watch my older sons, each seven, ride themselves across the city. If only, if only..... If only, the streets were safe enough for them to ride themselves everyday.

Team Cargo Bikes!

The start of the ride. We got to starting point on the later side so waited to the side and let all these folks lead the way. The group of riders snaked up and well beyond what you can see here.

E & T in action in their Joe-Bike bakfiets. My four-year-old had much to say about the size of their box. How the taunts start early!
Here are my guys, pedaling away. I was a proud mama. It's clear that the twins need new bikes.

At the different resting points, F switched from bakfiets to Xtracycle, back to bakfiets again.
We were so psyched to run into this mama rider. Look at her frock closely. We complimented her loudly and often on her Ms. Frizzle dress selection!

How cool to run into one of your preschool teachers on the ride.

I took this shot on our final stretch. It was amazing to watch the boys ahead of me.

Look what was waiting for us at the end! The CHEESE TRUCK. Yum. Amazing grilled cheese & tomato sandwiches.

Team Cargo Bike Handmade T's

We've been looking forward to tomorrow's Rock to Rock Earth Day Ride for months. Last year's was among one of our most fun days in New Haven since we moved here almost three years ago. You see-- while there is a growing bike riding community, we're no Portland, Oregon. I read blogs that continuously highlight fun community rides with envy. While there are regular group rides here in New Haven if you are a cyclist-- one of those lycra-wearing, racing kinds-- but outside of a monthy Critical Mass (that meets inconviently for us with little boys who desperately need to eat at 5:3oPM at you guessed it, 5:30PM), there don't seem to be community rides for us overweight, jean-wearing (never lycra!!!), mama types like me. One of the reasons that last year's event was such a blast was the array of folks who climbed on their bikes and joined in taking over the street on two wheels. This year, it seems like there will be far more riders and many more of our friends have committed to riding as well. It'll be a party!

When our friends who recently bought a Joe-Bike box bike came over to show us their new wheels, L said, "We should get team t-shirts for Rock to Rock." Suddenly that got my mind whirling. You see, besides being obsessed with bikes, my other obsession is making t-shirts. I started with creating shirts for my boys from those websites that let you customize shirts (like my Boys Like Pink, Too shirts-- see sidebar) and moved on to freezer-paper stenciling shirts. Early this winter, I tried to up my game by purchasing an at-home "easy" screening system called EZScreenPrint. I made a few screens in December with varying degrees of success, but I struggled with getting the timing right while exposing the screen to sunlight, and got crazed with work and buying a house so stopped messing with hand-screening for these months.

Soooooo, in order to avoid packing (moving day= this coming Wednesday), this week I suddenly decided to give the screen printing another go. On Tuesday I came up with a design, created the screen at 6:00pm after work--yay, sunlight in spring evenings!-- ran off to Target while P oversaw boy bedtime ritual on his own, and finished 13 shirts by 11:00PM. I have to admit that I am quite proud of the finished product. I made shirts for two families with whom we are friends who own cargo bikes. The adult shirts are in green with white print; little people ones are gray shirts with green print. I have to give a major shout-out to Travis Whittwer for his design inspiration. Many thanks.

Go, Team Cargo Bike! Rock to Rock 2010:

Makeover

SPORKIES!

One of the many, many fun things about our cargo bike has been decorating the cargo box. We've made detachable signs for it and then, last summer we discovered that removable wall stickers work incredibly well. You can find a number of fun designs at craft stores or on the web; they are hardy enough to withstand bad weather; when you grow tired of them, you can peel them off and start again.

We decorated the box with multi-colored polka dots for the big guys' birthday and then changed to robots on Halloween. The boys have been begging me to change the design for some time, but I held off because I loved the robots from Blik and thought we should get full use out of them. I also kept thinking I wanted to customize stickers, creating text that would read something like, "Stop texting. Keep us all safe." or "A car is not a phone booth." However, the boys didn't seem to like this idea much and P was hesitant as well, worried that we might antagonize some already bike-hating crazy drivers.

Instead, a few weeks ago, I got on the web with my four-year-old and we started looking at new wall sticker graphics. Site after site, we couldn't find stickers we could agree on when suddenly I pulled up this one photo and F yelled out, "Sporkies!" Now those of you who don't speak F may not know what this means. Our F, you see, tends to be Suessian with his language at times, randomly creating words that pretty accurately describe what he means. One of his long standing words that the rest of the family has adopted is "sporky." F first used it when he went to kiss his dad after P skipped a morning or two of shaving. "You're sporky!" he called out when he rubbed up against P's whiskers. Sporky was also recently used when I got my hair cut extremely short and came out of the salon with it spiked in all directions. My hair, you see, was all sporky. So when F looked at these stickers and cried "Sporkies!" with delight, I knew we had a winner. While the company may have called these creatures "Fuzzles," they shall be known in our home-- and in our bike, of course-- as Sporkies. A cool thing about this site was that it had a huge color palatte so F also got to choose the colors he wanted the sporkies to be.

And so now let me unveil our newest cargo box design: multi-colored Sporkies. Since he was the visionary behind the design, F also wanted to be integrally involved in adhering the stickers.

The spikes were a bit tricky to get off from the backing without ripping so I took on the Sporkies' bodies, while F became the "eye man."

Design completed. One proud four-year-old.

No, these are not jazz hands you see. These are three fellas doing their own imitation of Sporkies!

Front view. Sporkies all around.

Joy!

Another Box Bike in the 'Hood

We spent a fun long weekend hanging in NYC with friends and family, riding subways, visiting the lemurs at the Bronx Zoo, running around parks in Brooklyn, and a highlight, for me anyway-- spotting Ira Glass coming out of a Vietnamese sandwich joint. We arrived back in New Haven tired but satisfied, and were just finishing an early dinner when the doorbell rang. I looked out our front windows and immediately got jazzed, commanded all the guys to throw on their Crocs and get outside, and grabbed the camera.

And what to our wondering eyes should appear, but a new Joe-Bike boxbike with two helmeted cuties happily strapped in the cargo seat. Check out our friends and their brand new spanking cargo rig:


We are most excited that another bakfiets has hit the city-- even though this crew will be moving to Nashville this summer. The box is shorter than our long box so when I took Joe-Bike's version for a quick spin around the block, two things struck me immediately: 1. how light it was 2. how much of a 'regular' bike it felt like when riding. Mostly, it is just heartening that families looking to get into family bike riding have ever more options from which to choose