For the first time since Cranksgiving, we made the trek to Capitol Hill for the Val Kleitz Memorial Bike Ride, put on by Aaron’s Bicycle Repair. We met Val on the Easter cargo bike ride where he took this awesome picture (a.k.a panda shot) of himself riding alongside us. He was cargo bike royalty, mechanic extraordinaire, and I just love his Bike-Hugger-declared Best Shop Prank–make sure you read all the comments, too.

We met up at 20/20 Cycle which has a toy area! The kids were kept busy inside playing so I was allowed some time to check out all the people and bikes convening out front. I was very interested to see Car Free Days Anne’s tandem bike. I’d been wondering how kids fit on the back of tandems–it’s simply the addition of a kid-back. Precision Tandems has some amazing pictures them in use. I’m not sure that’s in our future, but it seems like a wonderful way to keep bigger kids nearby as well as get to travel at adult speed.

Aaron’s was the only Bakfiets I noticed, but there were several other cargo bikes, a half dozen Xtracycles, a Yuba Mundo, Stella the dog in a basket, and two radio-equipped bikes.

I hope someone took a headcount and recorded the route. I think there were at least 50 people along and this is roughly the route we took from Capitol Hill to Ravenna Park:

I can’t believe I rode my bike to/through Volunteer Park! We biked around the water tower a bunch of times while waiting for everyone to regroup.

I had planned to just do the ride and skip the picnic so we could go back to Bumbershoot one last time, but it was just too fun (OK, and maybe I was just a little too tired as well). We met Kent Peterson of Kent’s Bike Blog and Laura and Russ of The Path Less Pedaled, and saw a lot of familiar faces: Eric of Tubulocity, Anne and Tim of Car Free Days, Seattle Bike Blog‘s Tom, and Biking with Brad. And we made a lot of new adult, kid, and dog friends.

Today’s miles: 14.7 miles
September cumulative: 57.5 miles