Rosa Parks bikes rolling in… every day is like a cargo bike roll call!
San Francisco schools start mid-August, so we’ve been taking our son in for a week now. Now that our daughter is finally in a new preschool (at a Japanese immersion program a few blocks from Rosa Parks that we love) we have, for the first time ever, a shared commute. And for the new school year, there are new bikes to see as well. We arrived early on the first day of school, and we had to rent a car because our daughter woke up vomiting, but there were plenty of bicycles to see nonetheless.
Front seats rule!
Last year I wrote about the Oxford Leco top tube seat, and we were lucky enough that friends from Rosa Parks picked up for us one while they were in the UK. Circumstances conspired, so we have not installed our seat, but they are already using theirs. On the first day of school it was carrying their son (who goes to preschool with our daughter) but this is typically the way they take their daughter, now in the first grade, to school. They told me that the kids fight for the chance to sit in the front seat, which does not surprise me: front seats are fun!
This bike is too fast to catch in motion.
For a couple of years another family was also using an ad hoc top tube seat in the form of a spare saddle stuck on the top tube, but their daughter, in 2nd grade, has grown too tall for this option. Now she rides behind her dad, standing on the foot pegs he’s installed on his rear wheel and holding onto his shoulders. I continue to be impressed at the way he’s managed to haul a kid for six years now with the absolute minimum cost and hassle. They cut a mighty figure rolling through the streets—since he’s kept his bike so light they move very fast, unlike those of us on cargo bikes.
This is the second BionX Mundo I’ve seen at Rosa Parks.
At the welcome breakfast for new families there were: more bikes! And check out that newly assisted Yuba Mundo with BionX. This particular rack usually holds kids’ bikes that have been disengaged from their Trail-Gators and are locked up until the parental pick up later in the day, rather than this collection of parental bikes, because it’s inside the locked courtyard.
There is so much awesome in this bike that I cannot do it justice.
Most impressive of the new bikes was the Xtracycled tandem! This is the same family that formerly rode the Bike Friday triple tandem (aka Shrek 2). Their oldest is now riding solo, so they swapped the triple tandem for the Xtracycle tandem, and now they can carry three kids. And they do: they are the neighborhood bike-pool. Cargo bikes may be slow, but have their uses.
This is the way we ride to preschool.
And although we did not ride to school on Monday due to sick kid, we did ride for the rest of the week. I took our daughter to preschool solo twice last week, and picked her up too. I still get tired much too easily, so I can’t ride every day, or for that matter go to work every day (I’m still on half-time disability). Yet riding is still easier than driving+walking—even with my handicapped parking sticker, we can rarely park close enough to our destination that it’s an easy walk for me. People are still surprised to see me on the bike again, but riding is still so much easier than walking that it almost feels like cheating.
Even more astonishing, I’m not the only one back in action.
[Note: As of April 2014, release of the Ridekick child trailer has been postponed to 2015.]
When I thought about getting back on the bike after my injury, I thought immediately about electric assist. We live on a big hill. I was surprised that I could get up part of it on the Brompton by myself when I tried riding for the first time last weekend. But a little more experimentation made it clear that I wasn’t able to ride up all of it. This is better than I’d expected, but still: not useful. It doesn’t help much to go partway up the hill. And when I tried to walk the bike up the hill instead, it made the pins in my leg ache so badly that I had to lie down. This was predictable but still unwelcome.
A mid-drive spotted near work
What’s more, it’s not very useful to be riding again if I can’t pick up and drop off a kid occasionally. I figured I would get my strength back eventually, but in the meantime I needed a better solution. Option one is a new mid-drive electric-assist bike, but that’s really expensive for short-term use and depending on how much strength I got back, could potentially be overkill in the long term. Ideally I wanted a temporary assist that I could stick on the Brompton, which is basically the only bike we have that I can use right now given my limited strength and range of motion. I did try getting on the MinUte, and technically it’s possible, but it wouldn’t be safe yet with a kid on the deck. I can get on and off the Bullitt, but it’s too heavy for me to ride for the time being.
Introducing: the Ridekick electric assist trailer!
I knew what I wanted, but unfortunately I didn’t know of any temporary, immediate on-off electric assists currently in production. At least, I didn’t until a blog reader pointed me to the Ridekick trailer (thanks David!) The only Ridekick currently on the market is a small cargo trailer with an electric assist built in. It was cute and it looked like it would do what I wanted, but when I went to their website, I saw that they were taking pre-orders for what looked like my rehabilitation holy grail: an electric assist child trailer.
This is a complete stealth assist system, if you want to look super-tough on hills.
Although I’m not the world’s biggest child trailer fan (hard to see in city traffic, don’t always fit in urban bike lanes, won’t make it up many San Francisco steep uphills, can be terrifying on many San Francisco steep downhills, we prefer to have the kids in front), we had been considering getting a bike trailer for travel, and for upgrading our one-kid bikes to two-kid bikes on occasion. The trailer also has the advantage of offering weather protection, just like the Bullitt, but in a far more portable package. The Ridekick assisted child trailer also seemed way more promising than an ordinary trailer because with an assist we’d no longer have to worry about drag on the bike. The pull of a weighted trailer can really be a problem on hills and in strong winds, both of which San Francisco has in abundance. And if the assist were up to it, I could attach it to any bike and make it up hills with one or both kids even in my reduced state.
So I wrote to Ridekick, hoping against hope that the child trailer was close enough to production that I could get one by August. The answer was no. But they were coming to San Francisco in August with the prototype to look for venture capital funding, and would I like to try it? Yes!
This is the cargo hold with the battery for the assist.
We met Dee and Mark from Ridekick in Golden Gate Park. They are great people. The prototype trailer that they brought is built up from the same Burley Bee model that we rented last year when we visited my mom in Bellingham. To my surprise, the assist doesn’t really intrude into the trailer’s cargo space. There’s a lithium ion battery with an on-off controller attached, about the size of a hardback book, that slides into the rear cargo compartment and that’s basically it. There is a throttle attachment that they Velcro-tied onto our handlebars, and then strung the wire for it back along the frame with more Velcro ties. It clipped into the wire coming from the motor at the rear wheel bolt, which is the same place that the trailer itself attaches. For novices like me: a Burley trailer attaches with a hitch plate that is threaded onto the same bolt that holds the rear wheel onto the bicycle frame. The trailer frame has a drop-in pin that goes through the hole in the hitch plate, with a back-up strap that loops around the bicycle frame in case it fails. Ridekick estimates that the trailer can go about 15 miles on a charge, depending very much on local conditions (how much weight and how big a hill?)
Technically both boys are too old for the trailer, but we never pay attention to stuff like that.
“Oh, if I must.”
My kids hadn’t ridden in a trailer for a year and were thrilled to get back in one. They also brought a friend. For our first test ride, we attached the assisted trailer to the Kona MinUte and then Matt took the two 7-year-olds for a spin through Golden Gate Park.
Something I may not have mentioned before is that Matt is less enamored of new bike experiences than I am. He mostly just treats all the experimentation I do like my weird hobby. He’s not big into optimizing his riding experience. The first bike he got was the Kona MinUte, and when it was stolen, he bought another one just like it. I got him a new pannier for Christmas one year when he complained that the ones that come standard on the MinUte were not office-appropriate (definitely true), but he has never used it. When we got the Bullitt he said for two months that we should have replaced the car instead, although he has since come around. So Matt was actually pretty grouchy about coming down to Golden Gate Park on a Saturday morning for “another bike thing.” He had had other plans.
It is in this context that I say that Matt loved the Ridekick child trailer from the moment he started riding with it. Generally neither of us is a big fan of throttle assists (the kind that go when you push the button, whether you are pedaling or not), but in the context of pulling well over a hundred pounds of weight behind the bike, the throttle assist is extremely appealing, especially at intersections. At steep intersections it is sometimes impossible for us to start a heavily loaded bicycle, even with the BionX, because the BionX doesn’t kick in until your speed exceeds 2 mph. Although Golden Gate Park is a little thin on steep hills—its grades top out at about 12%—Matt took it on a moderate hill, probably 10% grade, behind the Conservatory and had no trouble hauling both 7-year-olds up. When you’re riding with an assisted trailer, you don’t have to feel like you’re dragging an anvil.
It was a struggle to get him out of the trailer so his sister could have a turn.
When he came back I took our daughter for a solo turn around the park on the bike. Despite the fact that I was on the MinUte, which is a huge hassle to get on and off for me at the moment, I loved the Ridekick child trailer too. It resolves a lot of child trailer problems all at once. There’s no drag from the trailer unless you want to work harder. When you get tired, you can have it push you along for a little while. Taking breaks like this, interspersed with pedaling, got me up the same hill behind the Conservatory that Matt had ridden. That felt amazing! And it’s something that is currently completely out of reach for me on an unassisted bicycle.
There is probably a limit to the Ridekick’s capabilities. We have the advantage that we are using to riding up hills, and so we just need an extra boost now and again when we have extra weight on the bike. Even I, in my reduced state, tended to use the assist for a while, then pedal solo for a little bit, then repeat. My guess is that a weak rider could burn it out on the steepest hills, given that Matt has overheated the BionX on the steeper hills in our neighborhood occasionally. We’d have to ride with it a lot more to be sure. Then again, how many families really deal with hills like ours on a regular basis?
In the world of trailers, which tend to be useful but not that fun, the Ridekick assisted child trailer is a killer app, both useful AND fun. Normal trailers drag, and pulling them can be exhausting. As a result, even though most cargo bikes ride like tanks, cargo bikes are a lot easier. Still, in a situation where one parent drops off and another one picks up, you’d need two cargo bikes (which is exactly what we have now, but that’s a big commitment to start). But an assisted child trailer? Awesome! The assist means that riding is not a chore, it could be passed between parents’ bikes as needed, and it can keep the kids warm and dry, all for a (suggested) price of a single unassisted cargo bike. And as a rehab tool, it would be amazing.
If we could have, we would have bought it on the spot. But there is only one in the entire world. Our kids were crushed. “Can we keep it, please?” our daughter begged. “It goes fast! Can we keep it?” Alas, no.
Evidently Ridekick has gotten a fair bit of interest from parents who would like an aftermarket kit to assist their existing trailers. This doesn’t surprise me, but they still don’t even have the basic model in production. Ideally they could find a partner with an existing child trailer company (e.g. Burley, Chariot, Wike) and add the assist option to their standard product lineup. I’m sure there is sufficient demand.
This trailer is so much fun!
How cool is the Ridekick assisted child trailer? It’s so cool that if it had been on the market when we started riding with our kids, we might never have gotten cargo bikes. Even with my misgivings about the width of trailers versus bike lanes and having the kids behind me in city traffic instead of in front, having a trailer that could glide up hills, as well as being able to swap it between bikes, would be worth compromising in other areas. I have zero regrets about getting cargo bikes, especially given that the Ridekick child trailer isn’t actually available yet, but an assisted trailer would have been a much lower stakes way to ease into family biking, and it would travel well. I could be biased by the fact that this trailer allowed me to ride up hills that I couldn’t have otherwise attempted, but I loved the Ridekick.
My kids are evidently getting to be really fast on those scooters.
I have been incapacitated for 12 weeks now, and it is really starting to chafe. Even though I can go into the office now (thanks to my new compression stocking) and that is fun, I find that I am irritable. I can only maintain a good attitude for so long. And when people tell me things like, “You should just be grateful that you’re alive! And that your son is okay!” I kind of want to punch them in the face. Yeah, sure, it could have been worse, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy that my entire summer was ruined and I can’t go out with my kids and that after three months I still have weeks to go before I can try walking again. Maybe I shouldn’t have weaned myself off all of those narcotics.
Going ice skating? Wear cashmere!
Then again: I have forgotten the entire month of May. Seriously, my son was asking me questions about some things that happened then, things in which evidently I had some involvement, and I had no memory of them whatsoever. I do remember that in June I bought my daughter an entire new wardrobe on eBay after my mom mentioned that a four-year-old probably shouldn’t be showing so much VPL or sporting crop tops. Normally I would go to the local consignment store and pick up stuff in her new size, but I couldn’t leave the house. Luckily for me, there are scads of amazing deals on eBay for people who have nothing but time. She’ll be spending the next year or so in secondhand cashmere. Nonetheless, thank goodness our son goes to a uniform school.
These are the appropriate costumes for 1-legged airplane rides on your parents’ bed.
There are things that I can do, although they are limited. Given that I can only use my left leg, and that university housing still hasn’t gotten around to putting grab bars in the bathroom despite our requests, I can do pistol squats on that leg until I fall asleep from boredom. That means, as I learned recently, that I can give my kids one-legged airplane rides in bed. That’s fun. And we can watch movies, when they’re into that. I can read them bedtime stories. I can give them rides on the cool electric cart that I use at the grocery store (although the competition for those carts has been fierce lately). That’s about it.
The Bullitt+Roland heading out to Great Highway’s Sunday Streets last weekend. They saw lots of friends.
Matt takes them out to do all the fun things I wish I could do. They’ve been swimming at city pools and ice skating and last weekend, they went to Sunday Streets on the Bullitt with the Roland add+bike attached. Poor Matt is getting worn down by the constant attention the Bullitt draws, and sticking the Roland on the back only adds to the effect. That will be our commute vehicle next year, so with any luck it will get a little more familiar to people on our usual route.
We won’t miss her old preschool, although we’ll miss her old friends (nearly all of whom are leaving as well).
Some good things have happened, although I get the news secondhand. Our daughter has finally started at her new preschool. After the for-profit takeover of her old preschool I would have been happy with anywhere that let her go to the bathroom when she needed to and anyplace where her teachers didn’t tell her than she was “wasting mommy and daddy’s money” when she didn’t listen and she wasn’t told to “turn and face the wall” any time that she talked to another kid in line. But her new preschool is apparently awesome even by standards much higher than our radically downsized ones. She looks forward to going and she’s surrounded by her future Rosa Parks classmates—it’s a Japanese immersion preschool and a feeder for the school.
On the other hand, if the San Francisco summer continues along these lines, skirts and shorts are a non-issue.
I am also grateful for my colleagues, who make me happy every time I’m in the office that I work in academic medicine. I have scars on my right leg that look like a giant red zipper running from the ankle to above the knee, and they can’t stop telling me how great they look. Sure, they’re saying that because they’ve seen so much worse, but I don’t mind. One person told me it looked like a shaving accident. This is so far from the truth that when I reported it to Matt, he laughed so hard that he almost stopped breathing. But the person who said it was speaking the truth as he saw it, and that makes me feel okay about wearing skirts to work again one of these days.
The kids collected jellyfish at Ocean Beach over the weekend. I couldn’t go.
I have x-rays next week and if they look good I will get permission to start putting weight on my leg the week afterward. And according to my surgeon, who is also a bike commuter, if I can walk, I can ride. Sure, there’s the minor matter of what bike—I suspect I won’t have the strength to get the Brompton up our hill for a while, I know I don’t have the range of motion to get on the Kona because the top tube is so high and the stoker bars mean I can’t swing my leg around the back, and Matt sometimes needs the Bullitt so I can’t ride it every day. Maybe I could put an assist on the Brompton?
Thanks for the electric carts and the cargo bike parking, Rainbow.
And one more piece of good news: just before I was hit, I wrote to Rainbow Grocery after a difficult Bullitt parking experience asking them if they’d reserve the end spots on their racks for cargo bikes and bikes with trailers. A friend of mine sent me a picture of the racks just the other day, and the new sign on them that gently requests that the big spaces be saved for big bikes. So life goes on, with or without me.
We arrive at Sunday Streets. No more cover; it’s spring in San Francisco.
Last weekend we went to Sunday Streets again, and it was even more crowded than last year. Except right at the start, I think that the Mission site is so popular that walking the bike is no longer optional but required. It was still fun, however, with a caveat.
We went planning to meet another Bullitt family. Instead we met two! Even more amazing, although both rode red Bullitts, neither one of them was the one I recently spotted at our son’s after-school program (I asked).
This was the first red Bullitt.
We were late to Dynamo Donuts because we got caught in all the street traffic, which is okay, because halfway there we spotted our first red Bullitt. What’s more, it was another Bullitt from Splendid Cycles! (Matt has been complaining that we need a bigger Splendid sticker on our bike because people keep stopping him to ask where we got it. The little sticker under the seat is easy enough to spot if you know where to look, and of course I do, but strangers on the street, not so much.) It was great to meet this family.
I am getting the skinny about Bullitt #2.
When we got to Dynamo we met Jim, as planned, with his red Bullitt, plus an Xtracycle (formerly assisted, before the battery died), a Kona Ute, and eventually a music trike. For all the attention that one Bullitt gets, it pales in comparison to the attention that two Bullitts get. This red Bullitt came from Blue Heron in Berkeley, and to my astonishment he got it back to San Francisco on BART, by standing it on end in the elevators. I’m still impressed by this story.
A Kona Ute set up for kids
Unfortunately by this time Matt, who had ridden the Bullitt because this trip would be his only riding for two weeks thanks to all his business travel, noticed that the front cranks, which had failed once before, were starting to creak again. By the time we navigated back to Mission, they stopped working almost entirely. Matt had to use the throttle on the BionX to get the bike home. Using the assist this way drains the battery fast, but we were lucky to have it. Now the Bullitt is back in the shop. Sigh. And I have to figure out a way to get both kids to their respective schools without a two-kid bike while Matt is away.
It’s an organic cargo bike roll call.
This left me with two kids to get home solo. I crossed my fingers, loaded my daughter in the front basket (which is not rated for that kind of load, nor is it a comfortable way for her to ride) and rode home with them very, very carefully. The good news is that we made it.
And the other good news is that Mission Sunday Streets is pretty cool. Our kids were completely impressed by all the music, as were we. And the dancing. Check it out!
People keep asking, so here’s proof: you can fit 2 kids side by side in a Bullitt under the canopy. They are four and seven and were discussing Antarctica.
We missed the opening bell of Sunday Streets at the Embarcadero this year—and how is this year different from any other year? But thankfully someone—a special someone, specifically another Bullitt family—reminded me that Mission Sunday Streets is this month, so we are heading southeast to the Mission this weekend for Dynamo Donuts and cargo bike spotting. Hope to see many families there! (Learn from our mistakes: we now head out early before the crowds get so insane that we have to walk the bikes.)
This is a big weekend in family biking: in addition to Sunday Streets, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is holding a Playground to Playground Ride from Duboce Park to Golden Gate Park on Saturday (4/13, 10:30am). I think this is supposed to be kind of a sub rosaKidical Mass (things that sound like Critical Mass have a mixed reputation among many in the city). I’ve been lobbying our kids to come on this ride as well but they’ve been balking, probably because there are no donuts involved. But adults who also prefer their rides to involve food might want to check out the simultaneous Western Lands Dumpling Tour (also 4/13, 10:30am), which I would totally do if I were riding solo this weekend, but that never happens. Oh well. Maybe we’ll do our own dumpling not-tour at the local hole in the wall. Or maybe not, at least not until I break myself of the habit of checking restaurants’ health department scores.
OMG! Bullitt meets Bullitt!
The most exciting news for me this week was spotting another Bullitt bike set up for kid-hauling at our son’s after-school program. Which: !!!! The security guards were as excited as I was when I rolled up in a matching bike to the brand-new cargo bike-sized racks that the internet gave us. Thanks again, internet! I don’t know whose bike this is, but between that and the Clockwork Orange kid-hauler my sister keeps spotting downtown, and the two families I have now actually communicated with who have Bullitts, our ranks are growing. That’s without even counting the guy I spotted on the Panhandle hauling his dog in a Milk, and the pink Bullitt I’ve seen parked around the Mission that always seems to be loaded with furniture.
And we are outclassed again.
Last but not least, Matt reminded me why we often ride the Panhandle, still, instead of taking Page: because the bikes on the Panhandle are awesome. Why not haul your boat with your bike? Why not indeed?
We tend to spot interesting bikes in the morning. I’m not sure why. I almost never get pictures because we’re booking to school, but last week was a particular doozy. One rainy morning I passed a recumbent bike that not only sported six poison-frog yellow Ortlieb panniers (with the rider in a matching jacket), but actual jingle bells. And almost every morning I also see some of San Francisco’s significant homeless contingent, or as I sometimes think of them, “self-supported locally-touring riders,” with each bike hauling not only a sleeping bag and a duffel bag but at least two full garbage bags of recycling. Matt found a generous collection of family bikes at the acrobatic center where he took our son this weekend.
Where I hit the motherlode (aside from our son’s school, of course) is Rainbow Grocery. Last Friday I took the day off after a particular grueling week; and instead of heading to work after school drop off I went to Rainbow. On the way in I saw our friends’ Big Dummy, probably because they joined us in car freedom last week, and together we checked out all the other family bikes locked up.
Another ad hoc family bike, with a seat on the rear rack
The first was one of the many ad hoc family bikes around the city. This bike was immediately familiar, though, because I’d already talked to the mom about her bike while we were riding on the Panhandle. I really liked the seat she’s screwed into the rack, which I’ve never seen before, and I would love to find another because it looks like the perfect addition to a midtail deck. Her kid is apparently still pretty small, but trustworthy enough to hold on to stoker bars. I asked her about footrests, because there aren’t any, and she said that she always keeps panniers with a kid on board, and her kid’s feet go inside. Personally I’d use a sturdier rear rack, but then again my kids are bigger.
A one-off: the Fraser Pack Mule
The second bike that pulled up while I was there was a longtail I’d never seen before, a Fraser Pack Mule from Southern California. I asked the dad riding it and he said it was custom, purchased long before the Surly Big Dummy hit the market. I was really impressed by the integrated back support on the deck. And although it is evidently usually a single-kid hauler he said that he sometimes carries both of his kids on this bike as well (as long as they’re not fighting, a caveat that’s all too familiar). They live on a hill, but he left the bike unassisted because he has to carry it upstairs to park it, and wasn’t sure he could handle hoisting another 20 pounds on top of an already heavy cargo bike. How cool is this bike?
Anyway, I think I need to figure out a way to get to Rainbow Grocery more often on weekday mornings.
Rosa Parks parents rolling in: EdgeRunner, Mundos, Boda Boda, trailer, trailer-bikes
Last year I wrote about some of the bikes we saw at school drop-off. We have a new bike to take our kids to school (the Bullitt) but the big news for us this year was the group of new kindergarten parents on bikes. They outnumber all the rest of us put together. When we were first assigned to Rosa Parks in 2010 I never would have guessed that these families would be coming two years later.
This year’s kindergarten parents came riding multiple Yuba Mundos, and at least two of them are assisted (it’s still San Francisco). There is a bike with a trailer, a real rarity in San Francisco. There are a couple of bikes with trailer-bikes for kids, and an eBoda Boda. And joining them in 2013 is a brand new assisted Xtracycle EdgeRunner.
At the kindergarten end of the yard it’s bike-central
I catch these parents sometimes when I’m riding up Webster from the south, and we make a little bike convoy. On occasion my son has reached over to the deck to zip up another kid’s open backpack while we talk. Parents and teachers in cars wave to us at stop lights, and we wave to families walking to school from the bus stop.
Bikes with yellow jackets
The kindergarten parents are such a cohesive crew that I am seriously considering replacing my beat-up, broken-zippered windbreaker with one of the day-glo yellow ones that they all seem to wear so that I can look like part of their posse. And historically I have not been a fan of day-glo yellow.
Hey, Boda Boda.
After drop-off I sometimes ride with another family whose route to preschool mirrors my route to work. On the rare occasions that I leave our son and head out before school starts, I have spotted Rosa Parks families coming down Post Street in the opposite direction as they head to school.
Some of the families with older kids are in transition. The third and fourth graders are moving to their own bikes, or sometimes a kid’s bike hitched to a parent’s bike with a TrailGator (there is still a lot of traffic in the city). Our son’s love of the Bullitt’s rain cover has temporarily postponed his desire to ride his own bike, at least while it’s cold and rainy, but I’m sure this will change as he sees more and more kids riding on their own.
Rain? What rain?
Riding our kids to school on our bikes is still not typical, but at Rosa Parks it’s not exceptional either. The neighborhood infrastructure for bikes isn’t more than a bit of paint, but evidently this is enough. There are traditional bike lanes and sharrows on some of the streets near school, and drivers are used to looking out for bikes. Every morning there is a row of them parked along the fence at drop-off, in addition to the bikes like ours left at the actual racks.
All aboard!
I remember reading about families with in other cities with neighborhood schools that organized regular walks and rides to school and thinking, at the time, how unrealistic it seemed for San Francisco, with its citywide school lottery. I was sure that it would never happen here, with families coming from all directions and every neighborhood. But who really knows what creates enough critical mass to form a bike community? I was wrong. And I couldn’t be happier.
Last week was spring break at my son’s school. I’d planned to stay home with the kids, which is just as well, because I got sick. Between that and a trip out of town, I didn’t ride a bike for a few days, which is as long as I can remember going without riding in the last year or so. But April is 30 Days of Biking, and this year I’d signed up early. I still owe Family Ride a thank you for turning me on to 30 Days of Biking, which I’ve done twice now, starting with the official April version and most recently with the bonus round in September.
The California Academy of Sciences installed cargo bike-friendly parking right in front. Mwah!
On Sunday, although it was technically still March, we kicked things off with a morning visit to the California Academy of Sciences. When we came out we saw another family bike fleet parked next to ours, and I was even happier when I learned later that I’d guessed right as to whose it was. You don’t see a lot of Bakfietsen (short or long) in San Francisco, so maybe it was too easy, but I’m easily pleased. Like ours, it had a cover for the rain, which after a brief hiatus has returned to San Francisco. But kids in box bikes never need to fear the weather.
I didn’t really notice last year that 30 Days of Biking kicked off with April 1st, the day that you can trust nothing on the internet. This year for the first time we pranked our kids, offering them what Matt called “a new breakfast” which consisted of bowls of uncooked steel cut oats. Our son, who’d stayed up too late last night, looked confused. “Is this really edible?” he asked, as his sister gamely began eating it (she’s still too young!) When we said “April Fools!” he was delighted. I wish he were so cheerful every Monday.
Rain? What rain?
It was pouring this morning, not the best official kick-off to 30 Days of Biking. It didn’t really matter. I had already upped my game this year, upgrading from $10 rain pants that leaked all last winter to $40 rain pants that are, perhaps unsurprisingly, four times better. My daughter was happy to have a chance to wear her Muddy Buddy to school, and I was happy to be back on the bike. This far 2013 has been a little stressful. But rain is probably the most I have to fear from this month’s rides, and I’m pretty sure I can handle it.
Late last week I went to pick up my son at afterschool with some trepidation. The 5pm pickup is the most crowded at the bike racks, and this is often a nightmare. However thanks to the much-appreciated efforts of one of the afterschool staffers, we now have a passcode to enter a secured courtyard at the side of the building with its own bike rack. I have been parking there most days, even though it means a lot of extra walking around the building.
I was shocked when I rode up and saw a bona fide miracle: an empty bike rack in front of the building. I sped up before someone else could get there first. Then I looked again: there were five empty bike racks! They hadn’t been there when I walked by earlier in the day. And they were not placed against the bollards—bikes could be parked on both sides! Our son’s afterschool program had installed six new bike racks as promised. (And despite the fact that they’d been in place for only hours, they were already filling up—one family had gotten there before me and parked at the sixth rack already.)
Last year I successfully advocated to have a new bike rack installed at my office, which filled up immediately on installation. And now this year the internet has scored some outstanding cargo-bike friendly racks at our son’s afterschool program. They were filling up by the time I came back outside with my son. If you build them, they will come.
On the western side of San Francisco there are many excellent bike lanes through Golden Gate Park, which stretches nearly half the length of the city. Even outside the park to the north and south the streets are pretty quiet (with a few exceptions), so it is very easy to get around by bike as long as you don’t mind the hills. Which whatever, where besides the Mission are there are not hills in this city.
Transitioning from the park to the Panhandle
At the edge of the park the Panhandle begins. The Panhandle is a one-block-wide, ¾ mile long stretch of greenway, and it extends even further east. A nightmarish three blocks at the far edge of the Panhandle then drop you into the Wiggle, and from there bike lanes, some protected, run all the way to the eastern edge of the city and San Francisco Bay. (Protected bike lanes for those three blocks of Oak Street have been in the works for some time and postponed repeatedly.)
Unfortunately the streets on either side of the Panhandle, Fell and Oak, are basically freeways in the middle of the city, and noisy. There is a break in the middle for the death highway of Masonic Avenue, which even with a dedicated bike signal is not the most fun street to cross. Supposedly Masonic is a designated bike route. Ha ha.
There is a lot of foot traffic on the shared-use path.
There are two paths on the Panhandle: the southern path along Oak is a pedestrian-only path, and the northern path along Fell is shared-use. For reasons that mystify me, runners and walkers mostly shun the southern path and so there are always multitudes wandering idly among the bikes. And there are always off-leash dogs. A couple of weeks ago I slowed when one came close, but not fast enough because it suddenly jumped right into my path, knocking me and my son to the ground. My son fell under the bike and although he was unhurt, he was so upset that he burst into tears. The dog ran off. Of course its owner was nowhere to be found.
Walkers blocking the Shrader Valve on the way out of the Panhandle
So anyway, although the Panhandle has its appeal–no car traffic to contend with–it has some issues as a place to ride.
There is an alternative. Like all alternative routes in San Francisco, it is steeper. Heading east, Page Street runs above the southern edge of the Panhandle then drops down suddenly to join the Wiggle. In reverse, obviously, it goes up just as suddenly. I know many riders who prefer Page Street to the Panhandle. They tend to be solo riders.
Recently, to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, we headed out for Mexican food (eating out contrary to ethnic expectations on holidays means never having to wait for a table). Because we were already south of the Panhandle we took Page, which we don’t normally ride. It was nice; there were multiple sidewalk sales, and families were sitting out on their front steps chatting with each other. Even though there are lots of stop signs to slow you down, it is a pleasant alternative to the Panhandle in the downhill direction.
After dinner we had the choice of following the Wiggle back or turning around and climbing up Page. Matt had both kids in the Bullitt and to my surprise he wanted to take the hill. As he headed up, a pickup truck going down the hill slowed, and the driver stuck his head out the window. “GIT IT, OLD MAN!” he cheered. “GIT IT, OLD MAN!” I laughed so hard I almost fell off my bike. Oh how I love San Francisco.
Git it, old man!
We made it back to Golden Gate Park with only the usual stares that the Bullitt draws from families walking on the street. I scratched Matt’s back at a stoplight and said, “Git it, old man.” He laughed. “He was supportive,” I said, “That’s what matters.”
“He was ACCURATE,” he replied. “Like I care. I’m fitter now than I ever was in my so-called prime.” And this is true. We have been married for 14 years, and by any historical standard Matt is smokin’.
I’m used to the Panhandle and its quirks. But I can see us taking Page more often in the future too. Git it, old man!
Hum of the city 