At the beginning of summer I complained about having to earn back my “summer legs”. I was out of practice carrying kids and their bikes and beach gear and a day’s worth of food. School started today so now I’m back to carrying just kids and little lunch boxes…but my slow strong legs now have to get used to the morning sprint between schools again!

I didn’t get a nice picture of us all on the bike, happily riding to school–because I didn’t have a moment to spare–but here’s my least favorite intersection at a red light with a women parked in the bike box.

The first leg is a two-mile rush to preschool for a 9am dropoff. We made it on time! Which meant we didn’t have to rush the handoff. I think we were out the door at 9:05 which left sufficient time to rush two miles back for 9:25 elementary school dropoff. Thank goodness our school start times stayed the same as last year because even five fewer minutes wouldn’t leave me enough time. Next year when they’re both at the big school life will be so much easier!

Here’s the bike rack after school started:

Looks like I need to get on my Bike to School Mom game. But I also saw lots of parents with trailer bikes and walking their bikes alongside kids.

Now that my bike was free of passengers, I loaded it up with preschool garage sale donations. You know you’re having a good cargo day when a friend says you look like a bag lady.

At 1pm I swapped the garage sale goods for my four-year old and hit the grocery store:

We dumped the groceries and bike at home and for 3:30 elementary school pickup (first grade!) I rode my son’s 20-inch Danish Mosquito while the four-year old rode his 12-inch bike. I love that one of them is on a bike big enough for me to [sort of] fit on! It’s only two and a half blocks, by the way. And that’s my new J Bailey Brand hat from Hub and Bespoke.

At school I saw my friend’s Zigo Leader stroller bike for the first time. It looks pretty neat! I’m eager to hear how her uphill ride home went. There’s a similar product called Taga I have yet to see in person.

And finally the last leg: kids on bikes (on the sidewalk), me on foot.

Have a good school year, everyone!

I’m stealing their thunder by breaking the news, but if you read Julie’s Biking During Pregnancy post and did the math, you’ll have surmised there’s a new Wheelha.us family member! I’m eagerly awaiting a biking-with-baby post. Our biking with baby started at 2.5 months in a infant carseat in the trailer, but the Wheelha.uses probably have something more creative planned.

But this post is about all the bigger kids, as I took my two and two of the young Wheelha.usians out for the day. I eased into things with just one spare kid for four on a bike (and a spare bike on the bike).

They look a little crabby because I just tipped over.

It’s a shame to live so close to Seattle’s stellar Burke-Gilman Trail (two blocks in my case, half a block in the Wheelha.us family’s case) yet not be able to easily access it. I can travel one busy block off the most direct route and get to a new crosswalk (which took parents at our elementary school years of campaigning to get and at which cars rarely stop for nine-year olds trying to cross to school, let alone me on the big bike). From the Wheelha.us house, I traveled one block along busy Pacific to get to a narrow curb cut to get up on the sidewalk–which is where I turned a little too slowly and tightly for having a trailing bike, and tipped. And then I still had to ride two sidewalk blocks parallel to the BGT before being able to access it.

But really, they had fun! Look at those happy faces:

They’re also relieved that our bike shop errand (putting the fenders back on the road bike) was over. Not that they didn’t have a great time playing with the shop dog and bins of used parts (seat tubes make excellent horns). And we browsed the used sporting good store next door because I’m not only about errands…just mostly about errands.

Then I traded my bike for Julie’s Madsen bucket bike so I could grab another Wheelha.us kid for even more fun! (And more errands!)

This was my first time carrying so many kids and also my first time riding with e-assist. I wasn’t sure how to read the display and didn’t want to run down the battery so I only used it a bit at the beginning of our excursion, but it was fun! Of course having four kids hidden behind me in the covered bucket got a bit wild. At one point through the giggles I heard “Now all of our helmets are on wrong!” Sheesh.

That was even before we stopped to load up on sugary doughnuts. Doughnuts!

But then they had to endure library book return (sans visit inside the library) and my chiropractor appointment (but they have a train table). There was a bit of storage space in the bucket even with four passengers, but it wasn’t so easy to get to, so I utilized the frame-mounted front rack. I think they sometimes use a basket on the rack, but today I borrowed a bungee to hold my shopping bag (to keep my messenger bag dry because it was raining) on.

And finally playground, french fries, and play cafe.

They’re just lucky I didn’t also drag them grocery shopping as that was initially on the itinerary. The kids may be more relieved than the parents that relaxing school starts back up tomorrow.

This was supposed to be my “I found great routes up two big Seattle hills!” post, but I’ll save that for a future post (because I chickened out on the first hill and got lost on the second hill). So instead it’s just another “blah blah blah hill hill hill” post.

Our first hilltop stop was 20/20 Cycle for the Posse’s on Broadway Cargo Bike Picnic Ride and next year I’ll go through Interlaken and arrive from the north, but this year I stuck to my old, familiar route:

…plus I didn’t see a great waypoint for the kids to stretch their legs and me to drink more coffee using the new route (though this is Seattle so I’m sure there’s coffee and greenspace to be found if I look again) and I wanted to stop by The Calf & Kid to pick up Briar Rose Creamery truffles for the potluck.

Here we are at Melrose Market, home of The Calf & Kid. Even though my long bike doesn’t fit in our fancy bike corrals, I got it wedged in backwards. Interesting that everyone else parked nose in, whereas at R+E in the U-District, people back their bikes in.

Point “C” on the above map is a stop at Tougo Coffee was for me to rest at the top of the hill while the kids played in the play area. Nothing beats a cafe with a kid area! But soon enough we made it to 20/20 Cycle, which conveniently also has a little play area.

The ride consisted of 20 adults and 8 kids–or so that’s what I count in front of Black Sun Doughnut:

Prior to that stop in Volunteer Park was the obligatory swarming of Dick’s on Broadway:

and winding up this lovely path by a Henry mural:

We had a fun off-road section leaving Volunteer Park:

There was also an off-road section into our stop at Ravenna Park, but I was working too hard not to tip over so there are no smiley pictures of that. It helped to climb that last hill next to Davey Oil as he offered some encouraging words (which I think may have been “How are you not tipping over?”) I have a lot of practice riding extremely slow in gravel, though it’s usually on flat gravel while following zig-zagging kids and not up a painfully steep hill. But we made it! After which I had to lay down in the grass for a bit.

Now, I feel like I shouldn’t pick favorites, but look at this awesome family! Traditional Santana tandem on the right and Hase Pino Allaround on the left. I thought it was just another Bilenky Viewpoint “unique tandem” at first (there are quite a few of those around Seattle!).

The bikes were cool and the whole family was nice, but I was mainly taken by the Santana stoker. He had so many creative seating positions! One of them even involved pedaling…though with just one foot. So cute. But at the same time, I really hope I get some pedaling help by the time we move up to a tandem.

Now along to hill two!

Our preschool often has gatherings at the playground six blocks away. Six blocks up Seattle’s best hill, that is. I’ve tried the direct route before and it was awful. I don’t think I even made it up one of the four uphill blocks. I’ve been meaning to try a supposed gradual route up–from a friend who rides a regular bike with no extra stuff (such as 100 pounds of kids) on it. It’s a little convoluted so I meant to try it alone (and on my light road bike) first, but naturally, I never got around to that. Also naturally, I fell off the route without realizing it–it’s awfully twisty and turny! But look at this lovely view from West Armour Street and 5th Avenue West (which is way higher than I should have gotten at any point):

The playground is just two blocks down that hill and a little to the right, but I continued two more blocks uphill to West Raye Street, same street as the park. I should have continued up even more, but instead I took the steep downhill, stopped to cross busy 3rd Avenue West, and then got stuck at the base of the park. The kids kindly got off to walk through the park and I could ride the rest of the way in.

A couple people cheered us on near the highest point and I really wanted to snarl, “Obviously we’re lost!” but I managed a smile. Soon (though not too soon, I need to recover a bit) I’ll give it a try and see if it’s all it’s cracked up to be.

Today we crossed the ship canal and back in order to avoid the Missing Link. Actually, that wasn’t my original intention–we’d originally planned to visit Alki Beach in West Seattle, but changed the plan for Golden Gardens Beach instead. But we still wanted to see the superyacht parked at Pier 91 so we went out of our way…and then more out of our way to hit a bakery by the Olympic Sculpture Park and watch the trains for a bit. I should have realized Sunday is the wrong day to check out superyacht because it was dwarfed by the cruise ships. We’ll go again on a different day. And hopefully it’ll have a helicopter or two on the landing pads to complete the look.

We biked 15.6 miles instead of 6.7, but looking at the map, a more direct detour only adds one mile. There is the matter of having to walk through the Locks and it’s not quite as flat a route, but it’s scenic, includes the bike counter, and avoids the Missing Link.

I haven’t previously gone out of my way to avoid the Missing Link, but I can’t imagine my kids riding solo along it. And like most people, I hate the Missing Link. Every few trips through, I see a bicyclist felled by the train tracks. It’s awful and upsetting. Even on non-crash-witnessing days I think of all the injured people and tear up. Maybe I should consider intentionally avoiding that stretch, eh?

But back to the good stuff!

Heading back north from superyacht I realized Sprocketts Recycled Bicycles is really close to the trail! I thought it was deep in Magnolia, but it’s just a couple buildings down from where the bike route emerges from the train yard. We’d been meaning to stop in and see if there’s a dog, as implied by the logo.

There is indeed a shop dog! Her name is Mama and she’s the sweetest dog in the world.

The bikes are pretty sweet, too. I especially liked the Brooklyn Cruisers–pretty city bikes with internally-geared hubs. The Brooklyn Cruisers are new, as are many of the bikes, but the shop also has a great selection of used bikes.

And then, beach! There were a ton of people out. I’m sure those visiting by car had a bear of a time finding parking.

We took our regular route on the way home and saw evidence of upcoming changes to the Missing Link! (I also saw a guy pedaling in between the train tracks, but he stayed upright…though I didn’t stop to watch his exit at the curve.) The dotted lines mark something totally new: advisory bike lanes. I’m curious what the spray painted icon will become–it looks different than the regular short-hand sharrow.

And there are a lot of speed humps coming!

This is really going to be something!

I discovered a great new use for my Xtracycle WideLoader last Bicycle Sunday: longboard holder. My Sector 9 fits perfectly upon the WideLoader platform with the 12-inch kid bike in the pocket above.

I used a bungee cord to secure it as well, which was good for when I released the kids on their own bikes at the beginning of the Bicycle Sunday street closure.

I brought the skateboard along because I left my Big Dummy at the FamilyBike Seattle Family Bike Expo and I figured the kids would want to ride back and forth along Lake Washington Boulevard and I didn’t want to jog after them–after all, I ride my bike to avoid walking (and running). We ended up just hanging out at the beach so I didn’t get to do much skating–just to between the beach and expo a few times.

I saw the usual assortment of cool bikes along the three-mile, mostly-closed-to-cars route, but I think I was most taken by this trailer trike, the Morgan Cycle Caboose Trailer Bike. The bigger model can hold quite a large passenger–up to 33-inch inseam and 200 pounds. I’ve got a soft spot for adaptive bikes.

There are three more Bicycle Sundays left this year: September 1, 15 and 22.

We had a great time at Summer Streets last night. Seattle has four Summer Streets events over the summer–the last one, Rainier Valley is next Saturday, August 17th from 11 to 4. They’re just wonderful and the kids love walking and riding in the middle of the street–who wouldn’t? If only there were more of them!

I don’t like the westward climb to Phinney, so we happily swung through Ballard to pick up friends on the way. When I say “pick up friends” I mean that literally–my suggestion for a “kid swap” (very useful when siblings are getting wild) turned into a “kid addition”…but that’s just as helpful as a kid swap in separating battling brothers.

Sadly, I couldn’t fit the fourth kid on so he opted to balance bike most of the way over and poor Alyssa hardly got to carry anything with her Xtracycle–just one kid bike. She might not be as obsessed with carrying anything and everything as I.

We hit the Phinney Farmers Market first and partook in the zucchini car races. Even on Summer Streets day, car culture is insidious. But also at farmers market we learned that bike-based artisan ice pop vendor Six Strawberries is getting an Icicle Tricycle today! See it at the Seattle Street Food Festival this evening.

Summer Streets was full of TOOMUCHSTUFF. The kids barely registered the Bubble Man in their race to the Cascade Bicycle Club bike decorating station. We had picked up a new bike basket while passing a garage sale (the garage saler thought I’d picked up the kid bikes at a previous garage sale and didn’t think I was intentionally hauling them around town all day–heh) and it needed some personalization! Here’s Cascade Bicycle Ambassador Kelli of Yoga for Bikers quizzing the kids on bicycle anatomy.

Our other big stop was G & O Family Cyclery where we scammed a little free bike maintenance from Davey Oil…although Davey is more of a “Here, let me show you how to do that yourself” kind of guy which scares someone as inept as myself, but my son was stoked to remove his broken chain guard.

And Tyler happened to have the perfect bolt in his pocket to perform a repair on our other bike’s coaster brake. That’s some of their test ride fleet in the background (as well as Tom of Seattle Bike Blog, making the bike blog magic happen via smart phone): Tern Cargo Joe, Xtracycle EdgeRunner, and Larry vs Harry Bullitt.

I test rode the Bullitt because it’s such a humbling experience. Those things are hard to get the hang of! I wobbled my way across the street to a flat block and eventually worked my way up to donuts and panda shots.

I was not the only one perfecting bike tricks. The kids had a blast bike dancing (is that a thing?) back and forth in front of the loud music at the north end of the event. The little one finally got the hang of stand-up pedaling and the big one did some fancy one-footed stuff and side saddle coasting. And curb jumps. So many curb jumps. It’s a wonder their bikes didn’t rattle apart, even with the recent maintenance!

We took Engine Engine Engine (cyclocross bike + Burley Piccolo trailer bike + double trailer) out for a last hurrah yesterday: 33.3 miles to Alki Beach and back. The kids love Engine Engine Engine. I wish Engine Engine Engine had a triple ring on the front. But the Alki trip was flat enough. Last time we used EEE was on a trip to Greenwood and that was too much hill for me.

I should point out that I’m pretty sure no trailer or trailer bike manufacturer would recommend using a setup like this. I like EEE because it’s a way to carry two or three kids with separate pieces that can easily be broken down. For me that means it’s easy to carry up from the basement, but I like to imagine a family with three kids piling the pieces into their car and driving to a safe, flat, wide path for a wonderful afternoon ride with the kids. EEE isn’t ideal in a busy city, but we managed OK through Fremont and crossing streets numerous times for the Alaskan Way construction detours. It takes care to angle oneself carefully at corners to wait out a red light without the caboose sticking out into traffic.

We rode by both bike counters: Fremont ignored us, West Seattle counted us. But the West Seattle one is a little glitchy so I wasn’t too celebratory. And it ignored us on the way home.

So why the last hurrah? Cyclocross season is approaching and one isn’t supposed to have extra stuff (drink cages, fenders, Burley Piccolo rear racks) that could fall off in a race and hurt someone. My original plan was to ride three separate bikes down to Recycled Cycles in the morning, but I was tired from all the pedaling yesterday so we dragged the bike down on our way to lunch with friends down the street at Agua Verde.

So this is what I ended up riding all day:

We were quite the clown bike parade–initially we were also with Anne of Car Free Days on her Xtracycle and Shawn of Wheelha.us on his Big Dummy. Kristi and Pete normally ride a Madsen bucket bike and Yuba Boda Boda midtail in the Bay Area, but are traveling (via Portland where Pete won the Fiets of Parenthood!) with their new Brompton folding bikes. This is where we broke off from the parade of Kristi, Pete, and Julie of Wheelha.us.

Speaking of cyclocross, the WAWCX (Washington Women of Cyclocross) Festival is Sunday. There are clinics, a non-competitive course ride-through, and a mom race! Online registration is closed, but one can register on site. I’m doing the mom race:

Exclusive for this event, the Mom Race is an opportunity to truly celebrate and recognize women who race cyclocross and their other life roles. Mom categories will be seeded based on the age of their oldest child (-12mo, 13-35mo, 3-5yo, 6-10yo, 11-14yo, 15-19yo, 20+yo). Thanks to Woodinville Bicycle, all proceeds from the Mom Category Race will benefit the ultimate WAWCX Mom-of-Cross, Sarah Bender and her family.

I would like Engine Engine Engine to live on, but ideally with a different front engine. Lotsa gears would be nice. And disc brakes. And I’ll put a kickstand on that bike because Engine Engine Engine shouldn’t have to lay down at the station.

Or soon we can trade that caboose for a proper engine–the newly four-year old is just about tall enough for the Burley Piccolo. I want to stick it behind a tandem bike in the future and we’ll all share the pedaling.

…not that today saw any pedaling help. My six-year old spent the whole trip to Alki pedaling backwards. Apparently that’s much more fun that pedaling forward. And on the way home he spent the trip perched in a standing position, occasionally doing a half pedalstroke backwards then forwards. At least on a tandem his pedals will move (and hopefully his feet will be on them) and I imagine the little guy will be a more eager helper…although today his big move was shoving the sides of the trailer into the wheels creating even more drag. When I described EEE to a neighbor once he asked, “Why don’t you just drag an anchor around while you’re at it?” Indeed.

So farewell Engine Engine Engine! You’re certainly a crowd pleaser and I hope we’ll see you again.

Today was our first day on East Marginal Way since the Lance David Memorial Ride exactly three months ago. I didn’t know this during today’s rides back and forth to Alki, but this morning there was another collision–bike on bike–here. What I did notice was the new green bike lane leading up to the corner with the ghost bike. It’s hard to miss the heavy tread marks of all the truck traffic screeching through it.

Since we travel this street during weekends or non-commute weekday hours, we don’t share the space with trucks, but I can imagine what it’s like during commute time and I felt it was important to attend the memorial ride, organized by my friend Don of West Seattle Bike Connections. Here’s a quick recap of the May ride…

There were several fast-paced memorial rides and while I would classify this one as faster than my usual “easy (under 10mph)” it was just about slow enough for my heavy rig and kid-friendly. Now kid-friendly isn’t the same as kid-oriented–like a Kidical Mass ride–so we skipped the pre-ride gathering and speeches to get wiggles out at the adjacent beach. A bit of run-around time can make all the difference.

And I was able to do a bit of socializing during the long ride over–riding under 10mph makes it easy for friends to catch up and pay a greeting :) I met Brooks, one of my costars from the Cascade Bicycle Club: Three stories from the road video. He was heading home to Burien.

Next Don of West Seattle Bike Connections caught up and rode with me for a bit–we’re right across the street from the ghost bike here. Note the oncoming bike on the sidewalk rather than the other side of the street.

And Dongho Chang, recently declared maybe “the coolest traffic engineer in the world”.

So things are changing on Seattle streets, but not fast enough to protect everyone. Just two days ago, people gathered in Rainier Valley for a community walk and vigil. Meanwhile, the kids and I were in Portland, experiencing a truly bikeable American city. But now back in the real world, we carry on, encouraging more people to join us on bikes on Seattle streets and influencing what change we can in our little way.

We attended our first FREE kiddie race at the Marymoor Velodrome two weeks ago and it was awesome! This was Grand Prix weekend, the velodrome’s biggest weekend of the season, so there were Kiddie Kilos on Friday and Saturday, but usually the kid stuff is on the first and third Friday of the month for June, July, August, and September. Kids ages 2 to 12 are welcome (with parental permission, bike, and helmet) and the heats are divided depending on how many kids show. July 19th had a record setting 60 kids so after the balance bikes/training wheels lap, each age had its own heat.

The park is great with a small train play structure very close by, plenty of room for riding little bikes around, and bike race watching.

The track is surrounded by grassy slopes and people set up picnics at the edge to watch while eating dinner. There’s even a beer garden down by the track.

The kids ride on the flat asphalt at the bottom of the tilted part of the track…though some of the bigger kids opted to take to the real track. The littlest kids took one lap and the bigger kids could do two if they wanted–that started at the six-and-under lap, I think. My three-year old just started full-time pedaling (he learned in April at Cascade Learn 2 Ride, but he hasn’t been motivated to really ride until the Pedalheads open house a few weeks ago). Unfortunately, he hasn’t picked up braking yet so he kept going once he finished his lap (or maybe he was just having too much fun to stop) so I darted through the grass after him and caught up about 1.3 laps in.

The remaining 2013 Kiddie Kilos are:
August 2
August 16
September 6
September 20

The racing starts at 7pm and Kiddie Kilo is the 4th event. Kids are free, but over 16 admission is $5 per person. My Cascade Bicycle Club membership card got me in free for Grand Prix weekend, but that’s just for the special weekend. Rain cancels racing and their twitter is the way to track the latest info.

I hope we can make it out again this season. We drove this time, but I would love to bike over early and have Mr. Family Ride meet us with the car after work to take kids and their bikes home for a reasonable bedtime. Pedaling home a quiet, empty bike and skipping bedtime mayhem would certainly be a nice ending to a day of Kiddie Kiloing :)