end of a work week

I vowed to myself that any time I opted to take a car to work rather than ride my bike, I’d post about it. Yesterday I wimped out. The weather for the day wasn’t exactly ideal bicycling weather: steady winds at 25mph, gusts up to 40mph, and several severe thunderstorms (complete with tornado watches) throughout the day. Combined with the fact that we’re still adjusting to a new baby care schedule for the summer semester and it was just easier to drive the loaner car. We compensated, though: three adults plus a baby all drove to campus together.

Wait – three adults and a baby? Yes, that’s right, I count really well up to at least 5 or 6. Elinor and I have, in a manner of speaking, leased out our two spare bedrooms to a couple of college students for the summer. In exchange for rent, they babysit during the day when I’m at work and Elinor is in class and doing schoolwork. The students get a furnished place to stay in town for the summer and we get 30-some hours per week of babysitting in return. It’s an experiment, but we think it’ll work out pretty well for everyone. So anyway, one of the girls had a morning class on Thursday so she came along in the car.

Today it was back on the bike. The weather was the polar opposite of yesterday: sunny, high in the mid 70’s with light wind.

I have an update to report on the baby helmet. We bought the Me2 by Giro and I fitted it for Beatrix today. After applying the extra pads, the fit is great. The helmet still looks huge on her little head (perhaps pictures to come later) but it’s snug all round and the shape is much better for riding in the trailer. One negative: the extra pads are self-adhesive in name only. Perhaps I wasn’t attaching them in the right place – the manual doesn’t say anything about them and I couldn’t find any guides online to tell me the best points within the helmet to affix them – but in the place where it seemed best to me to attach the pads, they wouldn’t stay stuck. I was trying to put them along the padded band which runs from over one ear around the front to the other ear. This is the band that’s not adjustable, it’s fixed to the inside of the helmet. I spaced all four pads along the band and ended up gluing them on with Krazy Glue. That might not be the right expoxy for the materials involved, in which case I’ll have to shop for another glue. In any case, with the pads in place there and the back adjustable band tightened down, the helmet fits Beatrix’s head perfectly. It’s snug on all sides, doesn’t wobble, and doesn’t seem to be uncomfortable for her. So far, it’s a success. If things go bad on us later, I’ll share it.

easy commutes

Monday and Tuesday were great for commuting. It’s a little more than a mile and a half from home to work, nearly flat, and the weather has been idyllic. Highs around 80, just under 70 in the mornings when I leave, and sunny. I’ve noticed that biking even that short distance 4 times a day (I come home for lunch) for a week or so has already gotten my legs in better shape.

Today I have the perfect commute: I don’t have to leave the house. I telecommute on Wednesdays since I have a very cool boss who’s in favor of such things. It was a lifesaver for the past 9 months since Beatrix arrived on the scene since I’m able to help with kid care and either relieve Elinor or save us from needing a babysitter. It’s not as if I dread getting back on the bike or anything, but this is just one day out of five that I don’t care whether it’s raining like hell, blowing gale force winds, or whatever.

Beatrix’s new helmet is due to arrive today. I hope it works out better than her other one.

a long weekend

It was a busy weekend – so busy there wasn’t any time to sit down and write. And my computer desk is covered in tools, sawdust, and bits of drywall. It was also a weekend when I needed to use a borrowed car – twice.

First I needed to pick up a couple of small chests of drawers from an out-of-town furniture store, about 30 minutes’ drive from the house. Then Elinor and I hauled about 50 feet or so of 1×12 lumber back to our house for shelving. Since we don’t have a cargo trailer for our bikes, the boards had to come home in the car.

Still, we found some time to get some riding in. Beatrix is getting more used to the trailer and we’ve found she’s easier to entertain inside it than she is in her car seat. She can see her surroundings, for one thing (she’s too small to see much out the car window), and there’s room at her feet and to her sides for extra toys and drinks so she can entertain herself while she’s riding. One feature that we wish our bike trailer had was a recessed pocket in the back of the seat for the kid helmet to fit into. As it is, when Beatrix rests her head against the back of the seat, it pushes her helmet forward and down over her face. This does not make for a happy kid. We’ve ordered another infant helmet that doesn’t appear to stick out as much in back and has more clearance at the forehead. If it helps I’ll post links and such.

Ironically, now that we’re giving up our car, I really wish we had a garage. For the three years we’ve lived in our house, I haven’t missed having one except for mornings after ice storms. If you’ve ever scraped a quarter-inch of ice off a windshield, you know what I’m talking about. Now, though, we keep accumulating this bicycle gear and we’re just flat out of storage space inside our house. I’m not willing to lock things up outside. It’s not really for fear of thieves so much as fear of weather. We’re investing some cash in all this stuff, and leaving it out in the rain will shorten its lifespan considerably. So unless and until inspiration strikes, we’re putting our two bikes in our one big closet on the ground floor (under the stairs) and storing the trailer just inside the back door.

This week’s gear purchase plan: A rack for my bike. I’m still keeping my eye out for a cheap pannier I can use for commuting with a laptop, and ideally also something big enough for trips to the grocery store. I’d love one of these, or even one of these, but the dollars are adding up fast around here. So I’ll be camped out on ebay for a while, hoping something good turns up.

lap of luxury

Yesterday I went to our friendly neighborhood bike store, Sunflower Outdoor and Bike, to buy a trailer to carry baby Beatrix around.

Last weekend we tried buying a Schwinn trailer, the Trailblazer, at Target. It was on sale for $115, which was a good price, but after going on a couple of short rides it wasn’t working out. At 9 months, Beatrix is a little younger than usual for trailer-riding. Her neck strength is just fine – she’s always had a really strong neck and back – so supporting herself with her helmet on isn’t an issue, but she’s also a lightweight for her age so she looks pretty tiny in the trailer seat. The Schwinn straps and seat arrangement just didn’t support her very well at all. We ended up padding her with towels to get her propped up in a good riding position, but when she fell asleep after a long day she was leaning precariously to the side all the way home. Add to that a lack of any roll bar or guard rail for the wheels and we decided to return the trailer, bite the bullet and buy a more expensive one. The Schwinn was nice and light and had lots of storage space, being a double-wide model, but it just didn’t seem as safe as it could have been, and we decided that this was not an area for compromise. So, back to Target it went.

What did we buy? The Trek Solobug. This particular bike store is a Trek and Specialized dealer, so their trailer options were limited, but the Solobug had lots to recommend it. Beatrix was strapped in much more securely, there’s plenty of extra tubing around to cage in the cabin and the wheels, and the jogging stroller mode seemed robust enough for Elinor to take Beatrix on runs with it – something that would have been impossible with the Schwinn.

There are some downsides. The thing is big. It’s really big. It’s over-engineered, I’m sure, and I appreciate that, but damn that’s a big stroller to be pushing around on the sidewalk. Converting the thing to a stroller involves attaching two front wheel support bars and then the quick-release front wheel. No snap-on, snap-off wheel for the front, it must be attached the same way as a normal bicycle’s front wheel, all while the baby is stuck in the seat, getting bored and cranky about the wait. Moreover, there doesn’t seem to be a designated place to stow the unused hardware. While pulling the trailer, where to put the wheel and two bars? While pushing the stroller, where to put the trailer hitch bar? Trek seems to think that you’ll leave the house either for a bike ride or a walk/run, but not both, which isn’t the case for us. We like to ride downtown, unhitch, and walk around for a while. I think I’ve found a way to stow the pieces and parts in a way that isn’t dangerous to Beatrix and won’t be too much trouble to deal with on a regular basis, but as efficient and clever as the rest of the design is, I would think Trek could have done better in this respect.

So that evening we took the new trailer out for a ride. Pulling it was easy and being a single-kid trailer it was easier to keep track of how much wider I was with the trailer in tow. When we got downtown I realized we’re going to need some more locking equipment. A U-lock and a cable aren’t enough to lock two bikes and the trailer all together and I hadn’t brought the extra stroller pieces with me. So I did the best I could and hoped nobody would try very hard to steal anything. All in all, though, the trailer worked pretty well and Beatrix is comfortable inside as long as her helmet isn’t tipped down over her eyes.

Next up: Shopping for a bike rack and pannier for commuting to work and looking around for an infant helmet that doesn’t stick out so much in back.

a new lifestyle

My wife and I are ditching our car.

My wife, Elinor, and I live with our baby daughter, Beatrix, in a mid-size college town in the Midwest. We’ve been a one-car family for a few years now. Last week, the electrical system in our old VW station wagon shorted out (i.e., melted and began smoking). Ironically, this happened on the very same day that I bought a new bike to replace my ancient and recently ruined mountain bike. We looked at the cost of fixing the car, the expected upcoming maintenance work, and the last tank of gas we bought ($53), and decided it wasn’t worth fixing. Then Elinor asked, “Do we really need to replace it?”

I’ll admit: I reacted instinctively and said Of course we do. I grew up here, and I’ve been driving since the state let me at the age of 14. We live in a town with very limited mass transit (a small bus system) in an area of the country that’s extremely car-centric. Though we live in an older part of town that’s more compact, all around us the town is typical of new development: sprawling neighborhoods and commercial districts designed for car travel and little else. We have a 9-month-old daughter who must be carted around. The automobile justifications stacked up in my head.

I slept on it. I thought more about it over the next few days. I started to like the idea. We’d save ourselves a car loan payment and an insurance payment, not to mention (frequent) repairs and gas money, so the cost benefits would be significant. Moreover, with the right equipment and a lifestyle adjustment we could get by. And more than get by – we like riding our bikes together. For emergencies and the rare out-of-town trip we could borrow a car. Those times would be even more rare with planning, home delivery of internet purchases, and some re-prioritization on our part. How badly do we really want to go out to the other side of town? Is there something closer that would do just as well? One obstacle remains in my mind: winter. But we have plenty of time to worry about that. In the meantime, it’s summer, we’re perfectly capable of getting around under our own power, so we’re ditching our car.

And we’re not getting a new one.