I’ve finally joined the ranks of the tunes-blasting family bikers! I’ve wanted to get a portable speaker for my iPhone all year, but it took seeing how much fun my friends are having with them to finally get around to it. Lindsay of You Ain’t Got Jack led the charge with a very affordable iLuv speaker and now The Main Tank is rocking one locally. And Julian of Totcycle is sporting a super cool bicycle boombox. I just went for the cheapest one I could find at Target yesterday–the iHome iHM60. I wish it pulsated like the As Seen on TV Music Bullet, but quality is more important than flashiness. Or you can have both: it looks like the newer models change color.
A dad at the playground admired my bike today and mentioned his friend in Tucson makes a Bike Boom Box. Now that looks cool! He started out just making solar-powered ones, but now those of us not in sunny Tucson can get a battery-powered version.
Other newness is a new, different Brooks saddle. My former B17S has found a new home on a friend’s road bike and I’ve moved on to a B68S (although now that I’m looking at the site, it seems that I have the Imperial version–extra fancy). So now I’m back in the club. And I’m back down lower to the ground. I might raise my seat a bit higher because it was nice being up at normal height while sitting on the squishy Schwinn saddle, but it’s also nice to be able to get the ball of my foot on the ground, too. Ah, the decisions of the precious-cargo cargo biker.
On the way to the bike shop and the park, the three-year old (as of yesterday! Big boy!) took to hitting his big brother. We were on Ravenna Boulevard, one of the rare instances of the bike lane being to the left of car traffic so I woman in an SUV slowed to my pace and tried to reason with my child for a couple blocks. Her heart was in the right place, but it felt a bit less safe having a driver leaning out her window, slowed to a crawl alongside us for what felt like quite a long time.
With Mr. Family Ride out of town, I had to bring the brawling brothers along on tonight’s Critical Lass ride. Please know that children connected by trailer, trailer bike, bike seats, etc are fully welcome along on Critical Lass rides…I just prefer the rare opportunity to ride solo with the lasses. And other than the little one shoving his brother off the picnic table during Robin’s fix-a-flat tutorial, the ride was without incident.
Today’s miles: 28.2
July cumulative: 324.9 miles
Family Ride 
Happy birthday to the boy! We had a spate of shoving at age 3 but it has mostly settled down at 3.5 years. Sometime you will have to explain the many saddles of Brooks to me, although given the incredible theft rate of Brooks saddles in SF it is unlikely that I will ever own one.
Thanks! Isn’t it clear that I don’t understand the differences between the Brooks saddles very well myself? ;)
Bumpin’! You should get a hydraulic seat up in that!
Good luck with the boys…
Things were so much easier when they were separated in front and back seats on my old bike! I guess the one good thing about it being so cold (in the mornings, at least) is my old snowboarding jacket wrapped around the little guy works like a cuddly straitjacket and contains those feisty hands of his.
In addition to throwing punches or head-butting each other, mine have been known to gang up on the driver… “Hey Mojave, let’s beat up dad.” Then the kid furthest back stands to hit my upper back/shoulders while kiddo in front punches my kidneys or lower back. They’re young enough that the blows are more like a frantic massage, but I imagine it looks pretty irresponsible to passers by… but so does riding a bike with kids I suppose.
Wowzers–thanks for the perspective! And yay for teamwork ;)