I’m not sure how that’s a “safety” belt: how does it make Fizz safer? She’s a sensible kid, she’ll sit still while Thistle is riding. In the same way that a rider can easily step off a bike, a child of Fizz’s age and common sense would be better off _not_ being attached to the bike, in my opinion.
Unless I’ve missed something. Sorry for coming over all Safety Pierre, I just hate “safety” or “security” being used as blanket weasel-words.
If the bike tips, she’s going to be totally fine as long as she stays put in that location. If she’s not secured and Thistle dumps the bike, Fizz could get pretty screwed up especially if she hits the pavement and then the bike/Thistle plow over the top of her. In that situation I’d definitely want to be secured into the box too.
I’ve tumped over a trailer with a kid in it (unexpected bumps in a curving downhill, though I guess near Boston it is insane to expect smooth roads), and the safety belt keeps the kid inside the structure.
The better the infrastructure, the less need for a safety belt, but those of us who live in the poor, impoverished USA cannot afford the lovely stuff that they have in the Netherlands.
I love peer pressure when it is for good things. Just like eating healthy, imbibe in the bad things once in awhile too. Ride your bike often and drive when you must.
Damn you Thistle, getting children interested in doing healthy, active things out side with little negative impact on the environment, how dare you. Before you know it there will be people riding bikes to school, shops, work, on holidays, they’ll be having races, shops will open, people will be employed making and selling bicycles… oh hang on, that has already been happening for the past 100 years, carry on the good work.
This looks optimistic to me… I think kids are quite conformist and would hate drawing attention with such an eccentricity as coming to school in a bakfiets.
When I still happened to encounter kids in the bus (I’ve hardly used the bus since I caught the biking disease) I was appalled to see that all of them had bought exactly the same brand of rucksack (namely Eastpak)
The kids in my neighborhood want to ride in the bak, or even better pedal it themselves. Sad to say, I regularly have to turn them down due to other things that don’t allow me the time.
Trying is OK, but would they accept to be taken to school by their mum or dad in a bakfiets? I think not, but maybe I’m just some kind of pessismistic fatalist grumpy myself
This is only for very little kids. Children of 4-5-6 are not as jugmental as those you talk about yet. They’re glad to be with mom and dad and do what they do. Later…
What JeanM said. As for the sadness of genetically mandated conformity of older children, we were all just as bad and as conformist at that age. It’s a natural stage in human socialization.
I haven’t commented here before, so a really quick intro: I’m car-free and about 2/3 of my bicycling miles are on a recumbent. I just had to weigh in on the notion that children are conformists. Speaking strictly from my own experiences, I’d say they are not usually conformists at the age Fizz is portrayed to be. I get many many positive comments from kids of that age when I’m riding my crazy recumbent bike around town. In fact, when my son was in the 4th grade (9 years old) I was invited by his teacher to speak to the class about my bikes and lifestyle, and every single kid there loved my recumbent bike. Which er… *could* mean they were conformists… but I’m taking it a different way.
@JX75 – re;Eastpak… I just Googled the name and from a brief look at the range, I can’t see why the objection?
(Long link – sorry) http://www.surfdome.com/Eastpak_Backpacks-374/31&source=google?_$ja=kw:eastpak+backpack|cgn:Eastpak+Backpacks|cgid:1185838542|tsid:13319|cn:A+-+Eastpak+Campaign|cid:35245782|lid:12669961|mt:Exact|nw:search|crid:2690490312|kw:eastpak%20backpack|pm:|bku:1&gclid=CI2v55SAraMCFRQ9lAoddSO15Q
Shows a good range of type, size, colour etc. So if that is a locally stocked item, why shouldn’ they use them, maybe as a sort of ‘uniform’?
I bought my eastpack in graduate school 15 years ago. It had a label with a picture of a skeleton wearing a backback in the desert. I though, yeah sure. By golly, I about believe it now. years of using it to carry beer and sometimes books, sweat soaked, lashed to racks, taken canoeing, several airline flights. Not only is it still pretty solid, but it looks almost decent.
The only problem that I see with eastpack becoming trendy is increased demand will result in reduced quality.
You can get used to that. I started commuting about 40km round-trip three years ago. It took some weeks to get used to it, but since I’ve ridden every day.
you haven’t been to Western Washington have you? I could point you to any number of places here (Shelton and Port Townsend are the two that jump out at me off the top of my feeble brain) where the schools were built on top of the hill.
jeez, weefoldingbike, can you please leave the tiresome helmet wars on comment threads where the helmet topic is relevant? I feel like I’m suffering from Post Traumatic Helmet Discussion Disorder.
Hey just seeking to clarify something Unabiker claimed. I looked for it and didn’t find it.
He claimed BS and called people liars yesterday. He has tried to insult someone else today.
I suffer from the effects of helmet wearers on a regular basis. It would be nice if one of them could back up their claims. In this case I’m specifically asking about the SNELL spike claim.
For the sake of all our sanity ask in yesterday’s thread. I’m a strict member of team choice but you pushing me towards supporting mandated helmet laws.
Wear one or not as you see fit, but let others judge their own risk and just shut up about helmets already. You anti-helmet zealots are every bit as annoying, ignorant and tiresome as the pro-helmet ones.
What is this spike? some sort of Titanium point you drop on a helmet to see how much of a hole it makes?
I thought that was the Brinell test or something???
You can get to a hill so steep that you fall over from insufficient forward motion or your front wheel lifts off the ground. Short wheel base Bromptons suffer from the second problem.
You have choices. Either grow a pair (of legs), or go for the electric assist. At least one hill in Scandinavia (Trondheim) has a bicycle lift. Or get a really low gear, and/or a lighter cargo bike.
Uhhh, my commute has a stretch that hits 14%, then thankfully levels off to 8% then goes back to 14% then levels off to, well, actually level, then goes to 11% to 12% before it gets close to normal again. I now find that 8% hills are quite nice.
And the going back, I’m sure your 8% is like my 14%, either an extrememly sharp corner at the bottom OR, a light that is always red when you hit it. Meaning you loose all that momentum you gained. I end up stopping part ways down one 8% hill I have so I can time hitting the next 2 lights green. Sometimes it works and it is great, but other times it is a pain to have to stop (and hopefully remember to gear down).
A lot of these comments sound like when I was a lad going to school. I had to cycle straight up a cliff face, a 90% grade. And every day it was snowing with freezing rain. Fortunately, we only had to fight off polar bears once or twice a week.
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
(http://www.phespirit.info/montypython/four_yorkshiremen.htm)
The issue isn’t whether you strap a carbon-titanium something-or-other to the back of your SUV and drive someplace, and then ride around for a while. Thistle is using the Bakfiets for transportation of herself and her child and for hauling cargo. If your ‘ride’ involves this sort of thing, then never mind. I doubt it does, though.
yoshiyahu, who said anything that would direct you towards those conclusions? I’m not sure exactly why you’re chastising Rzar, and you’re definitely making a premature judgment about Rzar’s road and bicycle use.
Because of Rzar’s comments, SDMSS, that’s why. Saying, I have two SUVs, and I ride, seems to miss the point of the strip. if RZAR and not you had replied to my snarky comment, we’d know if they ride for transportation and cargo-hauling, or if they ‘ride’ as a roadie.
I hate myself for commenting on this because I know it’s artistic licence making for a good comic, but: why is the car _remote_ (right side in first frame) chirping? Isn’t it almost always the _car_ that makes the noise?
Wow, I thought that was a clicker that she used to call to the child! To be heard in a noisy public place without having to yell at the child. (My parents whistled.)
I liked this one. Funny thing – if the kids choose themselves they seem to prefer riding by bike or in a trailer. At least this is what our girls aged 3.5 and 4.5 years want and I take them to kindergarten year round in a Corsaire XL trailer. Only problem is that the oldest one want to ride her own bike now but since there are some parts on the 3km distance to kindergarten where you have to share the road with cars and lorries she needs one more year of training riding her bike. Next summer she will be fine
Our youngest girl easily gets motion sickness in our car – guess why she prefers the trailer!
“The Halton District School Board will open one of its newest schools, P.L. Robertson Public School in Milton, on January 4, 2010 as a “walking-only” school. As the newly-built school gets ready to receive students, the school board and community partners have been busy ensuring the infrastructure and supports are in place for students to use active transportation to get to and from school.”
What is interesting is that this is in the suburbs, not the notoriously bike-friendly downtown.
<fun> In my head I now have a picture of a Bakfiets with a miniature town layout in the box and microscopic children taking a guided tour of the Lilliputian town! Thanks for the image )
About 10 years ago I took on two young boys that were going into second grade. I tried to get their assigned grade school changed because there was a closer grade school with a safe route so they could ride their bikes. I was told that was not a valid reason to change their assigned school.
I was forced to enroll them in the school where they had to cross two busy streets to get to school. For several years I just followed them to school until I was sure they could and would ride safely.
They both grew up to use their bikes as their main form of transportation.
As an alternative to a heavy cargo-bike for transporting kids – in http://www.pixbox.se/pic_show_id31474005.html you can see my titanium road bike with Super Record which I occasionally use with the trailer. The kids did appreciate the difference to the regular cx-bike which is pretty beaten up after a couple of tough years commuting.
Never tried a cargo-bike but don’t think I would enjoy one – the joy of racing with the kids behind you shouting “faster daddy” while overtaking other commuters is hard to beat – that would never happen with a cargo-bike.
I’d also suggest that the trailer has a big disadvantage in that the kids are BEHIND you–you can’t easily talk to them, point out interesting sights along the way, and if they cut up you can’t call them to order.
I have a three-year-old who I transport everywhere in a Chariot trailer. He is always trying to talk to me, and it’s very rare that I can make out what he’s saying. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be getting a bakfiets soon; it has so many advantages over the trailer.
Perry, I’ve passed a kitted rider on a Cervelo on a $300 hybrid with a noisy broken BB, hauling a trailer with two kids that are big enough to have just about outgrown the trailer. We have a Madsen now, which is heavier than an aluminum bike+aluminum trailer, but I consider it safer in traffic thanks to greater visibility and narrower width. It’s also 1/3 the price of a Bakfiets.
I saw an outfit like this outside Coventry’s Swimming pool in 2007. I also saw a squirrel trying to get into it!
He almost succeeded – he tore a big hole in the side in his attempts. Took seconds too (about 2030s)!
I took my camera-phone out and got a video of it as well, very funny…
Whatever works for you and the kids is OK. In my case I needed something that works year round eve if the weather turns ugly and the snow is tricky. Since my commute is 20km (or more) every day and 6 km of this is with a trailer – I would find it hard to use a cargo-bike. Not many of them around in January I can tell you . I also like to use different bikes depending of if I am going through the forest to my work or taking a longer tour on smoth asphalt
Add two pictures to demonstrate riding in winter as well as two happy (and warm) kids in the trailer.
Another cargo bike is bought!
Complete with safety belt for Fizz!
I’m not sure how that’s a “safety” belt: how does it make Fizz safer? She’s a sensible kid, she’ll sit still while Thistle is riding. In the same way that a rider can easily step off a bike, a child of Fizz’s age and common sense would be better off _not_ being attached to the bike, in my opinion.
Unless I’ve missed something. Sorry for coming over all Safety Pierre, I just hate “safety” or “security” being used as blanket weasel-words.
: P
If the bike tips, she’s going to be totally fine as long as she stays put in that location. If she’s not secured and Thistle dumps the bike, Fizz could get pretty screwed up especially if she hits the pavement and then the bike/Thistle plow over the top of her. In that situation I’d definitely want to be secured into the box too.
I’ve tumped over a trailer with a kid in it (unexpected bumps in a curving downhill, though I guess near Boston it is insane to expect smooth roads), and the safety belt keeps the kid inside the structure.
The better the infrastructure, the less need for a safety belt, but those of us who live in the poor, impoverished USA cannot afford the lovely stuff that they have in the Netherlands.
I love peer pressure when it is for good things. Just like eating healthy, imbibe in the bad things once in awhile too. Ride your bike often and drive when you must.
Nice ‘toon today R&B.
Yes, Thithle…look what you’ve started. Hip, hip, hooray!
Damn you Thistle, getting children interested in doing healthy, active things out side with little negative impact on the environment, how dare you. Before you know it there will be people riding bikes to school, shops, work, on holidays, they’ll be having races, shops will open, people will be employed making and selling bicycles… oh hang on, that has already been happening for the past 100 years, carry on the good work.
So it begins…
A cargo bike today – a fleet of trikes, small MTB/ATBs, full-on MTB heaven?
This looks optimistic to me… I think kids are quite conformist and would hate drawing attention with such an eccentricity as coming to school in a bakfiets.
When I still happened to encounter kids in the bus (I’ve hardly used the bus since I caught the biking disease) I was appalled to see that all of them had bought exactly the same brand of rucksack (namely Eastpak)
The kids in my neighborhood want to ride in the bak, or even better pedal it themselves. Sad to say, I regularly have to turn them down due to other things that don’t allow me the time.
@ grumpy
Trying is OK, but would they accept to be taken to school by their mum or dad in a bakfiets? I think not, but maybe I’m just some kind of pessismistic fatalist grumpy myself
This is only for very little kids. Children of 4-5-6 are not as jugmental as those you talk about yet. They’re glad to be with mom and dad and do what they do. Later…
adding to that, different is cool at that age.
What JeanM said. As for the sadness of genetically mandated conformity of older children, we were all just as bad and as conformist at that age. It’s a natural stage in human socialization.
Actually I rode a 8 and 7 yr to school and all the 4th and 5th graders wanted their parents to get one. It’s very cool with elementary age kids.
I haven’t commented here before, so a really quick intro: I’m car-free and about 2/3 of my bicycling miles are on a recumbent. I just had to weigh in on the notion that children are conformists. Speaking strictly from my own experiences, I’d say they are not usually conformists at the age Fizz is portrayed to be. I get many many positive comments from kids of that age when I’m riding my crazy recumbent bike around town. In fact, when my son was in the 4th grade (9 years old) I was invited by his teacher to speak to the class about my bikes and lifestyle, and every single kid there loved my recumbent bike. Which er… *could* mean they were conformists… but I’m taking it a different way.
@JX75 – re;Eastpak… I just Googled the name and from a brief look at the range, I can’t see why the objection?
(Long link – sorry) http://www.surfdome.com/Eastpak_Backpacks-374/31&source=google?_$ja=kw:eastpak+backpack|cgn:Eastpak+Backpacks|cgid:1185838542|tsid:13319|cn:A+-+Eastpak+Campaign|cid:35245782|lid:12669961|mt:Exact|nw:search|crid:2690490312|kw:eastpak%20backpack|pm:|bku:1&gclid=CI2v55SAraMCFRQ9lAoddSO15Q
Shows a good range of type, size, colour etc. So if that is a locally stocked item, why shouldn’ they use them, maybe as a sort of ‘uniform’?
I bought my eastpack in graduate school 15 years ago. It had a label with a picture of a skeleton wearing a backback in the desert. I though, yeah sure. By golly, I about believe it now. years of using it to carry beer and sometimes books, sweat soaked, lashed to racks, taken canoeing, several airline flights. Not only is it still pretty solid, but it looks almost decent.
The only problem that I see with eastpack becoming trendy is increased demand will result in reduced quality.
There’s somewhere around a mile of eight percent grade going up to the school in this town. Just sayin’…
So going home you fly?
Eight percent? So what?
You can get used to that. I started commuting about 40km round-trip three years ago. It took some weeks to get used to it, but since I’ve ridden every day.
You know that. I know that. Convincing the car-bound hoi poloi on the other hand…
Where is it? There aren’t that many places like that. OTOH, cargo bikes are geared very low.
you haven’t been to Western Washington have you? I could point you to any number of places here (Shelton and Port Townsend are the two that jump out at me off the top of my feeble brain) where the schools were built on top of the hill.
re: ‘built on top of the hill’ sounds like a good idea to me – free of floods etc, maybe, good views that help education, cleaner air? Just my view
Thats nothing compared to where I grew up, the whole town is on the side of the mountain range that runs down the center of england,
think the average slope was 1015% if you were going straight up the hill,
Did you deliver lots of brown bread on a Pashley shop bike?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gold_Hill,_Shaftsbury,_Dorset,_England.JPG
Wrong part of England – Black Sheep is from the ‘North’ (ie: above ‘Watford Gap’
About 200M from Dorset
I know but it’s the street they used in the adverts.
So that’s eight percent grade going DOWN after school, right?
OH NO! WTF Mongo, grow a set.
Says the guy has been scared into wearing a magic hat.
Do you have a reference for the spike claim in the SNELL standard. I read the spec and couldn’t find it.
jeez, weefoldingbike, can you please leave the tiresome helmet wars on comment threads where the helmet topic is relevant? I feel like I’m suffering from Post Traumatic Helmet Discussion Disorder.
Hey just seeking to clarify something Unabiker claimed. I looked for it and didn’t find it.
He claimed BS and called people liars yesterday. He has tried to insult someone else today.
I suffer from the effects of helmet wearers on a regular basis. It would be nice if one of them could back up their claims. In this case I’m specifically asking about the SNELL spike claim.
For the sake of all our sanity ask in yesterday’s thread. I’m a strict member of team choice but you pushing me towards supporting mandated helmet laws.
Wear one or not as you see fit, but let others judge their own risk and just shut up about helmets already. You anti-helmet zealots are every bit as annoying, ignorant and tiresome as the pro-helmet ones.
I think all zealots of all types are annoying.
The anti zealot zealots are the worst.
wee, see yesterdays thread. Move on please.
So is that a way of saying I was not BSing nor lying but that there is in fact no spike involved in the SNELL test as you claimed yesterday?
Did you notice that I didn’t called you a BSer nor a liar? Not difficult is it?
What is this spike? some sort of Titanium point you drop on a helmet to see how much of a hole it makes?
I thought that was the Brinell test or something???
It’s not part of the SNELL test in spite of some claims that it is.
The spike test only applies to motorcycle helmets.
We have some nasty hills here as well: I use an Xtracycle for those.
There’s no such thing as too steep a hill; just inadiquate gearing.
You can get to a hill so steep that you fall over from insufficient forward motion or your front wheel lifts off the ground. Short wheel base Bromptons suffer from the second problem.
Trikes don’t have a problem with going slowly.
If your regular route includes a hill too steep, then you go to your LBS and ask them to adjust your gearing appropriately.
You have choices. Either grow a pair (of legs), or go for the electric assist. At least one hill in Scandinavia (Trondheim) has a bicycle lift. Or get a really low gear, and/or a lighter cargo bike.
If I can make it up some pretty intense hills on a pedicab, well, I dont think I have to say it
Uhhh, my commute has a stretch that hits 14%, then thankfully levels off to 8% then goes back to 14% then levels off to, well, actually level, then goes to 11% to 12% before it gets close to normal again. I now find that 8% hills are quite nice.
And the going back, I’m sure your 8% is like my 14%, either an extrememly sharp corner at the bottom OR, a light that is always red when you hit it. Meaning you loose all that momentum you gained. I end up stopping part ways down one 8% hill I have so I can time hitting the next 2 lights green. Sometimes it works and it is great, but other times it is a pain to have to stop (and hopefully remember to gear down).
A lot of these comments sound like when I was a lad going to school. I had to cycle straight up a cliff face, a 90% grade. And every day it was snowing with freezing rain. Fortunately, we only had to fight off polar bears once or twice a week.
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
(http://www.phespirit.info/montypython/four_yorkshiremen.htm)
Not so fast. My money says Thistle’s friend’s mama is not going to buy or ride a cargo bike. Bet she has an SUV.
Hey I have 2 SUV’s, and I ride. Don’t be too judgemental on what type a vehical someone drives.
The issue isn’t whether you strap a carbon-titanium something-or-other to the back of your SUV and drive someplace, and then ride around for a while. Thistle is using the Bakfiets for transportation of herself and her child and for hauling cargo. If your ‘ride’ involves this sort of thing, then never mind. I doubt it does, though.
yoshiyahu, who said anything that would direct you towards those conclusions? I’m not sure exactly why you’re chastising Rzar, and you’re definitely making a premature judgment about Rzar’s road and bicycle use.
Because of Rzar’s comments, SDMSS, that’s why. Saying, I have two SUVs, and I ride, seems to miss the point of the strip. if RZAR and not you had replied to my snarky comment, we’d know if they ride for transportation and cargo-hauling, or if they ‘ride’ as a roadie.
I hate myself for commenting on this because I know it’s artistic licence making for a good comic, but: why is the car _remote_ (right side in first frame) chirping? Isn’t it almost always the _car_ that makes the noise?
: P
Wow, I thought that was a clicker that she used to call to the child! To be heard in a noisy public place without having to yell at the child. (My parents whistled.)
True, but now the kid has Bak in the blood, and Mom’s gonna end up thinking about it… Then she’d get one, and the movement grows.
And Right Now…
DON’T think about a chocolate chip cookie… How it tastes, how it smells fresh out of the oven.
See… It’s hard to get rid of a good idea. Now, where’s the milk.
Well, I agree. I’m not too happy about you commenting on it either.
I liked this one. Funny thing – if the kids choose themselves they seem to prefer riding by bike or in a trailer. At least this is what our girls aged 3.5 and 4.5 years want and I take them to kindergarten year round in a Corsaire XL trailer. Only problem is that the oldest one want to ride her own bike now but since there are some parts on the 3km distance to kindergarten where you have to share the road with cars and lorries she needs one more year of training riding her bike. Next summer she will be fine
Our youngest girl easily gets motion sickness in our car – guess why she prefers the trailer!
Before you know it, Fizz’s school will look like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iaz_T89wJ2o
Note: I recommend skipping over the first minute, which is some guy yakking about what we are going to see.
A “Walking Only” school just opened in one of Toronto’s suburbs. An excerpt from:
http://www.hdsb.ca/Newsroom/Pages/PLRobertsonPublicSchool.aspx
“The Halton District School Board will open one of its newest schools, P.L. Robertson Public School in Milton, on January 4, 2010 as a “walking-only” school. As the newly-built school gets ready to receive students, the school board and community partners have been busy ensuring the infrastructure and supports are in place for students to use active transportation to get to and from school.”
What is interesting is that this is in the suburbs, not the notoriously bike-friendly downtown.
A huge contrast to some American schools where
“Cycling or Walking to School Will Not Be Tolerated!“
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-volk/cycling-or-walking-to-sch_b_305429.html
I found a more recent article showing the school up and running as car-free.
http://spacingtoronto.ca/2010/03/25/milton-school-forces-to-students-to-walk/
Now what about the staff????
At least one school in Glasgow has cycling staff. Usually only two but sometimes a few more.
Ahh Thistle. Gotta love a bike riding gal with BIG hands.
My son (8 years) was seen recently giving a tour of the Bakfiets during a school festival…
<fun> In my head I now have a picture of a Bakfiets with a miniature town layout in the box and microscopic children taking a guided tour of the Lilliputian town! Thanks for the image
)
About 10 years ago I took on two young boys that were going into second grade. I tried to get their assigned grade school changed because there was a closer grade school with a safe route so they could ride their bikes. I was told that was not a valid reason to change their assigned school.
I was forced to enroll them in the school where they had to cross two busy streets to get to school. For several years I just followed them to school until I was sure they could and would ride safely.
They both grew up to use their bikes as their main form of transportation.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/murky/4872850904/in/set-72157624557969687/
Nice Bakfiets. I get the impression that the box is a bit shorter than usual. Perhaps that’s just an artifact of the photo angle.
Thanks R & B; this one made me smile!
I would love to have a cargo bike. They are just too expensive for my family.
As an alternative to a heavy cargo-bike for transporting kids – in http://www.pixbox.se/pic_show_id31474005.html you can see my titanium road bike with Super Record which I occasionally use with the trailer. The kids did appreciate the difference to the regular cx-bike which is pretty beaten up after a couple of tough years commuting.
Never tried a cargo-bike but don’t think I would enjoy one – the joy of racing with the kids behind you shouting “faster daddy” while overtaking other commuters is hard to beat – that would never happen with a cargo-bike.
That depends on how good you are.
I’d also suggest that the trailer has a big disadvantage in that the kids are BEHIND you–you can’t easily talk to them, point out interesting sights along the way, and if they cut up you can’t call them to order.
I have a three-year-old who I transport everywhere in a Chariot trailer. He is always trying to talk to me, and it’s very rare that I can make out what he’s saying. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be getting a bakfiets soon; it has so many advantages over the trailer.
http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb84/westhavenmusician/Bike/20010_07_18Madsen004.jpg
Perry, I’ve passed a kitted rider on a Cervelo on a $300 hybrid with a noisy broken BB, hauling a trailer with two kids that are big enough to have just about outgrown the trailer. We have a Madsen now, which is heavier than an aluminum bike+aluminum trailer, but I consider it safer in traffic thanks to greater visibility and narrower width. It’s also 1/3 the price of a Bakfiets.
I actually saw a bike just like this in Los Gatos, California yesterday. Had never seen one before and was quite surprised when I did see it.
I saw an outfit like this outside Coventry’s Swimming pool in 2007. I also saw a squirrel trying to get into it!
He almost succeeded – he tore a big hole in the side in his attempts. Took seconds too (about 2030s)!
I took my camera-phone out and got a video of it as well, very funny…
Whatever works for you and the kids is OK. In my case I needed something that works year round eve if the weather turns ugly and the snow is tricky. Since my commute is 20km (or more) every day and 6 km of this is with a trailer – I would find it hard to use a cargo-bike. Not many of them around in January I can tell you
. I also like to use different bikes depending of if I am going through the forest to my work or taking a longer tour on smoth asphalt
Add two pictures to demonstrate riding in winter as well as two happy (and warm) kids in the trailer.
http://www.pixbox.se/pic_show_id31474869.html
http://www.pixbox.se/pic_show_id31474870.html