This is my new, heavier cargo: we’ve traded the balance bike for a 12-inch pedal bike.

My five-year old isn’t 100% after yesterday’s slide mishap, but he was up to coming along to see his little brother learn to ride a pedal bike at Cascade Bicycle Club’s Learn 2 Ride for All Ages. Actually, he thought he was teaching the class, so of course he came! It was very impressive that everyone showed up given the downpour. And several more kids showed up after I took this picture.

And it worked! It was so fun to watch the ecstatic kids conquer bicycling. My ringer did figure eights in a huge puddle while his lil bro joined the ranks of pedal-powered people. Then he coaxed a new-pedaling little girl (who’d never been on any sort of bike, just a scooter!) to join him in the puddle. I guess that was his contribution to the course. The class will meet again June 2nd and September 8th ($10)–sign up! I suggested they do it EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND because it really was that fun. Imagine how much fun it would be not in freezing rain.

The only thing that made me nervous was how close my two kept coming to the curb. I told them the story of how I broke my arm when my pedal hit a curb in college (and on the last day of Bicycle Safety Awareness Week!), but my five-year old replied, “That’s OK. I’ve been trained to do this.” Oh, my bad.

After class, we checked out the brand new NE 65th Street cycle track. As I biked us to the top of the hill, we passed the Mayor heading down. We called hello to one another and he said, “You dig?” I think I responded favorably enough that he’ll push for many more miles of cycle tracks.

I didn’t think the new pedaler was cycle track ready, but I let my five-year old loose on it. He did great going downhill, but could only make it part way back up once the incline got too tough.

Here’s a view from the top of the hill. The cutest part is the half-scale stop sign.

I had hoped the cycle track completion meant the bottom of the hill would be easy to navigate, too, but it’s still being worked on. There’s a wonderful closed road that runs parallel to the sidewalk, but it’s not easy to enter from the corner. I’m not sure what the intended bike route is, but it doesn’t seem to be my route of choice.

A bit past the cycle track, we saw a kid bike–16-incher, I think–sporting ape hanger handlebars and an incredibly long seat post, making it adult-friendly. We were all intrigued and the kids began discussing the tandem tallbike they’ll build together from baby bike frames. Freak bikes have a special place in my heart so this made me very happy.

I’d forgotten my keys at home so we stopped at Counterbalance Bicycles to pick up baby’s first lock, a yellow Knog Party Frank so I could borrow it while we had lunch. (Psst…it’s actually orange, but please don’t tell him. Apparently they always sell out of purple and yellow first due to their proximity to the university–school colors.)

And then we arrived home to find my keys in the garage. They must have been there overnight. Oops. But really, I can’t believe this hasn’t happened sooner.

Daily miles: 11.3
April miles: 108.5

Both kids bike-ily delivered to school, I headed to Fremont to meet up with my friend, Alyssa. We often ride our fast bikes when the kids are all in school, but today we were both on our slow longtails. On the way over, I happened upon Barbara and invited her along. Behold our trio of kid carriers: Xtracycle, Surly Big Dummy, Kona MinUte. Yay!

After several days of sun, I’m never prepared for rain. This is Seattle, so I should know better, but it always happens. Must be an innate Southern-Californian-transplant survival technique. The kids were indoors and fine without rain gear, but I was getting progressively damper. I swung by Alyssa’s after our ride (to Goodwill to look for waterproof fabric for one of her fantastic DIY projects) so she could let me use her new rain skirt. It’s awesome! This one is oilcloth, but she’s planning another one with a lighter fabric. Note: if you want people to touch your clothing, wear a waterproof skirt on a rainy day. It was very popular.

Back on the Burke-Gilman Trail I noticed Cascade Bicycle Studio has moved into its new space–by the mama dinosaur and baby dinosaur foliage and next door to The Indoor Sun Shoppe (where you can test out a sun therapy lamp for 20 minutes if you’re having a rough rainy day). I don’t think they get a lot of cargo bikers in the shop, but they kindly let me and my rig drip on their floor while I checked out the new space. It’s big and airy and filled with fancy stuff. They were intrigued by the white cable on my bike–because they couldn’t figure out what it was for–so I demonstrated my Rolling Jackass centerstand. And then I told them about the guys who rode a Madsen bucket bike in a cyclocross race to try to bridge our two worlds. I think it worked. But if CBS runs cyclocross clinics in the fall (they’re thinking about doing so!) and I attend, I’ll bring my cross bike and not my cargo beast.

Then I popped into Free Range Cycles to stick a Pedaler’s Fair flyer on their community board. Free Range’s Kathleen was just written up in OutdoorsNW Magazine (So was I, so they’ll put just anyone in there, but Kathleen is the real [steel] deal). Alex was working on an Xtracycle. I hate to break mechanic/bicyclist privilege, but I bombarded Alex and Kathleen with questions. The owner is an artist who uses it to transport canvases these days since her kids are too old to be cargo. I’m intrigued by non-human-cargo cargo bikes. I expect to have one someday.

Those first two stops were impulse stops, but I eventually made it to Hub and Bespoke to check out caps. I found a great little Ibex wool cap that fits under my helmet. And the ear flaps fold up if need be.

Hub and Bespoke also has a funky VANMOOF on display. I’ve never seen one in person, but J.C. Lind seems to sell a lot of them as evidenced by his Facebook page updates. I’ve only seen pictures of their profiles so it was surprising to see the lights integrated into the frame. I still think they look weird, but weird with function. The H-and-B VANMOOF is from Charley+May, “located on the top of Queen Anne Hill.” I think I’ll suggest to Alyssa we use that as a future kid-free bike ride destination…but with our quick bikes.

Daily miles: 15.0
April miles: 89.3

I’ve been using the car in the afternoons the last few Wednesdays. School pickup by car is such a pain! We leave home half an hour early (school is FOUR BLOCKS AWAY) to snag a parking spot one block away, often involving circling a block or two. Mother Nature has peed down massive amounts of rain just on Wednesdays so rather than hang out in the school yard, the toddler and I impatiently wait in our metal box, watching other families circle and look for parking. Once we grab the kindergartener, we hightail it back to the car and head for tap dance class, hitting several maddening traffic backups along the way.

So why deal with the hassle? Well, we’re moving to a smaller house soon so I’ve been taking advantage of combining trips–first to all-uphill tap dance class and then onto the nearby thrift store to donate a carload of stuff. I’ve made thrift store runs by bike before, but these trips have including fragile stuff (which on the bike I’d have to pack very very carefully) and more per trip. And, yeah, it’s nice to avoid that hill sometimes.

But today we bike! And hopefully all Wednesdays forthcoming.

This morning after school dropoffs, Mr. Family Ride and I walked over to the new place to discuss how we’d fit all our stuff in. I never think we own very much until it comes time to move. Mr. Family Ride thinks we’re going to need a storage unit. I’m determined to prevent that, but it may require more stuff purging.

Before preschool pickup at 1pm, I had time to run three boxes and a metal doggie gate over to the new house. We’re moving 400 feet, all downhill, so I’ll bike move what I can, though the big stuff will be done by professional van-bound movers.

Quick aside: at preschool, I wasn’t the only mom picking up by bike! There is nothing that makes me happier than seeing more bikes!! She has to work this around naptime so biking every day won’t be possible for this family, but this won’t be the last time I have company at the tree.

One more quick aside: heading home I discovered my three-year old has been waving motorists through (appropriately) when we’re stopped at intersections. I sometimes get into “You go”-“No, you go” hand waving wars with drivers. This often happens when I’m turning left onto NE 40th Street which is uphill and has no shoulder and while it’s very polite for westbound cars to wait for me, I’d much rather wait and follow behind than vice versa.

Once home, the three-year old wanted to move some boxes, too, so we did one load together before heading over to kindergarten pickup.

The only thing I don’t like about biking to dance class (well, besides the HILLS) is having to grab my little tapper ten minutes early. Not that driving gets us there on time–we’re still a few minutes late unless all the lights cooperate and there’s a parking spot in the small parking lot. Today’s pickup was anything but smooth. Of all the days for my son to come out of school announcing, “I lost my jacket!” And of all the days for the kids to have been requested to wear shorts or dresses for a Hawaiian dance performance (which was so adorable!). But I remembered to bring along the sweatpants we had layered over him for cold morning dropoff. And thank goodness I ran back into the house at the last minute to grab my jacket. I put my sweater on my son for the ride to dance class:

And then my jacket on him for the ride home (aww, Hawaiian dancing and then tap dancing makes for a tired kid!):

Daily miles: 12.0
April miles: 74.3

I’m sure Engine Engine Engine version 2.0 will make an appearance this month and finally get a write-up, but most days when I want to coordinate school dropoff with some fast bike time, I drag the empty trailer behind the Big Dummy and leave it at preschool for four hours. This morning the bike counter acknowledged us–sometimes the trailer confuses it–and we were bike number 976 of the day at 8:54am.

After dropping the kids at their respective schools, I swapped the Big Dummy for my little road bike and met my friend Astrid to check out her new bike and treat her to breakfast as a thank you for sending me a Craigslist link to the most amazing kid bike (to be a birthday present in a couple weeks–you and the birthday boy will see it soon!). We met at Solsticio on the Burke-Gilman Trail and then hit Recycled Cycles for Brooks Proofide for Astrid’s fancy new saddle.

Speaking of fancy and new, Recycled Cycles has the 2013 Kona Ute and MinUte.

Next we rode downtown (numbers 1371 and 1372 at the bike counter this time) and as I was bidding Astrid farewell at a bike rack, who should pull up but the Jimmy John’s delivery woman I have seen around lately. Naturally, she’s my favorite…though I haven’t seen if she can track stand as well as the guy with the gold components. She pulled up to the rack, swore a bit, and manhandled a bike that was hogging two spots (and by that, I mean that she gently lifted it and moved it slightly to the side). All very exciting!

I had a bit of time before preschool pickup so I did some route experimenting for a Critical Lass ride to Pedaler’s Fair. I think I finally got it sorted out on this third attempt.

I still had a bit of time, because I always seem to have extra time when zipping around with the road bike so I stopped in at Wrench Bicycle Workshop. Last night on the Menstrual Monday ride when my bike started squeaking, Kelli of Yoga for Bikers said it means my chain needs lube. Kelli is among the new round of soon-to-be Cascade Bicycle Ambassadors and she’s already ambassador-ing!

So I pulled the preschooler home in the trailer and later on we used the Big Dummy again to pick up his brother. Slow bike, fast bike, slow bike.

Daily miles: 18.4
April miles: 62.3

The last day of March was glorious–sunny and summery and full of bike riding and friends. But while April started out cloudy and cool, April means 30 Days of Biking and is therefore the best month of the year. You’ve heard me say this before: I love 30 Days of Biking! It’s what changed me into an everyday bicyclist. It’s a great way to be tricked into seeing just what’s possible by bike. Some repeat participants have goals above and beyond simply biking each day, such as go farther. I’m tempted to up the ante, too. I’ll try to go farther, for one. Also, lately I’ve been using our car once per week so staying out of the car all month would also be nice. I’m not making it an official declaration just yet, but I probably will after a bit of mulling. And certainly oodles of new adventures and cargo-carrying feats are in order.

On to today’s biking…
Only one kid goes to school on Mondays so our day started out slowly, with a four-block ride to our local elementary school (and four blocks back, natch). Afer a bit of hanging out at home, we rallied and biked over to Ballard to pick up Pedaler’s Fair flyers at Swift Industries because I like distributing flyers. And since we were so close, we stopped in at Dutch Bike Co to get the skinny on their new shop (and eat pastries). Alas, there will not be coffee on site with the bikes at the new place, but the beer garden makes up for that. The address is on Leary which made me a little leery (ha), but it’s at the corner of teeny NW 48th Street, the cross street by Dutch Bike Co’s current (and future cafe-only) location. Yes, there will be two parts to DBC: cafe in the Kolstrand Building and bikes/beer in the new spot.

After fetching the kindergartener, we biked to Northeast Seattle for the memorial walk a week after a horrible car crash involving four pedestrians, killing two. We walked in the streets with a police escort, making a long stop at the intersection of the collision. It was lovely and heartbreaking and Mayor McGinn attended and later announced some safety improvements for the area.

I don’t often make it up to the northeast because it’s all uphill. Today, while zig zagging our way uphill, kids arguing (“It’s a puppy!” “No, it’s a doggie!”), and me whining at them, we found ourselves in front of Chez Car Free Days. What luck! Nothing like witnesses to end an argument. Anne led us the rest of the way to the walk, graciously waiting at the crest of each hill while I caught my breath.

I asked for route advice heading home, because neighborhood friends will always have better route advice than Google maps. Except they all wanted to send me uphill. Until it was discovered I hadn’t yet seen the new 39th Ave NE neighborhood greenway. Of course I want to go out of the way (and it wasn’t even very far out of the way) to go all downhill rather than uphill!

The greenway was easy to spot from 70th thanks to multiple signs and the new pedestrian crossing median islands.

And the greenway itself was glorious and full of bikes! In the seven blocks I traveled, I saw six oncoming bicyclers–the first one so distracted by the cherry blossoms, he was riding on the wrong side of the quiet street and nearly hit me head-on. Talk about a sign of a bike-dominated street, right?! The other bikers all kept to the right and I was particularly happy to see a dad pulling a trailer and a mom with a front baby seat. We saw one pedestrian walking in the safe street, but numerous others on the sidewalk. Also on the sidewalk I saw a girl riding a kick scooter and a cat being walked on a leash, both on the Neighborhood Greenway Checklist in my mind. Here’s the south end of the greenway, where it meets up with the Burke-Gilman Trail. The whole length of it is covered with these two-way sharrows. Wouldn’t it be nice if the only place we saw sharrows were on safe, quiet greenways? (That’s assuming the current sharrowed streets all turned into bike lanes and cycletracks).

The kids were inspired by all the walking (I have to admit the bike makes us all a bit lazy in terms of walking) and my five-year old insisted on walking past his school on our way home. He thought it’d be great exercise and make the hill easier for me. How could I resist? He didn’t want to get back on the bike once things flattened out, though, and I didn’t want to travel the remaining three blocks at a snail’s pace. Fortunately I talked him back on because I had places to bike and people to see!

I left the kids with Mr. Family Ride and made a rare solo night outing to attend the year’s first Menstrual Monday ladies ride (First Monday of every month, meet at the International Fountain at 6:30 and ride at 7:00). Nine of us biked from the Seattle Center to Loretta’s Northwesterner in South Park. It was a nice, flat 9.7 miles which included rescuing a drunk guy on crutches with a bag of beer cans who had fallen in the middle of the street. Menstrual Monday to the rescue!

Here’s my parking spot. Because it’s not often I can lift my rig to park sideways, but also because there was nowhere else to park.

Loretta’s has a converted Airstream trailer on the back patio where we hung out for drinks, food, and music before heading back north. Fun times!

Daily miles: 43.9
April miles: 43.9