Happy Eighth Birthday, Big Dummy!

First a confession: for the first time in eight years I didn’t ride my Big Dummy on its birthday! I have a cold and I got out the door five minutes later than planned so I rode the e-bike* we’re borrowing instead. But the Big Dummy is still my favorite bike of all time and gets a lot of action.

Here are a few of the fun things the Big Dummy got to do this year:

1) I learned I can still carry both kids, but it’s not easy now that they outweigh me.

2) Surly Bikes let me borrow the new e-assisted version of the Big Dummy, the Big Easy. It was fun! Obvs I hauled it around with my Big Dummy. I wrote about my first impressions and a full review over on BikePortland.

3) I carried camping gear (but the kids rode their own bikes) to a new-to-us campground, Oxbow Regional Park. We led the Kidical Mass PDX group so we had lots of company…as well as vehicle support for getting up the huge hill upon leaving the campground. My younger son opted for a lift in the truck up the hill, but my older son was game to ride up so I loaded my heavier gear into the truck trailer and we slowly crawled our way up. And we’d do it again! The only bummer about this campground is we couldn’t bring the dog. Here’s my review of the trip for BikePortland.

4) MOTHERLOAD, “a crowdsourced documentary about how cargo bikes will save the world,” is out! And my Big Dummy is in it several times. I rode my Big Dummy to the Portland showing in July.

5) Working full time means I don’t bike with the kids these days–one rides to and from elementary school on his own and the other rides the school bus to and from middle school. I usually ride the Big Dummy to and from work, but don’t use it at work (leading biking, walking, and hiking tours for Around Portland Tours). However, every so often I do use it for work, like my recent tour guest who needed to rush to the airport after our tour and was game to have me tote her luggage with us so she could take the MAX to PDX near the end of our ten-mile loop through town rather than call for an uber after the tour. And then I towed the extra bike back to the office from the MAX station. So fun!