In Like a Lamb

March's lion has yet to rear it's head this beautiful sunny March 1st.  I'll look to the end of the month for it's golden mane in the form of a spring break snow storm.  We haven't had one in a while and I believe we're due.

We rode to school today!  All of us!  March 1st seemed like a good day to leave the car parked in the driveway.  It was a bit cold but it was warming up fast.  No hats under the helmets (in retrospect I could have used a head band but my daughter didn't comment on being cold so it all worked out :).  It all went quite well really.  Even considering I haven't had the big train (AKA: bike, tag-a-log, trailer) out since the fall.  We even made it to school on time, had time to play together and for me to get to the office by 9!  Not too bad.  Oh, and I had a big smile on my face too.  Fringe benefit!

On thing of note is that I made the "permanent" switch on the trailer for my son to ride in the center.  The two of them in the trailer together just doesn't work anymore.  He's 2 and she's 4 1/2.  It is too narrow and my daughter is too tall.  They are both normal to slighter sized kids.  We wouldn't have made it this far if they were big kids.  Something to think about if you are in the process of gearing up for family style bike transport.  It's a tough world really.  The best solution in my opinion is a bakfeits style box bike.  Second on the list would be an xtracycle.  If you just have one child and they are at least 3 or so then the xtracycle is actually a fantastic and affordable solution.  They get to sit on the back and there is plenty of room for cargo.  Having two kids really pushes you to a box style cargo bike.  I'm a big fan of CETMA cargo bikes and some day I hope to have one.  They are really a cargo solution for families and non-families.  Box bikes haul pretty much anything under 300 lbs or so.  The nice thing about a box bike is you can still put a tag-a-long bike on the back.  You can't do that with an xtracycle.  heck, you can put the trailer on the back of a box bike but I can't for the life of me think why.  If I ever get a box bike the first thing I'll do is sell the trailer and the xtracycle!  Won't need either of them again!

Anyway, happy March 1! 

Making it through the winter

Just before the snow melted off the paths

This winter has been a challenge for me in terms of living car lite.  I haven't been able to ride the kids to school as often as I want.  Last winter it was just my daughter that I took and her school at the time was on the way home from work for my wife so it was easy for her to grab the bus if it was snowy.  I was free to either bring my daughter in the trailer or not depending on my whim.  True, I was stuck with the trailer for the rest of the day but that's a small price to pay really.

I've kind of struggled with how to reduce my car use ever since the cold and snow came.  I was convinced this fall that selling our second vehicle and buying a Bakfeits was not only the smartest thing to do but the only sensible solution to family bike travel.  Now I'm not so sure.  Would I be riding the kids to school more if we had one?  No.  Would we ride more in the summer?  Probably.  Kind of a hard sell for $3k in bike.  Is this all about bikes or is it about riding?  Hard for me to tease those two apart sometimes.  Is it so bad to use the car to get the kids to school and ride from there?  Not really.  Is it possible to live without a car?  Of course.  Will we ever do it?  Probably not anytime soon.

We lived one summer car free.  It wasn't intentional.  My wife had gone back to school in preparation for a graduate program and we sold our "good" car because it wasn't paid for.  The other one was.  Unfortunately the other one dies a week or so after the sale.  I bought a used bike trailer on the cheap and we used it to lug our laundry and groceries back and forth.  We borrowed a car to go camping for a week and that was that.  When fall came and graduate school started we found a cheap corolla and things worked out fine.  I don't know that we would have done things that way if we had had kids at the time.  It was summer which made it easier.  So, driving the kids to school isn't such a bad thing I guess.  In my heart of hearts I'd love to figure out a way to make living car free work but as a collaborative unit (i.e. a family of 4) my vote is only 25% of the equation. When it's -15 I'm grateful for the car to take the kids to school.  When the winds gust 75mph, ditto.  When it's 70 and sunny on a spring day with the trees a budding and the tulips shining in dewy brilliance I'm happy we live on the bike when we can. Winter is a big part of our climate here but the truly un-bike-commutable days are few compared to the whole

In the end I'm grateful for every minute I get on the bike.  On the bike life's dramas play themselves out.  There is struggle and elation. Moments where the tears in your eyes aren't just from the wind.  Times when the moment stretches into eternity and you hold on to that feeling and bring it out and dust it off for motivation  when times off the bike get hard.  Flashes of brilliance occur within the steady beat of the pedals.  Flashes that pass on once the bike is parked but you know they happened and that sustains me.

Hesitation

Whew.  It's been a bit since the last bit of writing.  Been busy on vacation and then getting back to life after vacation.  We spent the better part of the first month of the year in Australia.  First time I've been there.  Wonderful country.  Hope to go back some day.  So many places to visit!  Anyway, that's not what this post is about.

This morning dawned snowing and cold (5 degrees cold).  Beautiful day really.   Thick snow coming down in torrents.  Cold squeaky snow under foot.  Had to clear 3 inches off the bike rack to get the bike on the car.  Great day for a ride.  In a younger life I wouldn't have thought twice about leaving the bike at home on a day like this because I'd have been going skiing.  It's what I should have done.  Dropped the kids at school.  Gone to the local area and skied until I was numb with cold and my legs were jelly.  Damn, now why didn't I think about that this morning?  Instead I was pondering (hesitating) the bike. 

Normally I wouldn't have given it a second thought.  Heck yea, I'm riding.  There is a certain challenge in slogging through 3 or 4 inches of powder on the roads.  If you can stay out of where the cars have driven it's a breeze.  If the cars have packed it out nicely it's nice.  Once the plows and their magnesium chloride get to it all bets are off.  Salty sludge isn't the best riding material!  But I digress.....I was hesitating because I was feeling a bit punky and thinking the family cold was coming my way.  I was looking at the thermometer and the snow and thinking it would be nice for my wife if I parked the car at my office instead of at school.  Both weak excuses to not get on the bike.  In the end I rode.  It was great.  It was hard.  It was sketchy.  My helmet gave it up when I mashed it over my hat.  Guess that plastic has seen too many sub-freezing mornings.  I'm glad I rode.  It's hard when I hesitate.  It's pretty easy to come up with reasons not to ride.  Today was no exception.  To make things more complicated I would have been riding to a friend's house after work for dinner and meeting everybody there.  Instead I'll be driving.  My wife's bus never came.  In fact three of them never came.  She was left in the lurch with 5 minutes to pick the kids up from school.  I bolted out the door and rode there as quickly as one can in slushy/snow packed/wheel rutted roads.  Wasn't too bad and in the end it was pretty fun riding up there.  I dropped the kids at the house (yes, my wife made it home finally) and drove to the office to clean things up and then it'll be time to go pick everyone up for dinner.  A fine day indeed.  Tomorrow will be even better.  24 and sunny is the guess.  Should make for some nice riding!

6 days in 6 years

I had some minor surgery a few weeks ago.  Nothing big really but of course I was off the bike and most everything else for a bit.  The first few days weren't bad and I lazed around the house for the most part.  Towards the end of the first week I went for a walk down the block.  20 minutes later I had passed 5 or 6 houses.  Maybe this recovery thing was going to take longer than the doc indicated :)  6 days later I went back to work.  In the car.  I wasn't clear to ride or do anything more than walk for two weeks.  So, for the 6 days of work left in that two weeks I drove the mile to work.  Wow, quite an education.  For 6 years I hadn't had to drive to work.  There was an odd day here or there when the situation dictated that the car get parked at the office but usually my wife picked it up on her way to get the kids or something like that.  I hadn't been forced to drive so much in quite a long time.  I went to lunch with a friend the second day back and drove the 5 blocks because I was too sore to walk that far.  It actually took me longer to get through lunchtime traffic than if I had walked.  I even had one evening when I ran an errand and got mired in rush hour.  I was beginning to see why friends complained to me about traffic in this town.  I honestly hadn't know it was this bad.  Geez, somebody should do something about this.  How about we get half the drivers on bikes!  Now that would solve more than one thing.

The whole driving experience was in some ways more humbling than recovering from surgery.  I saw the doctor at the end of the 14th day and was cleared to get back on the bike.  Needless to say I drove home, parked the car and aired up the tires on my trusty cross check and haven't wanted to get in the car since.  The next morning I felt like a kid at Christmas when I threw my leg over the top tube and teetered down the street.  The first hill did me in and I had to crawl up it lest the slightly healed surgery site would start hurting.   Despite my improved state of mind resulting from spinning the gears however slowly two weeks off did a number on my fitness.  It feels like I had the flu twice in a row.  But.....despite having to recover my fitness it's still better than being in the car!

Why buy from the little guy?

Have you ever noticed that when you walk into a bike store there really isn't any choice?  I mean as long as you want a Specialized, Giant or Trek you're golden.  If you want something off beat or built for the purpose bikes originally were built for then you have to start searching the likes of Rivendell, Peter White, Rene Herse or, if your wallet is more the size of mine, Surly.  Not that Surly is all that much of a one-off anymore :)  Seems like in my town they are plenty common.  I once read a comment about Surly vs Rivendell that was somewhere along the lines of "If you want lugs, buy a Rivendell.  If you don't, buy a Surly".  There are more similarities than differences between the two.

I ride bikes for a lot of reasons.  I also like to be somewhat if not very comfortable.  I have as many spacers as is safe on my road bike with a fairly short and tall stem.  My daily ride has albatross bars on it.  I have no qualms about buying a Brooks saddle for a titanium road bike (if I only had an extra $80).  All that said, utility is probably the single most prevalent reason I ride.  I stay active, I get where I want to go, I am happier when I am on and off the bike, the list goes on.  How does that all fit into the title of this post?  Well, if we don't buy from the little guy (or vote for them for that matter) then the reasoning that goes into the bikes we ride will be no more than dollars and cents.  There are a lot of changes in our society/country right now.  There are a lot of people out of work.  It is the time and place to assert our desire for smaller businesses.  I for one would love to see small bike builders like CETMA become commonplace.  I feel that if they were then the custom bike wouldn't be a thing reserved for the financially elite.  Bikes are after all the least expensive and more functional form of transportation I see available to us.  Why then should so much of the bike industry be so expensive?

 This article is a really good commentary on how the US business world has changed since the 50's.  In my mind it illustrates why mom and pop operations are both less common and more valuable.  It's worth taking the time to read Ben Schiller's excellent article about MBA's: Rise of the MBA's.

RWS

We've all done it.  Or, we've all done it in the car.  Riding (or driving) While Sick.  Yuck.  I've muddled through some bad colds, a couple of flu sessions and more bronchial infections than I care to remember at different times.  Normally it isn't a big deal.  You ride slower and pay more attention but for the most part you just spin and soon you start to feel better.  In fact, that used to be my cure for colds.  I'd put on all my warm riding gear, go ride 20 miles and sweat like the dickens and then get in a hot shower followed by bed for a long nap.  Turns out that when I was in my 20's it was probably more my age than the cure that was working because now in my 40's it not only doesn't seem to work but I can't bring myself to do it anymore.

I was felling a bit poorly the other week and realized it was the first time I was taking both kids to school while sick.  Our daughter has been in school for just under a year and our son only for 6 months or so.  We had the luxury of not having to send them too early and we're thankful for that.  Now we're quite happy to have them both in a home based Waldorf setting.  It's really good for them and for us.  Of course it means that I'm pulling the heavy trailer in the cold weather since it's been too cold in the mornings for the tag-along (Do trailers weigh more when it's below 20 or so? :).  Anyway, I found myself pondering if I was OK riding the kids to school when I wasn't feeling my best.  It's a strange internal discussion.  I had the same one before the kids were born during that last month of pregnancy....."oh, I better not drink that second glass of wine......labor could start any time." I used to say to myself.  I mean, who wants to remember the birth of any of their kids through the haze of too much wine?  Well, maybe the celebratory part after but for me not during labor!  So, the same thing really goes for bike commuting while sick.  "Do I feel well enough to be putting the kids in the trailer?".  Is it really that different than driving?  Sort of.  I guess I feel like the car is safer at bike speeds.  Is that true?  Now I'm wondering.  There are countries in Europe that on average have very little bike helmet use and also some of the lowest bike accident incidents.  Curious.

NO!

I think every parent has gone through times when the kids just don't want to do what we want/need them to do.  Melt downs happen and kids can be amazingly dedicated to their decisions.  When our kids decide they don't want to go somewhere it's pretty hard to convince them otherwise.  I try not to degrade to bribes but I'm human and yes, it happens.  Not that it works :)  The parenting help books, blogs,  etc. are full of methods to deal with kids saying no but I'm not wanting to talk about that part of things here.  What we've been experiencing lately is a refusal to get strapped in and go somewhere.  I don't know if it's about not wanting to get in the trailer or on the trail-a-bike because of said method of conveyance or just simply not wanting to transition from what they are doing.  My guess is it's the latter rather than the former.  I blame it on needing more sleep (the kids, not me).  Whatever the reason is it doesn't really matter.  It's a lot harder to get your reluctant 4 year old to ride that trail-a-bike home when they dig their heels in and decide they're done.  It's even harder to get your 2 year old to ride in the trailer when he just wants to be close.  At least in the car you can reach back and hold their hand.  At least in the car you can roll the windows up so no one can hear them screaming all the way home.  The bike is a bit more public and requires a bit more finesse as a parent.  If they just don't want to ride home there's not much you can do but wait and/or talk them through it.  I don't want to make the bike seem like a less desirable way to get around compared to the car.  It's different on the bike and what I really think is the key is what kind of bike we're talking about.  There are six ways to Sunday to transport kids, yourself, and your stuff on a bike(s).  Some work better than others.  Some are more affordable than others.  Enter the Bakfiets.