First bike train

First up, the obligatory bike-loaded-with-groceries shot:

I still have trouble reaching my middle FreeLoader buckle because of the child seat, but that didn’t stop me from shoving four very full bags of groceries in my bags. There’s a half-full fifth bag back there, too, which I had to tie to the top of one of the securely stowed bags. I should always travel with bungee cords.

Today’s real excitement came after school when for the first time this year, another mom did pickup by bike. I don’t want to imply I’m at all responsible for her first two-wheeled trip to school, but I was still incredibly giddy about it. She lives even farther uphill than I and rides a Madsen bucket bike. Her preschooler recently upgraded from a 12-inch pedal bike to a 16-incher and can now make it up the hill, so that combined with the nice weather precipitated the big day. She biked her toddler and the kid bike down to school and we rode together to Wallingford Playfield–all the way uphill for me, and most of the way uphill for them.

It was eye-opening to ride separately from a little guy and I admit I’m in no hurry to worry about a separate biker on these busy streets. We altered our route slightly–turning west after crossing the Fremont Bridge to more easily use sidewalks to connect with the Burke-Gilman Trail. Once again, I am so grateful that it is legal to ride bikes on the sidewalk in Seattle because they used the sidewalk when we weren’t on the bike path.

Getting dropped block by block by a single speed 16-incher made me think about electric assist. I haven’t needed a boost yet, but I am awfully slow and in two years (I know, a long way off) I’ll probably need to coordinate a preschool and elementary school drop off and that makes me a bit nervous, timing-wise.

A third preschool friend met us at the park. She’ll be ferried around by bike soon, too, I expect, but today they came by car with kid bike in trunk. We moms talked about various kid seats and two-bike coupling systems while the kids zoomed around on bikes and balance bikes.