Advocacy

I started bike commuting because as a member of a one-car family, I needed a way to get from one place to another without buying another car. I wasn't looking to become a bike activist or advocate in any way. As my family started to ride together, we learned what works with biking in our community and what makes cycling here tough. Who doesn't want to make tough things in one's life a bit easier? However, taking on any such formal role of bike advocate just seemed too daunting with three young fellows and a full-time job. And there are simply logistics that don't work right now: the local community's formal bike advocacy group meets at a time I need to be home to feed my boys; the monthly Critical Mass rides also don't fit our schedule, etc. So I stayed content talking with folks whenever people asked about our bikes or riding with kids. I invited friends to join us on bike rides. I kept an eye out for bike events in which we could participate, a few Bike to Work breakfasts, a fun group ride here and there. But truthfully, I saw my truest act of bike advocacy as simply riding, riding nearly every day, riding with my kids, being out there and visible. I still think that.

But I can feel the urges, the whisperings that I must do more. I must contribute to making my community a place where more parents feel comfortable riding with their children. Where someone contemplates leaving her car parked for the day and rides downtown to the library and knows this is a valid and safe option. Where two friends might go out for the night just using pedal power to get them where they want to go.

And I must do more because my family now faces a dilemma.

We have three sons and two cargo bikes. We bike far more than we drive. We bike to school, to work, to music lessons, to camp, to church, to the farmer's market, to playgrounds, to friends' homes, etc. Both my husband and I have grown quite comfortable biking throughout our city with our kids in/on our bikes. But now-- our oldest two are about to turn eight. And they have grown. And the truth is, they are busting out of the cargo box on our Bakfiets. Yes, they are quite good cyclists on their own, comfortable riding their two-wheelers, happy to do so for some distance. However, we live in a city that simply does not have the infrastructure to make it safe for them to ride themselves most places. Our route to school brings us right through downtown with lots of impatient drivers racing to get to/from work and no bike lanes. We have no routes that would put us on quieter streets.

So what are we to do? Stop biking? We are not ready to do this and I fully resent the idea that we would have to give up bike commuting.

So right now, we are hoping that a new cargo bike set-up may solve this problem for us for the moment. We are sad that it is time to sell the Bakfiets, but excited about the orange Yuba Mundo that will join our family soon. How long will this extend our ability to be family bike commuters, I can't say. But I worry that my boys' growth will far outpace the changes our community needs to make it a truly bike-friendly city, a place where ten, eleven, twelve year-olds can ride to get to where they need to be going. And I know, I won't be able to haul them forever....

Do you live in a place where a young person can safely ride to school, to the library, to camp? Can kids do that in Portland, OR? In Cambridge, MA? In most suburban towns? How about rural communities? I want to learn more.

But the truth is, I don't want to move. Not now, anyway. So I need to get advocating in more formal ways.

This was a start.....

LGRAB Summer Games continued

We've been keeping an eye of Dottie and Trisha's Let's Go Ride a Bike Summer Bike Games. Here's a report on our second phase that included these challenges:

June 7 - June 27: Learning Experiences

• Perform a maintenance task — big or small!
• Decorate your bike
• Read a book about cycling
• Carry a load on your bike — groceries, etc.
• Test ride a different type of bike than you normally ride

We decided to pull the family card for a few of these so happily have completed each of them but with different family members involved. The most exciting challenge for us in this group was taken on by our youngest guy who decided to "test ride" his brothers' two wheelers (no training wheels) and yes, he is off and riding now. He happily checks the tires before he rides and is insistent that he pump up the flats himself so another nod to F for performing our maintenance task-- however small, but necessary! We also took care of decorating our bike with our new Zero Per Gallon ginormous patch!

Read a book about cycling. We did that, too! I've been diving into Joe Kurmaskie's family cycling adventures but the bike book we want to share here:
How can you go wrong with a story about a duck who wants to ride a bike? Truly. Fun to hear Duck's friends' reactions (and see their expressions) watching him cruise on two wheels. My boys love author and illustrator David Shannon's books in general and one with farmyard animals AND a bike= cool!

Finally-- carry a load on your bike..... Well, this feels like cheating a bit since we are family bike riders so EVERY day both P and I are loaded up with children and their stuff on our two cargo bikes. When we first became parents, I remember a friend commenting, "I am my child's roadie. I have one little bag of stuff and they have two tractor trailers worth of things like a rock star." So we decided to show some snaps of our every day haul. I don't think we have yet mentioned that with the boys taking up that much more room in the cargo box that we expanded our haulin' capacities with a set of gorgeous hot pink, orange, and red Clarijs bags.


So here's a list of what goes in our Bakfiets on a daily basis during school time:

• Two boys (roughly weighing 110+ lbs.)
• At least two books-- pictured on top of this post: a Tin Tin collection and one of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson books.
  
• Three lunch boxes (mine included)
• Kids' artwork (an amazing amount after each school day)
• My school bag with laptop
• Two water bottles
• Tissues

I did want to share a snap of "my favorite load" last week....

• A 1/4 sized cello
• Small kid's chair
• A 1/2 violin in other side bag
• Music books & sheet music
  
• One cute musician
• One iced coffee for the tired dad who accompanies one cute musician to his cello lesson then hands off the first cute musician to mom (who has the box bike with their two other sons) who in turns drops off a different cute musician down to the music school for his violin lesson which dad stays for as well-- Whew!
  

New Bike Decoration

Big Bike Event at Our Home

We've been riding a ton, writing very little. I have much to blog about & need to keep up reporting on our participation in LGRAB Summer Games events. I couldn't however let yesterday's BIG BIKE EVENT AT OUR HOME pass without marking it here.

Our little guy, F, aged four and a half, learned to ride a two-wheeler yesterday. Yes! It was so exciting. He's been on a balance/push bike for over a year and yesterday, my husband raised its seat. F was riding his balance bike up and down our block with ease, lifting his feet higher and higher with longer intervals between putting his feet down. P, watching him, thought F could likely ride one of his brother's two wheelers. F was game. It took only a couple of spills (plus, he hasn't quite gotten stopping down) but off he went. It was truly magical!

I have to say thanks to all the bike bloggers out there that talked about bypassing training wheels and just go balance bike to two-wheeler. In this case, it worked perfectly.

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.