We met some friends at Cascade Playground this morning and braved the cold for a while before agreeing to meet at the REI play area four blocks away. The walker with one kid in stroller left slightly before me with two kids on the bike and the driver with one kid in the car. The walker arrived first, then me, and last the driver. If the distance was slightly greater, I think I would have won. Also, I was the only one who thought it was a race.

At the bike rack I noticed that the bike parked next to me still had its rear light on. I felt uncomfortable at the thought of touching someone else’s bike, but also obligated to save the light’s battery. I looked around nervously and quickly turned it off while the kids shouted “Mama! What are you doing?”/”Mama! Uh arr oooooey?” and reached hungrily at other parked bikes. Is that cool or should I have just left the light on? I have a feeling the answer to this question might be different in standoffish Seattle than in other cities.

I was approached at the play area by an REI employee who asked if my two-year old wore a size 2T and did he want to be an REI fit model. I asked what it entailed and she said we’d go to the headquarters in Kent (18 miles south of Seattle) where he’d play around in clothing to make sure it fit as it should. At the mention of Kent I knew I wasn’t interested and explained that we bike everywhere so it wasn’t feasible. Then she said, “Oh, did I mention it pays? $120.” I’m embarrassed to admit I immediately changed my tune: “Oh, well we have a car! We just don’t use it often. Sign him up!” So on our way out–which was two hours later than I’d planned to leave since I was too wimpy to ride home in the unexpected drizzle–we stopped by the third-party talent scouts for measuring. Apparently his modelling career is not a done deal, but the measurers seemed pleased with his numbers and whispered to each other, “Ooh, I think he’ll be great” so we’re just waiting for the call now. $120 could buy a lot of bike lights. Or part of one really bright one.

Today was the first day I purchased dog food by bike. Not too impressive since the 14.5-pound bag borrowed the seat of the 35-pound kid who was at preschool, but a first nonetheless. I’ve probably been slightly out of balance with cargo before, but I think if I’d had both kids with me and put the bag of food in one of my baskets, it would have been a bit awkward. Now I’m curious to see, so I’ll have to try that next time.

It’s been fun keeping track of mileage and days missed (October: 212.4 miles with 7 skipped days), but I think I’ll stop the tally for now. I should try to find a tool to keep track of things online and perhaps get a cyclometer. Some day.

Happy Halloween! After last year’s old-school sharrow costume, my son wanted to be a new-school sharrow this Halloween. I couldn’t think of a good way to create a bicycle-and-chevrons-symbol costume so I talked him into bike lane guy instead. And we turned the green leotard and tights from a handed-down Super Why! costume into a bike box costume for his brother.

Photo courtesy Hub and Bespoke

No one could tell what the boys were dressed as (except for one neighbor who had seen the bike box picture on the Spokespeople Facebook page) and it didn’t help matters that they added wings to their costumes and the bike box also wanted a balloon attached to his helmet. Here are the real street markings in case you aren’t familiar with them:

I don’t know that the costumes are crafty enough to deserve more details, but here goes anyway…

The helmets are covered with half an old t-shirt each, sewn into place.

The bike box’s bike is cut from cardboard and sewn onto the leotard. I’m not much of a sewer–I tried to superglue it first!

I cut the circles for the bike lane’s wheels from thick cardboard and taped a wire hanger to them before gluing white paper over the ugly mess.

I made a little harness with part of the helmet t-shirt: part of the hem from the sleeve worked well to thread the hanger through and the collar fit under his other arm to hold things in place. The wheels flopped around a bit, but didn’t get in the way as much as the wings.

The bike lane held an arm out front and did a “flamingo leg” to look the part. Of course the bike box insisted on doing a flamingo leg each time his brother did, despite my suggesting he put his hands on his hips to look more box-like.

My dad is visiting so we haven’t been doing much biking. This afternoon we all took the bus to Fremont to see The Bubbleman at the statue of Lenin and trick or treat at the local businesses (including Hub and Bespoke and the Theo Chocolate factory). After a couple hours of that, we hoofed it past the Troll to catch the 16 to the Wallingford Center for Green Halloween. That didn’t last too long, but it was nice to get a warm indoor break before trick-or-treating the nine blocks home. That was by far the best part of the trick-or-treating and we met so many more neighbors tonight versus Neighborhood Night Out. The best house was the one that had candy for the kids and choice of vodka/tonic, red wine, white wine, or beer (IPA) for the grown ups.

Parts of the evening would have been easier on the bike–especially the half hour of waiting for the 16. The bike would have been convenient for carrying our stuff, but I had a stroller along which served to carry our increasingly heavy candy overflow bag.

Saturday’s miles: 0 miles
Sunday’s miles: 0 miles
Today’s miles: 9.1 miles
October cumulative: 212.4 miles
Days missed: 7

Yesterday resolved into a stunningly sunny day so we spent the afternoon aboard the Virginia V steamship for the final floating farmers market of the season. In exciting bike-related news, when I mentioned to Matt of Hart Coffee that his operation looked compact enough that he could manage as a bike-based business, he said it’s already on his radar and he’s currently looking for a bike trailer. Of course I tried to talk him into an Xtracycle, but he’s very attached to his road bike.

According to the FarmBoat blog, the construction in South Lake Union has kicked into high gear, cutting off access to the park. We really like SLU Park, but admittedly primarily in warm weather so we’re cool taking a break until May.

This morning was our coldest morning yet. We all wore gloves and extra layers. The boys didn’t complain about the cold at all so I think we’ll be fine through the winter. I have to admit I’m relieved preschool is on the Seattle Public Schools snow closure program so we won’t have to deal with riding on especially bad days.

Wednesday’s miles: 0 miles
Yesterday’s miles: 12.2 miles
Today’s miles: 0 miles
October cumulative: 203.3 miles
Days missed: 5

After reading this How to Teach Your Kid to Ride a Bike tutorial, we broke out the new princess pedal bike for the first time. I thought we’d be golden practicing on our block, given Step 1: Point the child up a gentle incline, but we didn’t make a lot of progress today. Back inside, I checked the steepness of our hill for the first time with the veloroutes.org hill grade calculator. Perhaps I shouldn’t have considered our 7.1% grade gentle. So even though the solo pedaling was a bust, it was cool that the little balance biker got to zoom ahead of his big brother for a change. I’ll rest my back a bit (Step 2: Hold the back of the saddle is hard work!) and find a gentler slope. The bike looks a bit on the small side so we’ll have to get over to Bike Works soon.

We checked out the fall colors today, too. Perhaps not the most glamorous locale, but the parking lot of Gas Works Park is full of red trees.

We collected a couple buckets of leaves and then admired the latest colors recently added to the play barn.

Yesterday’s miles: 3.3 miles
Today’s miles: 8.8 miles
October cumulative: 191.1 miles
Days missed: 3

I’m still planning to buy a quality kid bike at Bike Works with my $12 for $25 Google Offers coupon, but I couldn’t pass up the FREE BIKES message to the local moms group. There were no descriptions of the bikes so I rode over hoping for a blue one and found quite the opposite. I almost brought our bigger balance bike along for size comparision and probably should have–I initially put both pink bikes in my trailer. I felt greedy and put the big one back and got lucky–the little one is the perfect size if not the perfect color.

Since we’re still in balance bike territory and may stay here for qutie a while (“I just want bigger and bigger and bigger balance bikes. No pedals!”) I haven’t done any kid bike research. I noticed that this little bike doesn’t have hand brakes so I figured it had coaster brakes and might therefore be a bit hard to learn on. Turns out it has no brakes. By design. Doesn’t seem like the safest way to start biking. Maybe it’s supposed to have training wheels to control the speed. But we’ll give it a go as-is.

For the record, I’ve got nothing against princess bikes…though I think six leading ladies is more than necessary on one tiny bike. Most of our little friends have lovely pink sparkly bikes, we’ve just really got a blue thing (and a yellow thing with the little one) going over here. And it looks like my beach cruiser had a baby bike.

Today’s miles: 1 mile
October cumulative: 179.0 miles
Days missed: 3

I met bike touring family extraordinaire, Pedal Powered Family, today! They’re spending a few days in Seattle as part of their year-long adventure through North America. I didn’t get to see their bikes, but had a lovely ten-minute chat with them in the Children’s Museum. They’re amazingly nice and Heidi gamely answered all my cloth-diapers-on-the-road questions. I don’t know why, but I find the diapering aspect the most intriguing part of touring with toddlers. I’d love to take a multi-day bike trip with the kids and feel a bit unadventurous for having waited so long that diapers won’t be part of the equation.

I just had the front passenger along today–his big brother stayed home with a cold. That meant we could take a spin around the International Fountain, which felt quite fitting today given the gloomy weather. Bike Snob NYC called it “a fountain in their velodrome” when visiting Seattle in March. This was my first time riding inside the fountain and I declare it an absolute must for “To do in Seattle on bike” lists.

We took the new buffered Dexter bike lane home. It’s just as nice as the southbound lane we took a few days ago. Interestingly, there are no busty bike lane icons on this side of the street. Several of the symbols at the bottom of the hill are augmented in various ways, though.

Today was the first day I wore Mr. Family Ride’s Endura Luminite jacket. It handled the rain wonderfully and even though it’s much to big for me, it didn’t feel uncomfortable. I should have worn a thin long sleeved layer under it because the plasticky fabric made my arms sweaty. I think I’ll have many rainy days to fine tune my rain outfit.

Today’s miles: 9.6 miles
October cumulative: 178.0 miles
Days missed: 3

The Seattle Aquarium’s octopus bike rack is back! It’s probably been accessible since shortly after our last visit, but we don’t make it down here very often. And since this was our first time locking up to the octopus, I hadn’t previously noticed the overhang. I had our seat-covering rain bags along, but it was nice not to have to use them. Thanks, aquarium!

We headed home through the Ballard Locks and stopped to watch a large barge enter the big lock. That was the exciting part of the return trip for the kids, but I was elated to run into Haulin’ Colin by the train yard. The bad news was all six of his black Rolling Jackass center stands are spoken for, but the good news is it will be six weeks or less before more are ready.

Colin was on his way back from Seattle Powder Coat, which was our next destination. It’s not the most kid-friendly place with colored metal pipes hanging at shortie eye level just asking to be clanged together. Fortunately it was just a quick visit to confirm the swatch I liked on my laptop looked the same in person. Otherwise I may have resorted to plopping the children in the big blue recycling cage to have a few minutes of quiet to study colors.

You may have guessed from the mentions of Haulin’ Colin and Seattle Powder Coat that I’ve got a new bike in the works. I don’t want to jinx things by saying anything more about it just yet, but it’s very exciting and as soon as it’s in my garage I’ll let the cat out of the bag.

Wednesday’s miles: 4.4 miles
Yesterday’s miles: 4.4 miles
Today’s miles: 16.7 miles
October cumulative: 168.4 miles
Days missed: 3

If you like bike lane symbols with boobs, check out the southbound Dexter Avenue bike lane. I think one of them is visible in Seattle Bike Blog’s video of the new lane. I’d been on Dexter northbound once–before the new buffered lanes were painted on–but figured southbound was too steep. Turns out, it’s not. It doesn’t have the train track appeal of Westlake, but the kids were excited to be in a new bike lane. It’s not a divided bike lane, but the painted buffer zone is great, as are the traffic islands for the bus stops. I don’t think I’d ride it during commute hours when it’s crowded with faster bikes, but we’ll use it again.

Today’s destination was Pike Place Market, but we ended up all the way down at the waterfront (had to get some train track viewing in) so I cheated and took an elevator back up. This time I took the elevator on the side of the market parking garage. It didn’t go all the way up to the skybridge so I still had a block of slight climb up Western. I think I’ve hit every elevator other than the parking-garage-to-skybridge one, but that would probably be too crowded for comfort.

We took Westlake home, but we’ll check out the northbound buffered bike lane some day soon.

Today’s miles: 15.4 miles
October cumulative: 142.9 miles
Days missed: 3

We ran a couple Halloween-related errands by bike today: white pants for a costume (similar, but even better than last year’s sharrow) and mini pumpkins to decorate the porch.

After drawing faces on the pumpkins, the boys took them out for a spin in their balance bike baskets. Naturally, we headed for Halloweeny house around the corner to infuse the new pumpkins with spooky spirit.

Yesterday’s miles: 0 miles
Today’s miles: 10.6 miles
October cumulative: 127.5 miles
Days missed: 3