Another year, another bike birthday post. I think bike years are faster than human years, because it feels like much more than five years since this life-changing bike entered our lives.
I got the Surly Big Dummy primarily as a kid carrier, but now that the kids are riding mostly on their own bikes at ages nine and seven, its role is changing a bit. I always take the Big Dummy when we go out just in case I need to carry a kid and his bike, but that happens less and less these days (yay!). I worry a bit about the kids turning into bike-averse tweens so I want to be equipped to scoop them up on my bike after any little crash, tired spell, or tantrum. The kids weigh 125 pounds together, but without them on the deck, the Big Dummy rides like a regular bike so it’s fun to get to ride it around empty most of the time.
Today we biked five miles to the Seattle Center to see Space Santa in the Space Needle (he’s the coolest!) and the Big Dummy’s most important role was bike rack. I feel a little guilty relegating my sweet bike to such a mundane job, but apparently decent parking is the most important thing. Bike parking at the Seattle Center leaves a bit to be desired. There are a couple stationary bike racks (on the west side of the Armory and one I noticed today under the monorail track near the EMP), but most of them are small Cora racks that aren’t bolted down and get dragged around the center (and shouldn’t be considered safe to lock to). Looking at the Cora rack specs, I see my bike at 76.4 pounds weighs more than these six-bike Cora racks, plus it’s easier to anchor in a convenient spot–at the base of the Space Needle at the start of our day out, for instance.
I saw a couple bikes locked to Cora racks and a couple more smartly locked to fences. The Parking Squid used to live at the Seattle Center (it’s across the street from the aquarium now), but security guards yelled at people who tried to lock to it since it didn’t look enough like a bike rack.
Heading home the Big Dummy got a bit of a birthday surprise when we were number 666 at the Fremont bike counter. Very fitting with Surly’s surly-lowercase-ess persona. Fun fact: my handlebars–not the stock flat bars that come on Big Dummies–are Surly Open Bars that measure 666mm wide, rock on.
One little exciting change to the Big Dummy, as of yesterday: now I match the majority of cargo biking moms with MKS Grip King pedals. These were on my Surly Straggler (my “me” bike), but I swapped them out a while ago for Shimano A530 hybrid pedals, that are flat on one side and SPD clipless on the other. So now my Straggler is sportier and my Big Dummy is snazzier!
Don’t worry that the Big Dummy has been getting bored with her passengers getting so independent. We’ve been delivering loads of old stuff to the thrift store. A very noble job and there are the makings of many loads left in my basement I hope to clear out before her next birthday.
“Go Team Christmas Tree!” is one of the many things people shouted at us as we biked home with our tree this year. There’s something to be said for parading six miles with a big tree. Last year we got the tree just half a mile from home. That was the first time the kids rode their own bikes so that was exciting and new (for them–I would have liked carrying both kids and tree because the bigger the load, the more points). We probably would have gone to the same tree lot, but it doesn’t seem to be there this year and the kids suggested the Swansons Nursery Reindeer Festival. So this year was both kids-on-their-own-bikes and far-away-tree. Fun!
Six uphill miles is too ambitious for my seven- and nine-year olds to do all in one shot so I planned for a stop or two on the way there. This would also make for a nice break from the cold and rain. We started with one and a quarter of our steepest uphill miles to doughnuts. Pixie the dog came along so I hoped the kids would eat their doughnuts inside Mighty-O while I kept Pix company outside, but they voted to keep the pack together. Fortunately it was early enough (and uphill enough) in our journey that they were plenty warm and they downed their doughnuts quickly enough that they didn’t get chilly sitting still outdoors.
We made it three more miles when I dropped my chain which dragged my front derailleur mount clamp out of place.
Naturally this happened while the kids were half a block ahead of me (I can usually keep up with my nine-year old on hills, but every once in a while he joins his little brother to leave me in the dust), but they eventually heard my hollering and came back for me. They don’t go through intersections without me so they would have discovered my absence soon enough. However, I’ve been encouraging my seven-year old to do a bit of bikey wandering and for a mile leading up to this catastrophe he was u-turning around the Fremont Avenue Greenway traffic circles to zoom back and practice bike-by high fives with me. Now he’ll probably assume I’ve broken my bike every time he gets far ahead of me.
While setting my derailleur back to the right spot, my seven-year old pointed out he had a flat tire. I move my repair stuff from bike to bike and don’t always have everything with me (and never keep kid tubes with me unless we’re bike camping). I had my bike pump and a tube for my 26-inch tire, but no patch kit or tire levers. Oops. Fortunately we were very close to JRA Bike Shop so I loaded up my little dude and his bike and off we went.
This was my first visit to JRA’s new location and I love the new, bigger space! It was also perfect timing for avoiding a downpour and to warm up for a bit. They had a small Surly Big Dummy built up so I took it out for a test ride. Amazing how light it is without all the kid stuff on it. My bike weights about 75 pounds, but this one was easily heftable. I didn’t realize the deck is green this year and I can’t get over how cute the matchy-matchiness is!
JRA has great commuter bike stuff, like Rainlegs rain chaps and Bar Mitts handlebar mittens. We also like their bike bell and horn selection and picked up an orca and dinosaur.
Outfitted with a new kid tire and tube, checked-over mamabike, horns, spare tubes, patch kit, tire levers, potty breaks, and doughnut, we were ready to roll again. One mile and fifty puddles later we were at Swansons Nursery.
Reindeer!
Model train!
Koi pond!
Cafe!
Christmas trees!
Unfortunately no Curly the Camel this year, but we were forewarned by the website that he’s temporarily away due to a hurt leg. We also happened to see a friend who works at Swansons at our doughnut stop and got the full scoop. What luck! It was nice to get confirmation that it really was just a hurt leg and this isn’t another “Moe the miniature donkey is spending the winter in Hawaii” thing that we didn’t buy for a minute two years ago.
The whole tree experience is pretty cool at Swansons. The kids ran through aisles of trees hanging from the ceiling and soon found “Fluffy,” the perfect tree. Everyone was extremely helpful and very complimentary about the kids’ tree choice. I left the kids watching the tree shaker (to remove loose pine needles?) while I paid and unlocked the bikes.
Biking through the drive-through tree pickup area was way fun.
They were pretty excited about the bikes and did all the loading. My Big Dummy wore its Xtracycle WideLoader so I could load it on the side (pro tip: load your tree on the left side so people passing in cars can see it and be impressed), but Fluffy was bigger than last year’s tree so we put it on top of the deck. I secured it with my favorite long lashing things: a Yuba Cargo Strap and Xtracycle Utility Belt and the Swansons guys tied Fluffy’s trunk to my Hooptie very securely.
To break up the ride home we stopped to get pizza to go. Again, the kids didn’t want to wait inside warm and dry without me and Pixie, but we were between rainy spells and they hopped around enough and crashed their bikes into one another over and over to stay warm. The bummer about having the tree up on the deck was that I didn’t have a nice spot to put the pizza. My other usual spot is in the front basket, but that’s Pixie’s domain now. So I wrapped it in my rain skirt to keep it from the drizzle and bungeed it atop the tree, hoping it wouldn’t leave a square wilty spot on Fluffy during the final two miles.
It was an action-packed five hours/12 miles and we look forward to celebrating the season with Fluffy until it’s time to take him to the bike-based tree bonfire :)
‘Twas our rainiest Thanksgiving Day yet. Here’s the Flickr album of 115 photos, many of them blurry, all of them grey and wet. But our annual Thanksgiving ride is rain or shine so there was never any thought of canceling.
Check out previous rides to see less rainy, more exciting photos:
I wasn’t sure anyone would make it out to join us, but we met with one other family at Gas Works Park for the start and word of another catching up along the way.
Official start-of-ride group shot (my children are both hiding): two adults, three kids, one dog / two longtail cargo bikes, two kid bikes, one balance bike:
While I stopped to load one of my kids and his bike onto my cargo bike, we were joined by three more adults, one tween, one dog / one cycletruck, three regular bikes / one dog trailer:
Our first new bicycle infrastructure this year were the flexiposts protecting the bike lane over the University Bridge:
Despite the weather, we stuck to our schedule and stopped at the little playground at the southeast corner of Lake Union from 11ish to 12ish. And good thing, we were joined by another dad and kid! This made our final tally 11!
11 people: 6 adults, 1 tween, 4 kids, 2 dogs / 1 Surly Big Dummy longtail cargo bike, 1 Xtracycle EdgeRunner longtail cargo bike, 1 Larry vs. Harry Bullitt longjohn cargo bike, 1 cycletruck cargobike, 3 regular bikes, 2 kid bikes, 1 balance bike (the balance biker was off and on), 1 dog trailer.
This year we did ten loops around the Lake Union Park model boat test pond (except for me who did zero so I could take pictures and my seven-year old who raced around 13 times):
And then we enjoyed the other new bicycle infrastructure along our annual route: the Westlake Bikeway!
One other change this year is that the Starbucks in the AGC building was closed for the first time! We stopped for a beat to consider our options while cars streamed through the drive-thru (which wasn’t open to bikes, of course).
I suggested we continue along our way and see if we stumbled upon anything open. Having a warm-up stop is pretty nice, but I was also anxious to get home and start wringing out our wet stuff.
Normally we would have biked under the Fremont Bridge before crossing on the west side for the most kid-friendly route, but my kids were so far ahead they didn’t hear my shouted directions so we strayed a bit from this official route. I guess that’s a hazard of the kid-friendly Westlake Bikeway ;)
We noticed the Fremont Starbucks was open as we stopped next to Yellow Dot Cafe to consider next steps. A phone call revealed the Fremont Caffe Ladro was also open so half the group headed there and half of us continued home.
I was happy to get the kids’ boots on the boot dryer and this was the first time I made use of our HotSnapZ Reusable Hand Warmers. The heat packs are so big that they don’t tuck into gloves or boots easily so we’ll have to do some plotting before we head out in the cold next. They’d work nicely in pockets for passengers, but not sure what to do about pedaling kids.
Happy Thanksgiving!
In keeping with my resolve to just keep pedaling…but also do more, I’ll share how we started our day when normally I would skip posting about this part:
The kids and I spent some time talking about Standing Rock. I told them about our friends who are out there, like Mike who is charging phones with his pedal-powered generator bike. We wanted to choose some items from the Standing Rock Needs You Amazon Wish List, but had trouble getting the shipping to work (which I see has a workaround now) so we gave to the The Official -Sacred Stone Camp GoFundMe instead.
A tweet and Instagram of a video my seven-year old took of me removing our bikes from the bus got more attention than I expected (especially from France, bonjour!) so I probably should put it up here, too:
* Yes, it takes longer to load than unload…but not much longer.
* Yes, all Seattle buses have racks for two or three bikes (as far as I know).
How to
Before our very first bike/bus outing I watched the video on the King County Metro “Loading your bike” page a lot of times and used one of the practice racks.
About our racks
The rack in my video is the Sportworks Apex 3, the newest style here in Seattle. I discovered this by reading the comments of this Seattle Transit Blog post: Metro’s Xcelsiors hit the streets.
While I don’t know everything about bikes on buses, I have picked up a few tidbits…
* Just yesterday I learned from a lovely mostly-bike-and-bus-based piano tuner, Audrey Karabinus, that if the rack won’t fold down from the bus as expected, push it in towards the bus first. Worked like a charm on yesterday’s sticky rack!
* And from a friend who works for Sound Transit, the old DL3/Trilogy and DL2 racks can hold wheels as small as 20 inches and the Veloporter can hold wheels as small as 16 inches. I’d guess the new Apex also goes down to 16 inches.
I refer to the racks by the style of hook they have:
Apex = black plastic hook
DL3/Trilogy, DL2 = black metal hook
Veloporter = yellow claw
I like using the old black metal hooks best since they’re the easiest to deploy. Even the new ones can be sticky…a bus driver told me that when passengers don’t treat them gently they get like that.
Do you have any bike-on-bus insights? Please share them in the comments below!
Monday morning the kids and I escorted Russ and Laura of The Path Less Pedaled to their BoltBus and found ourselves downtown with three bikes, no school, and unexpected great weather. I don’t really like biking downtown with the kids so we don’t do it often. I prefer to bike “scary” places as one unit, either on the Big Dummy or tandem + trailer bike, but during non-peak hours it can be fun to be on three separate bikes…though we resort to quite a bit of slow sidewalk riding.
…but first, here are my photos from the kid-free weekend with Russ and Laura. And allow me to confirm that the breakfast burritos at TNT Taqueria are excellent. And our evening burritos mentioned in VLOG 027 were from Rancho Bravo. Seattle: not just coffee.
“VLOG 026 – Cranksgiving Seattle – Day 2 Part A” is the best of the Path Less Pedaled videos because Pixie gets the most airtime:
Back to the family biking stuff…
Our first stop was 5.5 blocks to Back Alley Bike Repair. I thought we had done a combo of street and sidewalk, but my Strava recording makes it look like we stuck to the sidewalk the whole way. Jackson Street has streetcar rails and can be pretty busy. At the bike shop I looked into replacing lost gloves and stolen helmet, but didn’t make any purchases. The kids signed the shop copy of “our” book, URBAN CYCLING: How to Get to Work, Save Money, and Use Your Bike for City Living. Fun fact, even the page that looks like it’s signed by me isn’t–it’s been forged by (outsourced to?) Stevil Kinevil.
Then we rode a whopping 1.5 blocks to the Klondike Gold Rush Museum and National Historical Park. I thought we had stuck to the sidewalk since it was so close and on our side of the street (and rails), but Strava says we took to the road so I guess that’s what we did. It’s all flat down here, by the way, which makes it easier riding in the road with kids, knowing we can move along at normal speed and not uphill crawl speed. It’s a great little FREE museum, by the way. We spent a lot of time this visit and learned much more than last time. The kids were game to sit through the 25-minute movie, something they usually don’t have the patience for.
Then we went 16 in-street blocks (16!) and one park block through Occidental Square to get to Westlake Park for a snack and playground break. This took us along the 2nd Ave Cycletrack. I let my speedy seven-year old zoom ahead since he knows to wait at intersections. If there weren’t so many people in cars who either don’t notice or ignore the NO RIGHT ON RED arrows (we saw two such people today) I would have urged him to go through ahead of me. While stopped at a red light at 2nd and University I pointed out the silhouette for Sher Kung–one of 240 placed around Seattle on Sunday for World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. We attended the memorial ride for Sher Kung two years ago, which was the reverse of this part of our route (Westlake Park to Occidental Park). The kids sat on the Big Dummy that day and we felt safe in the company of hundreds of other bikes, but I wouldn’t have let them bike downtown on their own back then.
From the end of the 2nd Avenue Cycletrack we biked two blocks of Pike in the street. As you can see, I took the Big Dummy just in case either (or both) kid wanted a lift, but I got lucky and didn’t have to tote anyone.
Fun times at Westlake Park and the Holiday Carousel looks ready to go in a few days. The kids aren’t currently carousel fans so we won’t come back down for it.
From Westlake Park we rode the sidewalk for 10 blocks: a block of 5th alongside Westlake Center to cut across McGraw Square and stick to the sidewalk of Westlake until the street car rails peeled off. FYI, BUS ONLY is for bikes, too. Then we got back on the sidewalk for the last block of Westlake between Mercer and Valley because it’s a mess.
And then that long glorious stretch of the Westlake Bikeway. I learned that the yellow strip I thought was a divider between bikeway and sidewalk is actually a bike bridge between hot lava and piranha-filled river! It also looks like an effective way to avoid the carpet tacks.
There’s also a new trick called “The Limbo”…but also sometimes called “The Limo”. Pedal fast to build up speed and then coast past your mom like this:
We stopped for sushi in Fremont, then biked home at 4:30 in the dark (ugh, yes, dark at 4:30 p.m. way up here). We ride three sidewalk blocks up from the Burke-Gilman Trail before we can ride a couple street blocks. Yahoo for those sidewalk blocks this time because they brought us face to face with a new cat! He’s super friendly and the kids have named him Fluffy Star Nightmare.
Come to the park at 4pm to have time for playing, stringing lights, and taking photos of our lit-up rigs while there’s still a bit of daylight left. The nice part of holding our ride on a weekday these last two years is that the community center will be open! Good for hiding from possible rain and visiting the potties before we roll out at 4:45pm.
We’ll finish up at Grumpy D’s Coffeehouse around 5:30 p.m. There’s a warm fireplace near a group of comfy chairs, plenty of table seating, and toys! Hang out a bit for peppermint hot chocolate and other treats.
It’s that time again!
Seattle’s Annual Thanksgiving Family Group Ride Lake Union Loop is coming up next week.
On Facebook? RSVP here.
Same rough timeline as years past:
Thursday, November 24, 2016 10:00 – Start gathering at Gas Works (near the play barn) 10:30 – Depart 11:00-12:00 – Playground by Daniel’s Broiler 12:30 – Starbucks warm-up stop 1:30 – Back to Gas Works
As always, families are welcome to drop off early for naps/cooking/eating plans. We’re usually a much smaller group by the end.
Route map (it’s a CLOCKWISE LOOP if you want to catch us en route):
I’m not much of a mall goer. Three years ago I biked 4.5 miles to our closest mall, Northgate Mall and noted it’d been three years since my last visit. We live 2.2 miles from University Village (or U-Village if you’re cool), but that’s an “outdoor lifestyle shopping center” which is hardly the same as The Mall.
But how could I say no to riding to the Lego Store in Alderwood Mall in Lynnwood with friends?! Granted, I never want to do it again, but it was a blast. Reminiscent of a summer bike camping trip, in the way it was so tiring and so humbling. So fun!
It was a long trip on a cold day so we took the tandem train (Rodriguez tandem and Burley Piccolo trailer bike). It was too big a trip for the kids to ride on their own and I figured even a little bit of pedaling would keep them warmer. Plus they don’t like riding their own bikes with handlebar mittens because they can’t see their shifters (it’s very important to see the number while declaring “I told you I could ride up that hill in gear seven!”), but I can put our Portland Pogies and Bar Mitts on the tandem train…though my stoker found them uncomfortable with his bar ends so we took them off partway into the trip and will have to do some adjusting before our next outing.
We biked four miles to G&O Family Cyclery to meet up with the start of the ride. That put us at 4 bikes / 11 wheels / 11 people. We collected some friends at Bitterlake Playground: 3 more bikes / 6 more wheels / 5 more friends. We lost 1 bike / 2 wheels / 2 friends to Costco along the way, but picked up 2 bikes / 4 wheels / 2 friends on the way home so it was quite the roving party.
We’ve previously been as far as Sky Nursery, nine miles from home, so we had five miles of new territory! Echo Lake and Echo Lake Park were really cute, and are just before the Interurban Trail ends for a bit at the Aurora Village Transit Center so that might make a fun epic 20-mile (round trip) kid ride some summer day.
A friend warned me the day before about the one big hill and described the secret work-around. Our ride leader Anny knew all about this (because family bikers are all-knowing), but the secret work-around has a very narrow spot the trike wouldn’t fit through so we skipped it in the downhill direction on the way to the mall. All the non-trikes took the secret route on the way back. Here’s the map of the regular-versus-secret route. My phone froze on the way home so no photos, but I’ll paint you a picture with words: heading south on 76th Avenue West at the south side of Lake Ballinger we crossed 205th in the crosswalk and biked one block west on the sidewalk of the south side of 205th. Then we ducked through a small cut-through in the railing to get to Wallingford Avenue.
It was great that there was so much multi-use trail for the trip. Lots of bollards along the way which makes me think people would drive their cars on it otherwise, but maybe it’s just a formality. I like that there aren’t a lot of bollards on the trails in the City of Seattle, but we do get lost cars on the trails now and then because of it. I also kind of enjoy biking on trails alongside freeways. It feels like secret access to an area not meant for bikes. But then it’s also ridiculously loud and stinky and we joked (in shouts so we could hear one another) about the joy of biking on the beautiful trail as we soared over I-5.
The mall was very mall-like. I’ve been there once before, when my dad was visiting with a rental car and drove us to the Build-a-Bear Workshop to make Minions. The bike rack situation left much to be desired–just two on those hitching posts you’re supposed to lift your saddle and hook over. There’s an REI at the mall, but it doesn’t have bike racks outside.
We were all starving (despite many snack breaks along the way) so we started at the food court (after an obligatory super-long journey to the potties) and then hit the Lego Store. Unfortunately our walk in from the bike rack took us past the American Girl doll-store-and-fancy-restaurant and a few of the kids make a break for the door, but we were able to catch them in time.
We stayed the perfect amount of time so there was still a bit of daylight on our way back to Seattle. We got back to Greenwood at 5pm (after leaving from G&O in Greenwood at 11am) and hung with the group at Flying Bike Cooperative Brewery for a little bit, but still had those four miles to get home and poor Pixie was home alone all day again so we didn’t stay long.
It was an awesome and exhausting 32-mile day and I went to bed at 8pm and never want to go there again…unless a friend says, “Hey let’s all ride to the mall!” :)
We planted trees today! Green Seattle Day took place in 15 parks around the city and I selected Golden Gardens as our park of choice. It wasn’t the closest location, but it’s our favorite beach and a flat bike ride…or so I thought. The event details arrived yesterday and pinpointed the location as up the hill from the beach. The email only provided driving directions so I poked around Google maps for a bit to decide what to do. Biking gradually up to the top of the hill via Green Lake and Greenwood didn’t sound appealing so we planned to stick with our flat trip to the beach and walk what Google maps said would be five minutes up a flight of stairs.
I was a little worried about leaving our bikes locked so far away from us for three hours, but not worried enough to bike uphill. The beach doesn’t get crowded in November, but there was an exercise group next to the bike rack when we arrived and a few families at the playground when we returned.
We’ve never been up the hill next to the beach, but it’s great! Except the stairs were closed for construction. And there was no sidewalk on the busy road. I was stymied for a minute, but looking at the stairs, they appeared to be repaired and just missing the railing so we carefully walked up them.
The planting was great fun! The kids can’t wait to go back and visit the last two trees we planted: Douglas Fur Seal Tree and Bunny Ears. We also saw a couple worms, a beetle, a snail, a squirrel, and A SALAMANDER.
The event ended early on account of the wind–they didn’t want to risk the volunteers being squished by fallen trees. But we planted a bunch of trees and removed a bunch of invasive species. I hoped to find a better way back down the hill so we followed the trail to the west of the dog park. Unfortunately it didn’t look like it would take us back down to beach and the swaying trees above us were a little worrisome so we turned back and took the closed stairs again.
We hadn’t made any concrete plans for the day besides the 9-12 tree planting (which ended up being 9-10:30) so we hit at the beach playground and ate snacks. We heard tell of some beavers in the wetlands so we walked over to check them out. No beavers or turtles, but we saw tons (tons!) of ducks and a cormorant. And then spent a long time on the beach. It’s nice having a flexible schedule, though we ended up leaving Pixie alone longer than I (and she!) would have liked. There was one dog at the tree planting, but he was mellower than Pixie.
Next up was lunch at Red Mill Totem House across from the Ballard Locks. The large lock is empty (through November 23rd) and it’s a sight to behold!
Then we had the usual hella long ride home with me carrying one kid, then both kids, then one kid again.
The day cleared up and was beautiful, though windy. It was raining when we left home so both kids wore rain pants. I don’t always think to bring rain gear if it’s not raining when we leave the house and they would have been very cold without that extra leg layer. My older son wore his winter boots, but my younger son wanted to wear his tennis shoes. I brought his rain boots along just in case, but didn’t get them on him until after he rode into a puddle so deep he got stuck and had to wade out. Unfortunately I didn’t think to bring extra socks. I’d like to think now he’ll listen to me about not riding through puddles–they can hide potholes! you don’t know how deep they are!–ha ha, wishful thinking.
All in all, it was a very fun day. I later found out that while we were the only family biking to our tree planting event, my friend in Portland PLANTED TREES BY BIKE with Friends of Trees. Wow! The kids can’t wait for Green Seattle Day 2017 so I’ll try to rally a group to bike with us and make it even more fun. And I took a page from “Transportation Nag” Merlin Rainwater and emailed the Green Seattle Partnership to ask that they consider providing transit and bike directions in the future. By the way, here’s where you can donate to Green Seattle Partnership–we did!
One of the main reasons I bike for transportation is because it’s fun. Fun also seems the easiest reason to convince others to consider bicycling. If you read this blog, you probably also already bike for transportation and know there’s so much more to it than just fun. I truly think more bicycling (and consequently less driving) will save the world. But right now I’m suddenly very worried for the future of our world.
I’m aware that I live in a bubble here in Seattle, but that doesn’t mean I’m unaware of the horrors going on all around–even in Seattle, just not to me yet–but much more so farther afield. The local incidents I’ve read about have been only on Facebook, though I hear the Seattle Times is soliciting stories to publish tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s the AP story of country-wide incidents via the Seattle Times: Schools report racist incidents in wake of Trump election.
My mother’s first memory was her father hiding under their house during the Holocaust.
She was so little, she should have been too young to remember anything. But it stuck with her and shaped her.
I guess it was one of her last memories, too–when her breast cancer metastasized and invaded her brain she’d tell me about the conversations she was currently having with her father, now hiding in the house with her again.
She made the world a better place in a million little ways, helping people, helping causes, volunteering for anything and everything, being a friend and ally to everyone. Were the million little things–rather than fewer, bigger things–because she’d had it instilled at such an early age that if she just blended in, everything might be OK? And aren’t we all taught that to a certain extent?
I was relieved she died shortly before 9/11. I am relieved she’s not here for today. But I also wonder if she would have been moved to help in bigger ways. The million little things she did in the periphery were important and I’m happy about the million little things I do in the periphery as I continue her legacy, but I also need to overcome my instilled “training” and do more.
I don’t know what to do yet, but it will involve bicycling…even if it’s just bicycling to meetings and events, but we should all use whatever strengths we have so perhaps bicycling will figure more centrally in how I help keep people safe and save the world as it continues to change.
And in the meantime, we must all keep pedaling.
Here’s my last few days of pedaling:
Tuesday feels so long ago and like the last normal day there ever was. I’m usually not one to vote early, but even ensconced in my bubble, it felt important to drop off my ballot three weeks ago.
Even though I had no ballot to bike around with, I donned a pantsuit and went about my day…which this day meant dropping off a bike-load of old stuff to the thrift store, one of my favorite things to do as I pare down all the boxes of stuff from my previous life that we dragged from city to city for over a decade.
After school, we biked to the chiropractor. We haven’t been in three years, and the kids have never biked all the way there. Heck, it’s even been a big deal for me to do all the biking to get there, but that was before the 39th Avenue NE Greenway existed and I didn’t know the best way to Wedgwood. The kids didn’t exactly bike all the way there, but it was still quite a ride for them. And for me it was great because I carried first one and then the other. Not having to carry both kids uphill at the same time was much appreciated.
Wednesday was a blur. It felt fitting that it rained all morning. I broke the election news to the kids and let them know they would probably have a lot of classmates who were legitimately scared and would appreciate any extra kindness. I had a meeting downtown at 10am so I had no choice but throw on rain gear and just keep pedaling. I saw Haulin’ Colin on my way so we rode together for a block and exchanged hopeless looks before he zoomed ahead to get to work. It wasn’t much, but even just 15 seconds of a familiar friendly face helped. Heading home I saw a friend biking my same direction on the other side of the Fremont Bridge. I dinged my bell and he shouted hello. He looked rushed with what appeared to be his daughter’s backpack perched on his back, but otherwise seemed fine. I thought I’d catch him at the red light and check in, but instead watched from 20 feet back as he raced through the red light, screaming at and flipping off the drivers who honked at him. He made it through the intersection physically unscathed, but I worry he hadn’t made it through the first half of the day emotionally unscathed. He’s not white; his Seattle bubble isn’t the same as mine.
Thursday was #coffeeoutsideforher day and seeing a bunch of friends was immensely helpful. A guy who works at Fremont Brewing learned of the event on Instagram and stopped by to bring us a 12-pack of Bonfire Ale even though he had to rush back to doing brewery stuff and couldn’t stay for coffee. I feel like people are going out of their way to be exceptionally nice to one another right now. It’s certainly helping me. I hope it’s also helping people much more in need than myself.
I had towed my older kid’s bike along to coffee to drop off at Recycled Cycles for a tune up. Our original plan was to drop both bikes off Wednesday, but I just couldn’t rally to get out to door in the afternoon. “Just keep pedaling” is sometimes easier said than done.
Then I went grocery shopping, because “Just keep grocery shopping” is probably my mantra just as much as “Just keep pedaling.” For those who don’t grocery shop by bike (and especially those who don’t grocery shop at all because there are lots of options for grocery delivery in Seattle from what I hear) it might not be a big deal, but often grocery getting is my only biking in a week so it can be pretty special for me.
When Greg is outside the grocery store I buy Real Change from him. A while ago I started buying it for $5 instead of $2. That’s not as convenient when I shop with the kids because they like each giving him a dollar and it is slow going teaching them things don’t always have to be–or get to be–equal. What a great time to really work on that lesson, though. Anyhow, Greg didn’t look so good this day so I asked him if I could get him something to eat while I was inside. He’s white, but I doubt he’s inside any sort of Seattle bubble.
The tuned up bike was ready after school so we all went to fetch it…and to drop off the other kid bike. I wish I had just dropped them both off in the morning, but at the time it seemed only necessary to drop off the one having shifting trouble.
Remember how I said it’s hard for the kids when things aren’t exactly equal? Sharing is also a bit of a problem. I thought it’d be fun to ride the tandem bike down with the little kid on the way there and the big kid on the way back, since we’d have one kid bike each direction as we swapped bikes at the shop. But my little kid didn’t like the idea of his brother sitting on his saddle so I hooked up the whole tandem train and rode down with an empty middle seat. F–king ridiculous.
Also, this was new in that I had to take the extra-long bike on my solo-riding-kid route to the Burke-Gilman Trail. I have multiple routes for most destinations:
– Me alone on a quick bike
– Me alone on the cargo bike
– Me carrying kids on the cargo bike or tandem
– Me with kids riding separately
So this day I had to negotiate the tight turns of the sidewalk with the tandem train so my solo-riding kid wouldn’t be out on the scary roads between our house and the multi-use trail.
Friday we went to pickup the tuned up little bike and this time I took the Big Dummy to carry one kid and had the other ride his own bike so we could all pedal separately back. Yesterday the kids noticed the candy dispenser at Recycled Cycles so we bought $0.25 worth of jelly beans and $1.25 worth of Skittles. That machine doles out way too many Skittles per quarter. My big kid ate most of them and puked ’em all out at home later. It smelled like Skittles, at least. My little kid did plenty of stomach jostling, but he fared OK. Personally, I don’t think performing tricks on a freshly tuned up bike is the best way to appreciate new cables and stuff, but what do I know?
But back to pedaling…and more. Do you also feel driven to action? What are you doing? We’re easing into more small things now and I expect bigger opportunities to present themselves. I told the kids about buying Greg lunch and we made the time to watch the four short films of Film & Family Homelessness Project: American Refugees. I’d been meaning to watch since missing the screening in our neighborhood two weeks ago. And we signed up to plant trees for Green Seattle Day tomorrow.
My mother’s first memory was her father hiding under their house during the Holocaust.
Family Ride 