Happy Seventh Birthday, Big Dummy!

It’s that time again! My Big Dummy turned seven today so here’s a quick recap of what I can remember about our adventures over the past year…

The kids mostly ride their own bikes, but I still take my Surly Big Dummy longtail cargo bike just about all the time. Every so often I get to carry a kid and his bike, though fortunately never both kids at the same time. Here’s my 11-year old from Friday who got a little too wet, cold, and tired on the way home from middle school:

I’ve also delved into towing a little bit. On the way to the pumpkin farm this October I towed each kid on his bike one at a time:

and one time I towed my nine-year old around on his longboard:

And I’m using the bike for work for the first time ever! I used it to fetch and charge e-scooters during the pilot project. I hope they’ll come back and I can do more.

It’s always exciting when my bike gets conveyed far afield and the trip to the Columbia River Gorge on the Cordilleran Tours van was something else!

I also found some cool, big stuff on the side of the road (#groundscore!) like these two bookcases:

And in more normal carrying, toting my single-speed bike, folding bike, and skateboard to the Ladd’s 500 and then riding a lot of my laps (many of which were with photographers or podcaster on the back) with my Big Dummy was a wonderful usage of the bike.

I always like to do a “day in the life” recap of the Big Dummy’s birthday so here’s our day:

Today started out a little slow because my nine-year old woke up with a little cough so I didn’t do the usual two-mile round trip ride to escort him to school at 8:00 a.m. At 8:30 a.m. I loaded up Pixie into the basket and biked eight miles round trip to escort my 11-year old to school.

Lindsey Bikes! is visiting so we set out to meet up with Kath of Portlandize for fabric store, visit to Clever Cycles, lunch at Lardo, pet food store (where I bought a 10-pound bag of dog food, yay cargo to carry!), Books with Pictures, retrieved my 11-year old from school, and surprise flat tire on Lindsey’s bike and short walk to A Better Cycle to get it fixed.

Then I traded friends for Pixie and headed north to record an episode of the Sprocket Podcast–my sixth time, Pixie’s first time. That’ll post to their site in a few days. Obvs, I spoke about the bike’s birthday a bunch.