Recap: Kidical Mass rides to Swansons for pumpkins and baby goats

Hooray for hearty Seattle family bikers who came out for Kidical Mass rides to Swansons for pumpkins and baby goats! despite every Seattleite being extremely worried by the SUPER STORM forecast. A large group–17!!!!–gathered at G&O Family Cyclery for free espresso (thanks!!) while the kids played in the awesome toy corner.

Photo courtesy G&O Family Cyclery

Here’s our 4.1-mile round trip route from G&O Family Cyclery to Swansons Nursery and back to Flying Bike Cooperative Brewery. Google maps calls it “mostly flat,” but the slight hills are noticeable on heavy bikes and kid bikes. We crossed to the south of busy NW 85th Street for the flattest possible route, and carefully chose our northerly wiggle for relatively easy crossings of 85th and Holman Road. Coming back was a little more straightforward since the “mostly flat” was the downhill sort of “mostly flat.”

We had light rain the whole time, but only felt a bit of wind as we turned the last corner to the nursery. It was a great opportunity to test rain gear for many of us. I was OK in rain jacket, rain skirt, shoe covers, and no gloves (though I brought two pairs just in case). My kids wore rain jackets and rain pants, but really wanted to wear regular shoes instead of boots so they ended up with wet feet. My older kid pedaled and was OK, even without gloves (he finds it easier to shift without them), but I carried my younger kid due to an upset stomach and his feet were pretty uncomfortable. As were his hands, wet despite his gloves. We have two sets of handlebar mittens–one Bar Mitts and one Portland Pogies–and I love them and recommend them to adults all the time (and Bar Mitts Stroller Mitts for Xtracycle Hooptie/Yuba Monkeybars/Haul-a-Day Whoopee-Deux rails), but my kids aren’t used to shifting with them yet. This is reason enough to take the tandem + trailer bike on our next cold ride.

Swansons was great! The goats were adorable! With awesome names: Buttermilk Pancake, MegaMan, and Tootsie Roll. And the kids enjoyed the hay maze and peeked at the partially-assembled holiday model train display (I hear it’s going to be a cross between Halloweentown and Whoville this year).

Unfortunately, the day didn’t go quite as planned–Swansons warned us they needed to close early, at 2pm, due to the impending wind storm, but our end spot, Flying Bike Cooperative Brewery was closed until 3pm for a special event. That didn’t really matter for my family, though, because my kid with the upset stomach vomited by the pumpkins so we headed for home as soon as we could.

But we got our pumpkins! We agreed ahead of time on each kid selecting one big pumpkin, one medium pumpkin, and two mini pumpkins. One kid wanted all ghost pumpkins so we ended up with a cool-looking bike load.

A few families coordinated drying off at a nearby house together so I’m relieved an after-party/playdate still happened. We biked off with one other family which was fun for our two puddle splashers (and their littler kid is the one who gave me a shell and told me I looked pretty during one camping trip so he’s my super duper favorite even though he doesn’t seem to remember our special moment).