Category Archives: rides

March 12, 2012 · 9:42 am

Free riders

A passel of kids' bikes waiting for riders

On Saturday I went back to the Outerlands, specifically to Sunset Elementary School, to attend one of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s Family Biking Series classes, On Road with your Children. To my astonishment, I was asked to attend in a vaguely instructional capacity.

I find it a somewhat depressing comment about the number of families in San Francisco with school-age children (there aren’t many) that I would be considered even vaguely qualified for this assignment. The guy who built up the tricked-out Kona Ute our PTA treasurer used to ride was there. The co-owner of Ocean Cyclery, which sold us my Breezer and our child seats was there. I was outclassed. I can, it is true, research any topic into submission, because doing research is my job and because I’m compulsive. But research is no substitute for experience, so this class involved some ugly duckling moments. The class met at the back of the school, and I had trouble even finding it until other people showed up so I could follow them. The parents teaching the class had been riding bikes for years and it showed; they were more graceful on their bikes than I have ever even aspired to be. And I found out that I was wearing my helmet wrong. All in all, it was a humbling experience.

Lubricating chains: virtually all of them were rusty, because the Sunset is permanently socked in by fog

And it was a hugely informative experience. I didn’t bring my kids; they were at their swim lessons. It is just as well. Neither of them is competent enough on a bike yet to keep up with the kids who showed up for the class. (We are the blind leading the blind over here.) I will, however, take my son when he is more skilled. SFBC’s instructor for this class is fantastic, warm and lively and hugely competent at wrangling both kids and parents. Apparently he has been leading these classes for years. It shows.

This kind of thing isn't helping with the helmet either

Matt and I signed our son up for summer bicycle camp this year. We didn’t thrust this upon him; he has been angling to attend bike camp since he heard that such a thing existed. But we’re all pretty excited about it. We are having trouble teaching him to ride safely because we live on a great big honking hill. Our efforts to talk him into going down to the park, where it’s flatter, to ride always fizzle; his enthusiasm evaporates with the walk down and on the rare occasions when we’re successful, he is too tired to walk back home. Although it is ridiculous to drive such a short distance we would do it, but he hates riding in the car. Bike camp seems to resolve a lot of problems at once; most importantly, it’s taught by someone much more qualified than we are.

Practicing riding in a crowd

We had both harbored ambitions that at the end of a summer at bike camp, our son would be qualified to ride his own bike to school. Attending this class disabused me of this fantasy. The area around the school was slightly hilly, but nothing particularly troublesome for an adult rider used to the city. It was much more difficult for the kids, who were, I realized, mostly riding bicycles that weighed more than half what they do. I have ridden a heavy bike before, and remember how hard it was to start and stop and get up hills, but at least I had a lot of gears to use. The kids did not. No one is selling ultra-light bikes for kids, so I don’t see any realistic way for mine to handle anything more than minor elevation on their own. And the hills along our commute to school are anything but minor.

Practicing riding while looking for cars behind

What’s more, supervising kids on the streets of San Francisco was terrifying. The area around the school is very lightly trafficked, but at stop signs things fell apart. The kids attempted to wave drivers ahead of them, then lurched out into the intersection as those cars actually moved, or waited for cars to stop, then tried to take their turn only to be rushed by drivers who’d grown impatient. There are a lot of decent people behind the wheel in San Francisco, but a lot of jerks as well. I suspect that these kids, as well as our son, would learn to navigate neighborhood streets like these with more practice. But we go through much more serious traffic on our route to school, and I would not trust my kids in some of those intersections for years to come.

Bumpity bump

Overall, I realized that riding in the city is too much to expect our kids to do alone at this age. Our son will not be riding to school on his own bike next year, or the year after. He wants to pedal, so a trailer-bike or tandem may be in our future. But he will not be riding solo.

We are going to be working harder as he grows, and that is daunting. We had talked about possibly not needing an electric assist if our son began riding his own bike. But I cannot imagine hauling my kids up and down the hills to school without help once their combined weight exceeds 100 pounds. We are now in the position where buying a bike accessory that costs more than our bikes themselves seems inevitable.

Despite this, I find I don’t mind the thought of keeping them on our bikes longer. My children have been growing away from me since the day they were born. Even in the newborn barnacle months, they were already exploring the world. It is thrilling to watch them grow more independent, but I know that eventually they will tire of being hugged, of sitting on our laps, of being picked up. My son is in first grade and already conscious that being affectionate with parents is not something that older children do. But when we’re walking or riding up a hill, all of this is forgotten. They look at the climb and want to be small again. “Mommy, will you carry me?” they ask. And I say, yes, I will carry you. I’ll carry you up the hill. I could carry you forever.

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February 6, 2012 · 10:51 am

A long day on the Yuba Mundo

Yet another relative I talked into trying out the Mundo

A week ago Saturday we decided to ride the Mundo everywhere we went. This was maybe not the smartest move on a bike I wasn’t used to, but I figured it would be a way to learn. Also, on Saturday mornings we take the kids to swim class across town, near where my sister and brother-in-law live, which meant we could get their opinions on the Mundo, and see them for brunch. And then we figured we could pick up some groceries at Rainbow while we were in the area. Total overkill, but I’m all about overshooting my comfort zone.

We don’t ride much on the south side of the city. Once we got to the Panhandle, the entire route was flat, almost disconcertingly so. This must be the part of San Francisco where people ride fixies. On the other hand, although there are bike lanes and sharrows, the traffic down there is terrifying. It’s all giant trucks and long straight wide roads that encourage speeding and there are overpasses with freeway traffic thundering over at every turn. The whole experience of getting down there was nerve-wracking. It was a relief to reach the campus, which has a large protected quad in the center near the entrance to the pool, a bicycle and pedestrian oasis in a neighborhood that still hasn’t really transitioned away from industry.

After swim class we headed to brunch at Brickhouse, a child-friendly café with bikes hanging from the ceiling, including a push me-pull you tricycle with handles and pedals on both the front and the back (see link; as its practical value was nil, why not hang it from the ceiling?) And from there we headed to Rainbow to pick up groceries and downtown to get our mystery box from Mariquita Farms.

The Mundo I’m riding has Yuba’s new Bread Basket. This makes it possible to carry both groceries (on the front) and children (on the back). The inability of most long tail bikes to carry both kids and groceries is something that’s irritated me for quite a while. In general, if you put kids on the back, the bags can’t carry a week’s worth of groceries, because that’s where the kids’ legs need to go. I’ve found it hard to accept these bikes as being a true replacement for a car, let alone a minivan, either of which can carry both a cartload groceries and children at the same time. We don’t typically have time to split up these errands; we shop on the way home from work. I suspect our experience would be different if one of us was a stay-at-home parent, but that’s not how we roll.

It's not just me that finds it disconcerting

So the Bread Basket is a total score of an addition to the bike. However, because it is attached to the frame, and it does not move when the handlebars and wheels turn, it is deeply and profoundly disconcerting until you get used to it. I tipped the bike over twice learning to ride because the Bread Basket’s steadfast unwillingness to reflect my steering made me try to yank the handlebars too far over. I accept that it’s the right decision to put it there because its attachment to the frame means you can casually dump unbelievable weight in there, but it still freaks me out a little.

So at Rainbow, I piled about two bags of groceries in the Bread Basket, including:

  • Small bag of cumin
  • 1 bunch of green onions
  • 1 bunch of parsley
  • 2 lbs russet potatoes
  • 1 lb of cheddar cheese
  • 1 block of cream cheese
  • 1 box of Ak Mak crackers
  • 1 lb of garganelli
  • 3.5 lbs of flour
  • 1.5 lbs of raisins
  • 1 lb of couscous
  • 1 lb of rye flour
  • 1.5 lbs of dried anasazi beans
  • 1 lb of dried ayacote morado beans
  • Cupcake and chocolates for kids on the ride home

The Yuba Mundo haul

Isn’t that just fascinating? I can’t believe we’ve become such hippies; we might as well start eating dirt after a credibility-busting haul like this. Then we added a bag with our jackets (not needed for this ride), my daughter’s wet clothes after an accident at the grocery store, my U-lock, wallet, keys, etc.  The kids climbed on the back. At that point I was riding very, very slowly, but I’ll admit, I was impressed that this was possible at all.

I forgot the milk, of course. Fortunately we live near a range of bodegas open 24/7.

Matt’s Kona was pulling its weight as well; he was carrying the mystery box, which contained:

  • 1 bunch carrots
  • 1 daikon
  • 1 head savoy cabbage
  • 1 head escarole
  • 1 large bunch white turnips
  • 1 bunch red radishes
  • 1 lb peanuts
  • 1 large bag baby tat-soi
  • 2 heads cheddar cauliflower
  • 1 bag of limes
  • 2 heads couve tronchuda
  • 1 bunch formanova beets
  • 1 20# box of apples (bungeed to the deck)

The Kona MinUte haul

We had doubts about what on earth we were going to do with the couve tronchuda (answer: gyoza). I digress. On top of that, we stuffed in his jacket and U-lock and the kids’ swim gear. Don’t let anyone tell you the MinUte’s not a real cargo bike. And then we rode 4 miles home.

We were really, really tired, despite the thrill of accomplishment. As other riders commented, “You’re not even getting any help from those two.” So true, but our daughter was passed out in the Peanut at that point, so it’s just as well. The Peanut is a bear of a seat to get kids in and out of, but I like the support; 5-point restraints, full leg shields, and even some side bracing for naps. This is a much better seat in every way than the other deck-mounted seat we’ve used, the Co-Pilot Limo. (Our other rear seat, the Bobike Maxi, mounts to the frame and as a result has pros and cons relative to the Peanut.)

The Yuba is a heavy bike, even heavier with all the stuff we had on it. I found myself really resenting red lights and stop signs because I hated losing whatever momentum I’d gained and having to start from a stop.  Getting to the Panhandle path was a relief (no stopping). With a long uninterrupted route, it would have been much easier. That’s not the kind of riding we do most of the time, however. On the other hand, riding this kind of bike, loaded up as it was, meant that the entire city of San Francisco formed a cheering section on our behalf. Families walking through the park yelled, “Look at that bike!” and “That’s so cool!” and drivers kept stopping next to us, rolling down their windows, and filling me in on activities on the back of the bike (“Your daughter is sleeping in her seat!”) I find San Francisco a very friendly city in general, but on days like this it really lays on the charm.

Despite the fact that I blog, which could only be viewed as a desperate bid for attention, and haul my kids around town on my bike(s), which is attention-getting whether you want it to be or not, I have mixed feelings about all of this. I often prefer to ride quietly, solo, to work with all of the other less interesting bikes (although I miss the conversations with my kids when I do). But for a more hardcore family biking advocate, a Yuba Mundo would be a formidable weapon indeed.

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January 16, 2012 · 1:21 pm

Cruisers at Pacific Beach

Our first night in San Diego we headed out for Mexican food, or at least a quesadilla, the only food our son will consistently eat. In kindergarten he composed a brief poem to the quesadilla, his favorite food, poorly spelled but nonetheless hauntingly evocative.

A wall with far less than half of the bike basket selection

By complete happenstance, while walking there we stumbled into Bicycle Discovery, the beachiest bike shop in my personal experience, if not the world. What I noticed first, from outside, was the entire wall of bicycle baskets, the most extensive I’ve ever seen either in-person or online, and although we were all hungry I insisted we check it out.

Once inside no one was disappointed.

I'm sure that these in no way encourage drinking and riding

Matt had to forcibly rip himself away from the handlebar baskets carved from coconut shells to look like the drinks you get at tiki bars. Both kids were fascinated by the chopper beach cruisers with handlebars taller than they were and four inch wide tires.

This bicycle appears to be on loan from an alternate universe where cyclists are cool

One of these was a tandem! We bought our daughter’s dinosaur horn online but at this place we could have chosen from hundreds of models. The kids rode balance bikes and tricycles in the store and investigated all the various baskets and panniers; luckily for us the staff was not just patient but indulgent. Our daughter was traumatized that she was not yet big enough to ride the bike covered with pink skulls.

In keeping with the San Diego spirit this store was as big as a warehouse would be in San Francisco.

No single photograph could do this store justice

I would guess that 90% of the bicycles on the floor were single-speed beach cruisers and most of them came in colors I’ve previously only seen on giant lollipops. San Diego proper is as flat as a griddle. While we were there the store was mobbed by a contingent of Danes (which we identified because they were speaking Danish). The Danes are coming to SoCal for bicycles now? Has it really come to this?

We came back our second day to visit the beach and the kids did not need convincing to try out new rental bikes.

How can there be multiple models of unicycles?

The store must do a land office family rental business, because they had multiple bikes set up with both child seats and trailer-bikes, and had them unlocked and ready to roll before our kids had made it out of the bathroom. I ended up with our daughter on a cruiser with a Co-Pilot Limo seat on the rack. Matt and our son ended up on a different cruiser attached to an Adams Trail-a-Bike.

After complimenting our son extensively on his Bikefish t-shirt (“Bikes eating a car: RIGHT ON!”), they sent us off to ride along the beach.

Figuring out the trailer bike

As one of them took our picture for the family, Matt commented drily, “Oh yes. Because no one would ever believe we rented bicycles if there weren’t photographic evidence.” Okay, maybe our biking habits are now more than two standard deviations from normal. I never imagined we could get to this point in less than a year.

I have never seen as many forms of mobility as we saw on the beach of San Diego. Dog pulling two skateboarders, trail-a-bikes, elliptical bike, kid bike pulling skateboard, rollerblader with a stroller, segways, and those are just the ones I remember. A bike with a child seat like mine was no novelty by comparison, even with my daughter yelling, “Ta ta ta TAAAA!!!” in the back as we rode (useful, given that we had no bell on that bike and the beach walk was crowded).

It was interesting to try riding such different bikes than we normally ride. Cruisers are about as simple as a bike can get, and they had big fat seats that were obviously designed for a cushy ride. Both of us found them uncomfortable.

Co-Pilot Limo test ride

I asked our daughter what she thought of the Co-Pilot and she said she liked the Bobike Maxi better. I was actually surprised because I thought that Co-Pilot had a nice arm rest; she is too young to elaborate her reasoning. Our son enjoyed the chance to pedal on the trailer-bike, but he found it unstable. He now wants to try a real tandem, which he believes would be less floppy, and I suspect he is right. Matt is used to the MinUte and disliked both the length and the wobbliness of the trailer-bike, although he liked getting some help with pedaling.

Along Pacific Beach with cruiser and trailer-bike

We both got off the rental bikes thankful we’d chosen to buy bikes better suited to us. But we learned a lot; we were correct in guessing that a trailer-bike wasn’t right for us, and we now know that our son would be eager to ride a tandem.

It was a great way to spend an afternoon and we couldn’t be happier that we rented those bikes, unlike the surrey. The beach was packed with people enjoying the day. Sun, sand, waves, and mid-70s temps in the middle of January: it is no accident that we spent most of our time outside during our stay. Curse you, Southern California, and your seductive wiles.

Further test riding was required in-store

We wouldn’t have seen half of it walking or any of it driving, and six months ago we would never have considered renting bicycles on vacation with our kids. If someone had suggested it we would have dismissed the idea outright, expecting there was nothing available for them to ride. Now I feel as though family biking is something that was always there,  waiting to be stumbled upon. We feel lucky now just to have been at the right place at the right time.

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January 16, 2012 · 8:25 am

4 wheels bad, 2 wheels good

Looks ridiculous, rides like a Flintstone car

The resolute flatness of San Diego gave us a lot of hope about a promise we’d made to the kids the second that they saw the website of the hotel where we stayed, which prominently featured its bike and surrey rentals. They have been crazy to rent surreys ever since they first saw one in Golden Gate Park, and we’ve never done it because we always ride there on our own bikes, and the weirdness inherent in biking somewhere to rent a surrey made my head spin. But we agreed that we would rent a surrey on vacation and we did.

Having now rented a surrey I can say that it is an unbelievable behemoth of a bicycle-like machine. I seriously reconsidered my burgeoning interest in a longtail or a tandem during our hour-long ride, in fact during the first five minutes of our hour-long ride. I don’t know whether the surreys we rented were junkers that had been permanently disabled by exposure to sea air, maybe so. Matt, who has a physics background and a strong theoretical understanding of such things (although, as mentioned, nil in the way of practical application of same), felt that running two sets of pedals in parallel with a second set of gears and an axle implied all the weight of carrying four people with only half the mechanical efficiency. Then he groaned with the effort of turning the wheel to get us around a 15 degree corner. We had to stand on the pedals to get over a speed bump and brake when faced with the downhill on the opposite side. I have been told that I have a habit of hyberbole but in this case I am completely serious.

Building sandcastles, no tools required

The kids enjoyed the ride for a while but quickly grew bored and asked to go play on the beach. Exhausted with effort of pedaling them there at a rate slightly slower than walking, we agreed.

I’m glad we rented a surrey because it was important to our kids and they enjoyed it, laughing through much of the ride and appreciating a promise kept. And we never had to worry about cars, for the brief period of time when we were on the road. Most of the risk of bicycling seems to center on not being noticed, and no one fails to notice a surrey, certainly not a bright red surrey wallowing along like a beached walrus.

Zero-risk camera-shot on the surrey

Our greatest risk was drivers losing control of their cars as they burst out laughing; we also managed to completely stop a few boats worth of competitive rowers on the bay, who stared at us slack-jawed and pointed. I have grown used to comparable things riding with our daughter on board at home, particularly when I do things like wrap her in a Mylar blanket, and I like to imagine that it keeps us safer.

However none of us wants to rent a surrey again and Matt and I are thankful for that. It was entertaining enough as a lark but it does make me thankful that we appear to have chosen well enough for our first bicycles that we are always pleased to get on and ride somewhere, to the point that our ambition at times exceeds our abilities. We have heard from people that have bicycles less well-suited to them that they are far less interested in riding than we are; it is not fun for them. We could have chosen the surreys of bicycles and I imagine that my brother-in-law’s vehement advice to us to purchase new bicycles well above the price point that novices appreciate as reasonable, as well as his insistence that we avoid even setting foot in certain bike shops, reflected his knowledge that it is easy to misstep and choose poorly when you are as ignorant as we are.

The rental agent's bicycle was more ironic, but also more practical

Having asked around among the many people I know who never ride bicycles and in some cases never have ridden one, my assessment of the price point that novices view as reasonable for a starter bike is: $100. I had no perspective on this question one way or the other before I started riding, but having gone down this road I can now say that the price point that would get a novice on a bike that is actually fun to ride as a commuter would be something between $500-$1000, at least in San Francisco (possibly cheaper somewhere flatter, but more expensive if the goal is to haul multiple children or serious cargo), including lights, fenders and a rear rack. That was an easy number for us to accept because we were comparing the cost of bicycles against the cost of a hypothetical second car. For people who are less certain about whether they will ride at all, I would imagine that’s a harder figure to swallow.

I think that the knee-jerk reaction that a price above $100 is unreasonable (which is usually where the conversation goes after I ask for a “reasonable” price) is worth reconsidering. Certainly reconsidering is a better reaction than sprinting off to Walmart, which will cheerfully sell people something like the surrey of bicycles near that price point, to the purchaser’s eventual despair. I can’t think of a single person who would expect that a mattress purchased for $20 would offer a peaceful night’s sleep unless they were extraordinarily lucky. And a bicycle is more complicated than a mattress.

Obviously used bicycles are cheaper but the (startlingly common) assumption that a total novice without daily access to a knowledgeable source could find a good used bike (or assemble one from parts!) is simply not reasonable. Craigslist lays many traps for the unwary, and I have heard now from more than one of my graduate students who tried to follow casual advice to “find a good frame and have a bike shop turn it into the perfect ride for half the price of new” that the best description of that advice would be “recipe for disaster.” Even my brother-in-law, who is a former bicycle mechanic, sent my sister out to buy a Jamis when she wanted a bike. It is true that a Jamis will not turn heads, but it was an excellent value and she enjoys riding it. And she and I are both somewhat contrarian so we appreciate the charms of being underrated.

Can I get off now?

Now that we have found bicycle shops we trust and have some experience and knowledge we could probably do well on the used bicycle market. But we have bicycles now. Even so I can easily imagine how much more poorly our search could have gone without the occasional push in the right direction from my brother-in-law. Knowing him as I do, I realize now that I owe him a box of cheap wine and another of expensive Japanese chocolates.

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January 9, 2012 · 8:26 pm

Outerlands

Our trip to Angel Island was okay and all, but the next bike ride stayed a little closer to civilization, which in the mind of the littles means commerce. Views are swell, but views while you’re eating something are better. We’ve been out to the Financial District and the Mission but weren’t feeling the love for Market Street. Eventually we remembered there’s a whole other half of the city to our west, the Outer Richmond and Outer Sunset, aka the Outerlands. We rode there on the last day of winter vacation, right after New Year’s.

I am the windmill, koo koo ka choo...

A trip to the Outerlands meant biking through Golden Gate Park, a smooth slight downhill all the way to Ocean Beach, and the park is always good. It had been a long time since we headed deep into the Avenues, which feels weirdly residential until you get to the beach; long, long streets full of houses. They have driveways! And sometimes yards! And frequently people park their cars in those yards. But the commercial strips get few and far between as the Avenue numbers roll up, with a sudden perk up at the end of the N-Judah line. We hopped on our bikes in the morning and rode the 3.5 miles down to the beach and the windmills, coasting much of the way. I had no idea they were remodeling the decrepit southern windmill, but it looks awesome. Not open for visitors yet, however, and no signs saying when it would open, either.

Recently Java Beach opened a real restaurant, the Beachside Café. The last time we’d been to Java Beach was before we were married, or even engaged. Remembering our failures on the food front on our last trip, our first stop was Beachside for brunch. I never expect this in the outer Avenues, but bicycle parking was tight, and alas, there are no racks, and there certainly aren’t parking meters. We eventually found an unclaimed stop sign across the street.

Beachside and Java Beach are cleverly located at the end of the N-Judah line, and eating brunch there made it clear that their business is totally Muni-based. The café would be quiet, then a train would rumble by and stop, then 20 people would rush into the restaurant to order coffee and pastry forming a line out the door. Five minutes later the café would empty out again. Fifteen minutes later, repeat. My conclusion at the end of our meal was that their door banged really loudly every time it opened and closed, and it would be nice if they could fix that. The food was good too.

It’s fun to ride in the Outerlands. Everything is pretty flat and if you time your ride to miss the Muni stops, there’s not much competition for the streets. We made our first visit ever to Other Avenues, a really old-school coop a little east of Beachside. Their bulk section isn’t as extensive as Rainbow’s but it’s pretty impressive. And they had bike racks, and a giant ball and chain holding the driftwood bench outside the store that the kids liked rolling back and forth. No pictures, alas, our camera flashed the “recharge battery” light right when we got to the windmill. SFBC discount still applies at Other Avenues.

From there we figured as long as we were in the neighborhood, more or less (and our definition of “nearby” expands substantially when we’re rolling on two wheels), we figured we would swing by Devil’s Teeth Baking and pick up lunch. This is more eating out than we normally do, but we’d gotten lazy about grocery shopping over the holidays. Worth the trip, however, because Devil’s Teeth has one of the city’s newest parklets. It is the first parklet I’ve ever seen over angled parking, which gave the benches a thematic zig-zag feel. They had kids’ chairs on the sidewalk and chalk for drawing. When we got in there wasn’t much left to buy; they said they’d been slammed that morning. But their good reviews are well-deserved.

The weather has been amazing lately, as if there is no rainy season to come at all, and I always end up overdressing in two jackets and having to peel them off as we ride. California’s drought is our gain.

Both Beachside and Devil’s Teeth had another innovation I hadn’t seen before; they’re now partners with Green Apple, which leaves a selection of used books on a shelf in the corner of each store for $5 apiece—they’re good books, too, and if I hadn’t had two grants to write the next week at work (and every night after the kids went to bed) it would have been difficult to resist. I hadn’t seen a store with the Green Apple partnership before; I wish they did that in our neighborhood. I never thought I’d say this, but we need to get to the outer Avenues more often.

We rode home through the Park, crossing up to JFK Drive in a search for the “squishy bushes” (some kind of beach succulent? Ice plant?) that our son had talked about every day when we brought him home from nature camp. No luck, but we hit the jackpot anyway, finding two waterfalls crashing down at the northern edge of the park we’d never seen before; they were astounding, I would have been less surprised to see a live sasquatch there. We stopped with a half-dozen other bicycles whose riders were enjoying the view while our kids pointed and yelled. We were passed by over a dozen cars that never slowed or seemed to notice there was something to see. We’ve driven on the same road and never noticed the falls either. Who knew there was so much to see?

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January 7, 2012 · 9:56 pm

Angel Island

All aboard!

While our kids were out of school over winter break we took the ferry to Angel Island. This is one of those trips that never would have seemed feasible before bicycles. There are no cars allowed on the island (other than those of the staff and summer trams) and the island is too large and the stay too long for it to be reasonable to walk with the kids; they would barely have made it past the docks on foot, and then we would have had another four hours before the ferry returned.

Bathroom break ad infinitum

After going on our bicycles I’d say that it was a mixed success. Matt and I had fun but even though we did the hauling, the kids got tired and frustrated and cold. By the middle of the afternoon they were engaged in their usual protest strategy of spending a half-hour in the bathroom apiece because they didn’t want to go anywhere anymore, even though the bathroom in question was a glorified outhouse in the middle of an empty field nowhere near the ferry dock that would get us home.

Alcatraz Island

But up until lunch, we all had a good time. The kids adored the ferry ride, especially spotting the buoys decorated in Christmas colors, and they liked the first half of the bike ride and eating lunch on the top of a hill looking over the old and new Bay Bridges. We rarely get to spend extended time with them outdoors as their default expectation is that after an hour in the park it’s time to go to a café. But in the off-season on Angel Island, there are no cafés. The costs of urban living: they are not fans of the concept of “wilderness,” not even half-hearted wilderness like an island you ride to on a ferry that has flush toilets and that was once the Ellis Island of the West.

Nobody here but us bicycles

In fact, in winter on Angel Island there’s not much of anything. There were almost no visitors on the ferry with us.  Six bikes in total made it onto the island, two ridden by mountain bikers who immediately hit the unpaved fire road, and two ridden by tourists tailed by a walker who’d chosen not to rent a bike for the trip. The first couple outpaced us immediately and we outpaced the second; even with the kids aboard, we ride faster than pedestrians. Everyone else was walking. We barely saw other visitors during our entire loop around the island. It was a startling change from a normal day in the city.

Angel Island actually sports some serious hills; the whole route is paved but it’s got elevation galore. None of it exceeded what we see on a daily basis in San Francisco, but none of it was familiar either, and it’s much easier, we’ve found, to climb a hill you know than to climb a hill you don’t. Case in point:  on the way up the seriously steep hill to the old Nike missile site, Matt started weaving with the combined load of cargo bike, our son, and our gear, and three-quarters of the way up he had to get off and walk. Since he ended up crosswise in the road, I had to stop and walk as well. When we got to the top we saw a sign telling bicycles that the hill was too steep to ride down, and walking your bicycle was required. No such sign on the uphill side, however.

Two Bay Bridges

The views on Angel Island are amazing. If our kids had been older they would have appreciated them more. They preferred to stop and look at things closer to the ground and complained that we wouldn’t let them climb on the restricted access crumbling old buildings. We didn’t pack enough food and snacks, underestimating the time the trip would really take, and they were hungry and cold.

By the time we got back both kids were exhausted. Our daughter started complimenting random teenagers on their braces. “You have shiny teeth! Where did you get shiny teeth?” and trying to make snow angels on the disgusting ferry carpet. At this point in the preschooler repertoire, the decision to take off underwear and run around shrieking cannot be far behind. Our son got so frustrated with waiting to get off the ferry dock that he punched Matt in the crotch. It was a low moment.

With hindsight I’m glad we went, but I wouldn’t go again with the kids for a long, long time. But someone else going to San Francisco, with older kids or no kids at all, would probably like this ride quite a lot.

A thoughtful visitor assembles found bones into a skeleton. We try to convince our kids not to destroy it.

What I would do again is ride the ferries with them. Riding to the docks is entertaining enough to suit them, they loved riding the ferry and looking out the windows, and in a pinch, the kiosk on board is chock full of snack foods in neon packaging. We could have hopped off in Sausalito and ridden home across the Golden Gate Bridge (the western bicycle path will soon be closed until April), laughing all the way.

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December 22, 2011 · 11:36 pm

SFBC 2011 Holiday Lights Ride

Thus far we have been very reluctant to ride our bikes at night with the kids. Because we are even more outside the mainstream than the average parent carrying kids on a bicycle, who is already, let’s face it, way more than two standard deviations away from any American’s definition of mainstream, we didn’t really pick up riding at all until late fall, heading into winter. Although this is a good way to get great deals on bicycles, and we’re grateful for that, I’m sure that this transition would have been easier if it stayed light later and if we didn’t have to spend time before each ride wrapping the kids up against the wind. That doesn’t really take any longer than putting them in a car seat, but it’s unfamiliar.

My daughter manages to make this look cute

Over time we’ve gotten increasingly comfortable on solo rides, to the point that I was riding home through Golden Gate Park at 9:30pm on Wednesday evenings after my Japanese class, which given that I have good lights no longer seems particularly remarkable to me, but did raise some eyebrows at work when it came up at one point. I have many colleagues who live in the suburbs. (An unexpected bonus of my bicycle commute is that I no longer have to hear daily paeans to the environmental superiority of the Toyota Prius, the bridge-crossing commuter’s vehicle of choice. Granted, I got tired of that because I am envious; a Prius is way cooler than a minivan. For that matter a Yugo is cooler than a minivan.) However when heading out with the kids after 4pm we’ve pretty much stuck with driving. Lately we’ve been feeling ready to expand our range.

As a kick-starter to nighttime riding, and because our son loves riding on the bike and staying up late, we decided to go out on the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s Holiday Lights Ride. It seemed like a fun seasonal thing to do now that we’ve mostly given up presents (excepting a couple for the small, long since wrapped). Leaving the house, the kids were already hopped up, especially because they saw that I was carrying several dozen lollipops in the hopes that the unfamiliar sugar rush would keep them awake. We knew that it was going to be a windy ride so in our usual last-minute scuffle I ended up using an emergency Mylar blanket as our daughter’s wind break, which I attached to her seat with a binder clip. Classy! Of course SFBC reps took a photo of this travesty.

I was pretty sure that the ride would start late but we were nervous and thus some of the first people to arrive. And at first the crowd looked pretty scraggly, frankly, made up solely of the kind of hardcore long-time city riders who always made me think that two-wheeled commuting was the exclusive domain of single, childless bike shop mechanics with serious tattoos and dreadlocks who have spent decades carefully curating rust colonies on bicycles that are older than I am. Nice guys, but we never seemed to have much in common. But although we were the first family to show up we were by no means the last. Before we left the Panhandle we’d met a dad with a Yepp mini on the front, another dad with a Yepp maxi on the back, some kids on their own bikes, a dad riding a tandem with his teenage daughter, and a mom and dad riding a tandem with a babyseat on the top tube between them, which was unquestionably the most awesome family bicycle I’ve ever seen. (If I had any hope of being competent enough to take pictures while riding I would post the dozen photos I wanted to take of this family.) Later on we even saw the rarest and most elusive family bicycle setup ever to roam these gritty urban streets: a bicycle trailer. On this particular ride, even I would have been willing to put my kids in a trailer; when you’re riding with 100 other people, traffic and the width of the bike lanes aren’t really issues.

We loved this ride. Every time we go out like this we end up remembering that we’ve forgotten once again how much we love this city. Sure, it was weird to hit a four-way stop as a crowd and figure out how many bicycles should go through the intersection for every turn between cars, and we got spread out pretty quickly due to traffic lights; this wasn’t Critical Mass.  But in addition to being around more family bikes than I’ve ever seen before, there were at least two bicycles set up as rolling speakers blasting holiday tunes, and SFBC volunteers marked all the turns by squatting the intersections and pounding away on what sounded suspiciously like cowbells. Nobody was in much of a hurry, and it quickly became apparent that this event draws a lot of once-a-year riders, because for the first time ever Matt and I were actually passing people on the hills even with our kids on board. The first climb up to Alamo Square seemed pretty daunting, but by the time we hit Pacific Heights the company and the sights made hauling uphill mostly a non-issue. We’ve gotten to be stronger riders (we never had to walk) and the ride was so much fun we eventually stopped noticing the grades. Up, down, it’s all okay.

Of course we couldn’t stay until the end. Our daughter had been so hyped up by the prospect of going out late that she’d missed her nap, and about an hour in started protesting violently whenever anyone complimented her Mylar blanket. “I don’t WANT to have a shiny BLANKET!” she screamed, prompting tandem-dad to say, “What? I don’t see any shiny blanket.” From behind us another couple of voices piped up with, “Nope, no shiny blankets here!” “Nothing shiny at all that I can see!” She subsided with a suspicious glare but passed out a few minutes later, her head listing heavily from side to side as we rode. Pretty much everyone who passed us from then on took a photo of this and showed it to me at the next intersection, but we knew at that point we’d have to peel out early. When we got to Presidio Heights we turned back toward home. Ironically, after sleeping through most of that party on wheels, she woke up again on the dark and silent streets of Golden Gate Park.

Still pining for the wind in its needles

While we were waiting at the light at the bottom of the long hill that takes us home, a man on the sidewalk ran out to the corner. “I saw you guys going the other way a couple of hours ago when I was headed into to the restaurant and I thought you looked great!” he said. “And here you are again just as I’m leaving! How funny is that?”

Happy holidays!

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Filed under family biking, rides, San Francisco

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