In the past I’ve done a bit of kid-swapping when biking with friends to keep siblings from pestering one another, but today was a real day of musical bikes.

Ride one:
For starters, I took my two kids on the Big Dummy to Julie’s house where we we learned to play Go Fish and deploy a lightsaber.

Ride two:
After a while we made tracks for the flagship REI indoor play area. Julie offered anyone who wanted a ride in her Madsen and of course all four kids jumped at the chance.

That awesome cover is new and details will be up on Wheelha.us soon. Also fairly new is the Madsen’s BionX electric assist so I didn’t feel bad giving her my 75 pounds of cargo. She let me carry her little bag so I could feel like I was doing something, too. Proof that I needn’t have worried is right here on Eastlake Avenue:

That’s the fully loaded Madsen waaaay in the distance.

But before the hills, I led us to this Smart Car I’ve been eying from the Burke-Gilman Trail for a while. It’s just so fun to take pictures of bikes holding two or more people next to a car that only holds two people. I call this “Who’s smart now, little car?”

Ride three:
I think the four kids got along fine in the bucket…though I wasn’t close enough much of the time to see for myself. But my two were ready to be apart from one another by the time we left, so I took my three-year old back and the other three kids stayed in the bucket for a trek to our mutual bike shop, Ride Bicycles. Julie hasn’t put the zippers on her weather shield yet so the kids were able to move the clear panel around which they found very fun–divider between the big kids and little kid, or between the two big kids. I liked that I could receive blown kisses through the gap.

Ride four:
After the shop I took my little kid and Julie’s big kid so both sets of brothers could sit separately for the short ride to Pizza Pi Vegan Pizzeria. The only wrinkle was that my new passenger hadn’t dressed for the weather. His t-shirt and sandals were just fine under the weather shield and REI’s indoor bike parking, but we hadn’t counted on exposure to the elements. Fortunately, the intermittent drizzle was on a break and we even saw some patches of blue sky. Also, we were on our way to pizza. P-I-Z-Z-A!

Ride five:
Finally back to my regular two passengers for the ride home. It was great following a friend so familiar with the area. First she led us on the most gradual route from the bike shop to the pizza place, but even better was the route from U-District home to Wallingford. I know NE 47th Street is a future University Greenway, but don’t usually use it since I’m often on the wrong side of the street or it’s out of the way. It was perfect for today’s trip and saved us six blocks of busy NE 45th Street (where we would have been stuck on the sidewalk walk).