A week of transportation

School is upon us!  For us this is a new deal.  Our daughter started kindergarten on Wednesday and we walked down in a big group from the neighborhood.  Friday we met three other kids/dads on the corner and rode the bikes down.  It's an unbelievably refreshing thing to ride in a pack kids.  More exhilarating and in many ways more tiring than a 8 man group ride on the racing bikes.  This was my daughter's first group ride I guess :).  She did great.  I took her backpack to make the whole thing easier but in hindsight I don't think it was necessary.  However, it gave me a chance to use my new rack (courtesy of a generous deal from Rack n Roll).  It has taken me a little time to get it on the bike but I've been using it for a couple of days now and this is the first real bulky item to have graced it.  School bag strapped on awfully nicely.  Wrap the straps around the front, cinch it down with a cam strap and away we go.  I've been contemplating mounting the old Wald basket to it but I'm not convinced as yet.  Having a narrower platform on the front is nice especially when taking the front wheel on and off.  Anyway, the rack was great, the weight was un-noticed, and the ride went great all around.  On the way home I stacked my bag under hers and it was perfect. Can't do that with a basket for sure.

So the week went by and we survived the car-light beginning to school.  This is why we moved into town and paid a premium for our house.  The ability to, as a community, walk or bike to school as a group is worth quite a bit to me.  It was an experience that I hope the kids remember as they get older.  My daughter is very adamant now that she wants to ride her bike and not the tag-a-long to school.  Now that she's been initiated into riding on the road with cars around we may be able to move my son to the tag-a-long next summer and not need the trailer.  I'm sure there will still be times when she uses the tag but most of our trips are under 2 miles so going to the park or a friend's house is all possible on bikes now in a way that wasn't with the tag or trailer because she's the one doing it.