January 25, 2012 · 12:19 pm

Legoland California

Legoland from the Sky Cruiser

Our son is old enough to appreciate the cult of Lego now so the big incentive for him to get in a plane to San Diego at some risk to his personal safety was the promise of getting to visit Legoland. I had no idea what to expect and neither did he; at our most specific, I would say we were all imagining a place where there were a lot of Legos to play with.

At the risk of ruining the surprise, Legoland is not like that. It’s like a Lego-themed Disneyland. Admission is heart-stoppingly expensive. There is a weird tie-in with Volvo, raising the question of whether all Scandinavians signed some kind of blood oath of mutual commercial support (but if you’re visiting San Diego and going to Legoland, try to rent a Volvo).

VIP Volvo parking

Although the whole experience primarily made me miss the charms of Fairyland, the most underrated amusement park attraction ever, we had the good fortune of visiting Legoland on what was evidently the least busy day of its entire history, and never waited for even a second in line for a single ride, attraction, or concession, so I have no complaints.

Our kids thought it was awesome, and there is a lot of thought put into what would entertain them.

"Yes, we have no bananas..." (I have no idea why this song, no)

In the water play area, very welcome on a hot day, they can step on dots in the ground to make the fountains go or make music play. The rides are pitch-perfect for a six-year old boy, involving helicopters and boats and trains and fire engines.

However the Volvo sponsorship deal led to some weird moments for us. This was particularly true for the rides that involved driving; kids of various ages can drive little cars around a track, for example, and at the end of the ride they are issued little driver’s licenses.

Legoland driving school

There were, on occasion, opportunities to pedal things, but they were always purely decorative, like on the train in the sky, a surreal experience where a train car with helicopter blades mounted on the tail fin rode on an elevated track through the park, ostensibly moving thanks to the two riders pedaling but in fact powered by an engine. Our kids were both disappointed to discover it was not in fact a train that you pedaled like a bike.

Why include pedals at all if they don't do anything?

Like nearly every amusement park I’ve ever seen, Legoland was surrounded by a sea of parking, and if there’s a way to get there other than by car I can’t figure it out. We were traveling from the city proper by rental car, and expected that we would drive, but it startled me a little. As mentioned our usual amusement park venue is Fairyland, which is so old-school that parking was an obvious afterthought and you can walk there from a nearby BART station (if you are used to city distances, at least; a recent visit from a suburban family member reminded us that there are people who view a half-mile walk with a preschooler and no stroller as something akin to a polar expedition).

Although we had a nice time, I found myself confused by the whole experience (and it was reassuring to read that we are not the only people thinking about this). Have the scales fallen from our eyes? Is it as crazy as it seems to me that we were alone in the carpool lane both there and back yet driving the smallest car on the road? It’s hard not to think of hundreds or thousands of people driving alone in giant trucks as laughable overkill, as if people were walking through the streets with rocket launchers strapped to their back for “personal protection.”

Legoland helicopters can be moved up, down, and around

Is it as bizarre as it seems that the pedals on the Legoland rides were all purely decorative while the controls to operate a small car worked and the ones for a helicopter ride that actually flew it up and down and in circles were functional?  Or am I now a bicycle-crazed crank?

I have a feeling I know the answer to that. At the same time, I don’t feel crazy. That should be worth something. At my old office I somehow got on speed dial at the locked psychiatric ward across the street, and would end up with endless messages on my office voice mail from the King of Hawai’i. He said his name was Raymond, and he would croon nonsense songs into the ether while complaining that I never visited. These calls were the introduction to a wide cast of characters in inpatient lockdown, all of whom seemed harmless enough, although finding a dozen random messages in my voicemail box every morning got to be annoying. Eventually the psych ward staff figured it out and changed the speed dial settings (which I heard happening in the background of the last message). But my point: these people knew that they were off the charts crazy and they didn’t shrink from telling my voicemail about it. When I think about transportation, I don’t think that cars are bad, although I think they’re overused and inappropriate for many conditions (it’s a rare day I don’t ride my bike faster than the cars on the road in San Francisco, and I am slow and frequently carrying an extra person). It doesn’t feel crazy to me to think this, but the reaction I get is often comparable to announcing that I am the King of Hawai’i, and I’ve got a lovely song for you today…

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January 24, 2012 · 10:10 pm

At last, it rains

The untouchable Novara Stratus makes its debut

In November and December, expecting the winter rain to start at any time, we prepared for the season by buying cycling rain gear. At that point, for some reason, prices were amazing, which is the only reason we were even vaguely prepared. Our rain jackets were purchased for half off regular price, and waterproof pants were even cheaper; I think mine cost $10? My mom sewed rain pants with cartoons of angry dinosaurs on them for our son. He tried to wear them as pajamas but we had to nix that.

And then: nada.

We were beginning to think it was another drought year. December was warm and dry, great for riding, but leading us to fear a return to the days when restaurants wouldn’t bring a glass of water and people were encouraged not to water their driveways. Evidently in the Inland Empire and SoCal, people water their driveways. Watering lawns during daytime hours and washing cars were also discouraged. But also: watering driveways. I have lived in California now for years, off and on, and I still don’t understand this state.

I was starting to feel kind of stupid. It looked as though we’d dropped a lot of dosh and shopping effort on rain gear we wouldn’t need until next year, or in the event of a real multi-year drought, several years. We were preparing for real Northern California rain, too, not the endless drizzle of my Pacific Northwest childhood, but the insane barrel-of-water-dropped-on-your-head downpours that scared the daylights out of me when I first moved here. These kinds of rains left my waterproof shoes filled with water that was then impossible to remove and once led me to attempt to dry my soaking wet clothes on the (forbidden) space heater in my office. It turns out there’s a reason they tell you not to dry clothes on a space heater, who knew? My entire outfit ended up with giant brown-edged holes in it. People across the hall complained about the smell and sent the department manager to investigate. I skulked home in my gym clothes. It was a low moment.

This year the rains came late but seem eager to make up for lost time. And I smelled the sweet scent of victory over the elements. I rode to work in the pouring rain but with waterproof pants, jacket, and boots, I was feeling great. There are some extra issues to consider: I can’t see as well; giant puddles at the edge of the road mean taking the lane more often; braking is best done early and often. On the other hand, there are many fewer cars on the road, and they are slower and more considerate. And once I stripped off the rain pants and jacket, no one believed I had ridden to work.

Empty racks=rainy season

It turns out that it’s fun to ride in the rain with the right clothes and the right bike. I haven’t spent so much time outdoors in serious rain since we were kids visiting my grandparents and didn’t care about getting soaked in the local thunderstorms: they’d just hose us off in their laundry sink. For the last several years I was always scurrying from one covered place to another when it poured. But seeing the world in the rain is pretty. The city smells green. I had forgotten.

Matt checked in after taking our son to school geared up as I was, and sent his impressions:

“The ride this morning in the pouring rain was actually great… especially after 3 days of driving 4 hours a day! [Matt had to drop off and pick up both kids while I was away.] The investment in gear has totally paid off — rain jacket and pants, bike shoes, smart wool socks, thermal gloves — I was completely dry from neck to toe.  Only remaining gaps are a) goggles or some other solution to keep my glasses from fogging over (I just took them off eventually, but then the rain gets in your eyes); and b) a helmet cover (optional, but would be nice to have dry hair on days when I have to show up a little more dressed up and collected).

The boy loves his rain pants and boots so much, he insisted on keeping them on in the classroom.  With the balaclava, he’s even better covered than me on top.”

Riding in a San Francisco winter offers fewer challenges, I realize, than riding in other winter climates. It snows here about once every 30 years, if we’re lucky, and temperatures are unassuming. But it’s nice to conquer our little challenges even so. And of course we’ll always have the hills.

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January 23, 2012 · 10:45 pm

The Co-Rider (aka Bike Tutor) debacle

I have avoided writing about our experience with the Co-Rider for some time, because thinking about it makes me feel nauseated to this day. But it’s probably worth putting down.

Before we realized installing the Co-Rider was a horrible mistake

I knew when I got my bicycle that I wanted to be able to carry both kids. My two children were heavy enough that even the more “conventional” setups for carrying two children on a bike were not really an option. The Bobike Mini/Bobike Maxi combination looked stellar, but at 32 pounds my daughter was only a pound away from the Mini’s weight limit. This was a shame because we trusted the Bobike line at that point. The Yepp Mini seat had the same weight limit. Bike shops we visited that knew anything about child seats liked the Bobike and didn’t object to the Yepp, although the Yepp had been recalled for safety reasons in the past and that tipped the scales toward Bobike.

I wanted a front seat that could hold more weight. There seemed to be only two options. One was the iBert seat, aka The Green Sled, an instantly recognizable bright green plastic seat that held up to 38 pounds. The other was the glowingly reviewed Co-Rider, which claimed to be able to hold a child up to 5 years.

The iBert was cheaper and easily available online, so we asked about it first. We had seen this seat all over the place on Sundays in Golden Gate Park. But we were unable to find a bike shop willing to install it, and none of them would sell it either. The first shop we asked said it was unsafe because it hung from the handlebars and compromised steering, too much of a risk with a child on board, particularly one nearing the top of the acceptable weight range, so they wouldn’t install it for us even if we bought it ourselves. The second shop we asked said it was unsafe because the back of the seat was too low and risked the spine of the child riding it, and they wouldn’t install it even if we bought it ourselves. The third shop said that the mounting bracket was nothing more than a giant steel spike that was a riding death trap, and what’s more the plastic would weaken with anything more than occasional recreational use, risking dropping the kid to the ground, and they wouldn’t install it even if we bought it ourselves. We didn’t get the iBert.

We have since learned that there is at least one well-respected shop in San Francisco that sells the iBert (Roaring Mouse), and ultimately, none of these things would have been as bad as what happened with the Co-Rider. So from my revised perspective we might as well have just taken our chances with the iBert, especially since none of the proposed horror scenarios seems to have actually come to pass. Although in general I think following the advice of informed people is a better idea altogether. More realistically, we should have given up the idea, accepted that we’d missed the window for using a front seat, and looked for a bike for me that could carry two on the back.

Testing the Co-Rider for stability didn't help any: it seemed stable but would collapse less than 15 minutes later

We then moved to the Co-Rider. It looked like what we wanted, and the weight limit was no problem. None of the bike shops we visited had any objection to installing it, probably because none of them had ever heard of it. The setup looked reasonable enough and it attached to the frame, which was apparently desirable. I had to order it myself but Ocean Cyclery was willing to put the Co-Rider on the front of my Breezer and the Bobike Junior on the back. They were confused as to how it could work on a frame without a level top tube, but the Co-Rider website and literature was vehement that the seat could be installed on a step-through frame, and in fact showed one mounted on what looked like an Omafiets, which had the most sloped tube I’ve ever seen on a bicycle.

When I came to pick up my Breezer the Co-Rider was installed on it but the bike shop was, if anything, even more skeptical about the seat. (This is where I should have listened more closely.) They felt it didn’t have any support at the back and that if the screws loosened even slightly, inevitable from the various bumps and impacts that come with regular riding, that the seat would tip. To test it, the shop owner had spent extra time on the installation and taken his six-year-old on an extended test ride to ensure it was stable. He felt it wasn’t going anywhere but was nervous about the design and insisted that I check the stability of the seat every time I put our daughter in it. His concern was prescient.

What the Co-Rider looked like when first installed, correct position

I rode with my daughter in that seat (sometimes with our son in the Bobike Junior in the back) for three weeks, checking the seat for stability every time we rode because I am paranoid like that. On the third weekend, riding in Golden Gate Park after once again checking the seat for stability before departing (no problem), the screws loosened, the seat tipped up 90 degrees, and she tumbled back out of it nearly into the street.

Where the Co-Rider ended up while my daughter was in it and we were crossing six lanes of traffic

The good news is that it was a front seat and I could catch her. The bad news is that we were crossing Masonic at Fell when it happened, and even on a Sunday, this is easily one of the most dangerous intersections in the entire city of San Francisco. Even thinking about this experience months later makes my palms sweat and a headache start.

Because it was my daughter and not my son, she laughed it off like it was an adventure ride I’d created just for her and cheerfully rode in the Bobike Junior the rest of the way home. When I called Ocean Cyclery to tell them how right they were they were mortified that they’d ever installed it.

I was left wondering why I had such a different experience than everyone else who wrote about this seat. When I called the distributor in LA to get a refund (well past the return window, but clearly the seat was defective, and to their credit I did get the full refund) he said that I was the 3rd or 4th person to call with a story of a seat failure like this on a step-through frame. The distributor felt that these people were installing the seat incorrectly but I was pretty sure this was not the case for me, because my seat had been installed by a bike shop with extensive experience. I also thought that given that the problem had been identified by more than a couple of people with the same frame, it was time to investigate the seat design or the fabrication. The distributor said he was sending a request to manufacturer to investigate the problem. But since then there have been no changes in the advertising by the manufacturer, which continues to claim the Co-Rider is appropriate for step-through frames.

In the meantime my feeling is that either I got a seat with defective parts, and I am not the only one, or the seat is fundamentally unsuited to installation anything but a frame with a level top tube. Either option would suggest that the Co-Rider doesn’t belong on anything but a diamond frame, at best. It would be impossible for the seat to tip if installed on a level top tube, because the tube itself would hold up the entire length of the seat. I assume that the people who had good experiences with this seat were riding on diamond frames.

If the Co-Rider hadn’t tipped and nearly sent my daughter head-first and backwards into the street (other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?) I would have other issues, but they are minor. San Francisco is windy and my daughter didn’t like to ride very fast on this seat, because of the wind chill (both the Bobike and Yepp seats come with optional windscreens). The footrests look impressive but don’t have straps to hold her feet in, so she liked to kick sideways, which at times made the bike wobble. The seat is heavy and rattles when a child isn’t riding in it, and the welds are sloppy. Heavy is understandable given that it’s supposed to hold an older child; the sloppy welds and rattles (and my terrible experience) made me suspect that the seat is poorly made.

I liked riding with my daughter in a front seat, because it was easy to have a conversation and felt intimate. Putting the kid on the front also makes the ride a lot smoother; crossing Muni tracks with a child in a front seat makes the bumps forgettable, and there was never any risk of popping a wheelie on the uphills. I would  have loved to have her there longer and if I were riding a diamond-frame bike, without any need for a rear child seat, we would probably have enjoyed using this seat for a couple of years to come. Admittedly we would have ridden at a very slow pace. After having the seat literally collapse underneath my daughter, however, I can’t imagine ever using it again.

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January 21, 2012 · 10:30 pm

Hello, Atlanta, good-bye

Sharrow: I missed you, little buddy

So Atlanta: not world-renowned as a bicycling destination. My experience there was brief but suggested that this reputation is deserved. I hardly experienced the breadth of what the city had to offer, as I was indoors during nearly all daylight hours, but I don’t think I’m far off. To wit:

  • Bicycles spotted: 0
  • Bike lanes spotted: 0
  • Sharrows spotted: 1
  • Pedestrians spotted (myself included): <10

I will return for further updates in June.

Atlanta appears to represent hometown pride in part by relentless promotion of Coca Cola products, which were offered gratis throughout the meeting. I only recently gave up my diet Coke habit, a long-overdue New Year’s resolution, and it was until then my only source of caffeine. I did not falter and I had packed a half-dozen green tea bags, but the whole experience was not unlike what I imagine a former smoker feels in Las Vegas, or at an AA meeting. Perhaps this colored my perception unfairly.

The meeting I attended had a nice warm-up introduction for people about to spend 12 uninterrupted hours per day together. Before we began, everyone in the room was asked to introduce themselves and provide an anecdote about something interesting that had happened in the last six months (the group meets twice a year, but this was my first time). I said that this year we had started taking our kids to schools on our bikes. As an introduction, this turned out to be pretty popular, at least in a room full of doctors. It wasn’t as impressive as the woman who had started open-water swimming in the Atlantic Ocean near NYC, and had kept it up right into January, and rightly so, but still, not bad.

At lunch and dinner I ended up sitting next to the only other vegetarian in our own little catering ghetto. We passed the time by guessing what our eventual entrée would be, a game that quickly grew dull as the answer was always pasta with vegetables.

She mentioned that she took her kids around town, specifically small-town Indiana, on a trailer attached to their bikes. Represent, team oddball! Although they walked to school, they traveled regularly by bicycle for errands, sometimes piling groceries around the kids until only their faces were visible. But, she said, she would never put her kids in a trailer in city traffic. At last, I have independent confirmation of my theory that trailers are for small towns and suburbs.

Her son is now riding on his own bicycle, even though he is slightly younger than mine, but of course they have no traffic concerns. And we talked about when it might make sense to put kids on their own bikes in city traffic, which I think depends largely on the extent of protective lanes given to bicycles. I have no issues with our son riding in Golden Gate Park, even though he can’t brake yet. I won’t have issues with him biking in a separated lane once he can use his brakes consistently. An urban oncologist noted that although he loved riding, he only commuted by bicycle on weekends, because the traffic where he lived was too frightening on weekdays even for an adult. Once outside of a small town, I have to agree: no infrastructure, no bicycle commuting.

Welcome home: I missed these little ones even more

And speaking of braking: although my son can’t use the ones on his bicycle yet, he can at least conjugate them, informing me with delight before I left that while the past tense of break, when you break something, is broke, but the past tense of brake, when you stop your bike, is braked, which he found enormously amusing. The bicycle commute just keeps giving.

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January 17, 2012 · 8:15 am

Away, away!

I am headed across the country for one of my rare business trips. As work is on the agenda morning, noon, and night, I will not be updating for the duration. I will return to talk smack about child seats in celebration of Lunar New Year, something of a big deal around these parts.

Although I am still not 100% there on the habit of bringing a camera everywhere, I have at least gotten better. So I know that my mom will miss the photos of the kids. Sorry, mom.

In the meantime, I leave with a story and a photo.

Recently while riding home from work, I saw a father riding with his daughter in the stoker position behind, with a child seat (empty) behind her. Is that an Xtracycle, I asked when we were both stopped at the red light. He seemed pleased that I recognized it and we rode along for a while talking; he told me he’d had the Xtracycle for 10 years but that most people didn’t have any idea what it was. I told him I knew it on sight because our friends at school have a Big Dummy. He said he was envious of the Dummy, but I was more impressed he’d had the Xtra since before his kids were born, given his daughter’s age (probably 7 or 8). I like having these conversations with other riders, which happens more often than I expect. I miss it when we are driving, where the only “conversations” involve honking horns. Riding my bicycle for the last few weeks has been keeping me sane; it was for several days the only time I was not simultaneously feeling horribly guilty and incompetent.

Put a bird on it (San Francisco-style)

The caption on this photo amuses me, but my husband, who purchased this shirt for me, and our son, who chose it, are less entertained. It it hard to read the thought bubble on the shirt in this photo, which really makes the bird, but it says, “Things will be different when I learn how to breathe fire.”

How true that is.

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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 15, 2012 · 9:12 pm

If it’s Thursday, we must be in San Diego

In the last year Matt has racked up unbelievable amounts of international business travel. From my personal perspective this is a hassle because it means I’ve spent more weeks than I care to count as a single parent. From a more optimistic perspective his travel represents an unexpected windfall in the form of hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles.

Sunset at Pacific Beach

At some point, realizing that our work schedules had turned our winter break into no break at all, we decided to take a real vacation over MLK weekend. Thanks to Matt’s miles, the cost of this vacation was $5 apiece in booking fees and a few days of entertainment plus eating every meal in a restaurant. We decided that was a price we were willing to pay. We didn’t want to leave the time zone because that always turns the kids into zombies and we wanted to be warm. Hello, San Diego!

I don’t leave San Francisco much and when I do it’s typically for conference travel, which is so stylized that I never really see the city I’m staying in—arrive at airport, take public transit or shared van with colleagues to conference hotel, meetings meetings meetings, meals in hotel restaurant, reverse on the way home. Many of my colleagues try to enjoy the conference destination but at this point in my life if I have to travel alone somewhere I prefer to go back home ASAP to be with the kids. So this was the first time in a long, long time that I had spent free-form time outside of the greater Bay Area, except for last summer’s trip to Europe. And I have to admit I’ve found it unnerving.

Oh yes, car culture

We stayed in a hotel with extensive grounds notable for its heavy reliance on golf carts, but every trip away from the property was a jarring reintroduction to Southern California car culture. Nearly everything commercial in San Diego appeared to be located in a strip mall. Every street seemed to have at least four lanes and traffic moved blisteringly fast except at rush hour, when we were the only car in the carpool lane and the rest of the traffic was at a standstill. Is this what the rest of America is like?

Despite the heavy emphasis on cars in San Diego, particularly huge trucks, it seems like a nice place to ride a bicycle in many ways. The city itself seems to lack hills entirely; it was no accident that we had trouble spotting a bicycle with gears in San Diego, even in a bicycle shop. There are bicycle lanes everywhere, albeit not with a lot of actual bicycles in them, and since they’re marked about once a mile it would be easy to confuse them with a break-down lane if they weren’t so narrow.

All bicycles end up at the beach

Except at rush hour, San Diego is a small city that doesn’t have serious traffic, which would be a relief. Admittedly my judgment as to what constitutes serious traffic might be a little skewed.

In addition, San Diego, like the rest of Southern California, is so image-conscious that we actually saw a street cleaner out buffing the streets. I’ll bet potholes aren’t much of a concern. California may be experiencing a state budget crisis beyond all precedent, forcing public elementary schools in impoverished neighborhoods to pack over 40 kids into kindergarten classrooms, but fortunately having streets as smooth as glass is the city’s last bulwark against the end of civilization.

No parking, bike lane

Unlike many cities, San Diego primarily stripes its bicycle lanes against curbs where there is no parking, eliminating the dreaded door zone. Unless our son is on board, as he is eagle-eyed and relentless in his self-appointed task of scanning for potential door-bike incidents, I ride as far to the left-hand side of the bike lane as possible when we are at home in San Francisco. And I get no small amount of huffiness from drivers about my determined leftward drift on sharrow streets, where the risk of being doored is greatest—without the visual reminder of a bike lane drivers fling open their doors into traffic with casual abandon.

I never knew that the sharrow arrows in San Francisco were positioned to protect riders from the door zone if they ride on top of the arrow itself until I read it on the SFMTA website. It makes perfect sense, but it does put you right near the middle of the street, and if I didn’t know that was the goal even after I’d started riding regularly I suppose it’s hopeless to expect full-time drivers to know.

What is that thing?

We have changed. In San Diego despite having no intentions to do anything in particular, we ended up renting bicycles (of a sort) almost every day.

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January 14, 2012 · 9:46 am

The Christmas bike: Jamis Laser 20”

Our son liked his old balance bike so much that he was reluctant to share it with his sister, even as he outgrew it and she grew into it. Until recently we had not considered getting him another bike, as larger-sized bicycles came with pedals, which he had never really shown much interest in using. His initial attraction to renting a kid’s bike in Copenhagen was immediately overtaken by the fun of riding on the back of our bikes. We assumed that he’d come around to riding his own bike eventually, but estimated that that interest would build over the course of a year or two. That didn’t concern us much given that both logistically and traffic-wise it’s unrealistic for him to ride on his own to school and back. We were surprised but pleased when after a few months of riding with us he said he wanted a “big kid” bike with pedals.

We didn’t take our son’s interest in a new bike very seriously at first, but as time passed, he became increasingly insistent that a bike was what he wanted for Christmas. I’m not sure where he learned that a bicycle was a traditional Christmas gift, but fair enough, it was. When we mentioned at one point that there is a bicycle summer camp in San Francisco, where kids can both learn to ride and take day trips across the Golden Gate Bridge, to cooking classes at the Ferry Building, through city parks, and to the zoo, his desire for a bike reached a fever pitch: he wanted a bike, and he wanted to learn to ride it in time for Wheel Kids summer camp.

Although buying so many bikes in a few months was starting to feel ridiculous, we also felt like it would be crazy to miss the opportunity to get our son riding when he was so motivated. And he correctly pointed out that he was now the only person in the family without his own bicycle. So onward: another bicycle. The selection of children’s bicycles is almost as confusing as the selection of adult bicycles, but mercifully, there are many fewer models available and they are cheaper. Our son, a very tall six-year-old, seemed the right size for a bike with 20” wheels, which would probably last him until middle school.  We hardly needed the advice to avoid big-box store kids’ bikes, as there are no such stores in San Francisco. Once again my brother-in-law offered advice that could get us to a decent ride. He recommended Wheels of Justice Cyclery, a Bay Area shop specializing in children’s bikes that not only had the coolest name ever but offered a buyback program, where any bicycle purchased from them could be returned anytime and 50% of the price would be taken off the next bicycle. The idea behind it was to help parents resist the temptation to save money by buying a bike that was too big and that scared kids off of riding for good.

The downside of Wheels of Justice is that they are located in Oakland. Getting there involves a brutal drive that promised to send our kids, no fans of driving anyway, into complete meltdowns. We weren’t absolutely sure about the appropriate size of bicycle and knew we wanted to bring our son for a fitting. So despite our fears, we packed both kids into the car one evening a couple of weeks before Christmas for a trip to what we said was a surprise destination. Our daughter screamed bloody murder for the entire half hour it took us to get off the Bay Bridge and into Montclair. By the time we parked the car, I wanted to kill my brother-in-law for sending us across the Bay. Mercifully, our son passed out cold about five minutes into our daughter’s screaming fit. Less mercifully, we had to wake him up on arrival, at which point we had two howling kids to wrangle. Fortunately Montclair has a frozen yogurt shop, which we carried them into, ordering each an extra large cup. By the time they’d finished eating, they had mellowed to the point that they were only in very bad moods. Onward to Wheels of Justice!

To my surprise, our son had not made the connection between his desire for a bicycle and this trip, and was completely gobsmacked when we arrived at a bicycle shop. His mood immediately ratcheted up to delighted. Our daughter spotted some bikes with streamers and perked up as well. Living up to their promise, Wheels of Justice primarily stocked kids’ bikes, and given that it was the Christmas season, there were a lot of them on the floor. There were also a lot of people buying kids’ bikes; unlike our other bicycles, this was clearly not going to be a purchase heavily discounted from list price. The selection of bikes ranged pretty widely, from simple single-speeds to geared mountain bikes with suspension forks (which I still think of as the thingy that holds the front wheel on the bike that looks like it has springs inside). Thanks to the Wheel Kids site (and once again vetted by my brother-in-law, who has in a few total hours over the last five years spared us many bad decisions) we knew what we wanted as a first bike: a single-speed bike with coaster brakes and a hand brake for the rear wheel (not the front wheel because gripping a front wheel brake too hard could send a kid over the handlebars). Happily, this is also the cheapest kind of decent kids’ bike.

Classic Christmas morning photo

It took a while to find someone to help us as the shop was slammed, but Matt was happy to cruise the selection of commuter gloves while the kids climbed on and off various bikes. When someone in the shop was finally free he confirmed that we wanted a 20” bike after popping our son on and off a couple of bikes, and told us that given what we wanted there were two options: a Jamis Laser or a COBO. They could build us a COBO in the next week that we could reserve and drive back to pick up, or sell us a Laser that night. The guy at the shop didn’t see much difference between the bikes except that they thought the Laser had a nicer paint job. Remembering the drive we’d had already, we bought the Laser.

Our son, who is a model of patience and discretion among six-year-olds, accepted that this was the last he would see of his bike until Christmas, and even pretended on occasion over the next two weeks that he didn’t know he’d be getting one. His first ride was on Christmas Day, and he needed one of us to hold the back of his jacket the whole time. His second ride was a couple of days later, and by the end of that ride, he was riding on his own. Admittedly his strategy for finishing a ride still involves riding headlong directly at one of us and yelling, “Grab my bike! I need to stop now!”

The Jamis Laser has some weaknesses, but I’m not sure that there is much we could buy that is better. Our son is familiar with our bikes, and immediately noticed the lack of fenders, lights, and a bell. He has argued that these are gaps that compromise safety and function and would like these accessories added to his bike as soon as possible. (Of course, he is six years old, and thus I suspect that he would cheerfully accessorize with anything and everything up to and including streamers on the handlebars.) I’m not sure that we can add fenders to the bike (we asked, and the verdict was that it is unlikely), but the rest is easy enough; however I feel like the bell at least should come standard. Our son also wondered why his bike didn’t come with a U-lock, as it has not escaped him that we lock up our own bikes even within the already double-locked building garage (I myself have often wondered the same thing about my own bike). Finally, we all find this bike to be pretty heavy for a child. Our son is strong for his age but lifting the bike is real work for him; this was a big disappointment after the ultralight balance bike.

We were surprised and delighted to see one of his 1st grade classmates, a friend since the first day of kindergarten, riding the exact same bicycle, right down to the color, on New Year’s Day. His parents don’t bike commute to school, so we didn’t realize they even had bikes, but like us, they were out for a family ride on Sunday in Golden Gate Park: one parent had a child seat for their daughter, the other carried her balance bike, and their son rode alongside on his Laser. Seeing our friends out like us on bikes, and our kids’ matching bicycles, pretty much made our day. What can I say? We’re cheap dates.

Girl on Schwinn

In defense of the Laser, there is a lot of crap out there people expect kids to ride. Other than an amazing old Schwinn one girl was riding, our son’s bike was the most functional bicycle we saw in the parade of new Christmas bikes in Golden Gate Park over the last week of the year. The awesome Schwinn was, according to the rider’s grandmother, 35 years old and her mother’s bike before her, stored  in the garage (under a bag of lawn fertilizer…) awaiting a new generation all those decades. That bike did have fenders, as well as huge sweeping handlebars and a kickstand and a full chainguard. The Laser, to its credit, also has a kickstand and a chainguard. The Schwinn did not have a hand brake, and that is a strong point in the Laser’s favor, because the only way that poor girl could stop the bike quickly was to reverse the pedals, at which point she would fall right off the bike. (I suspect it would be easy to add a hand brake.) Both bikes weigh a ton considering that they are meant for children. The absence of hand brakes was epidemic among other kids’ bikes we saw, many of which seemed to rattle aggressively even after they stopped moving. Based on their lack of major brand labels I assume that these bikes were purchased at Target or Walmart. Although I understand the temptation, because those bikes are cheap and because employees at Target/Walmart typically don’t treat kids like they are radioactive, I’m glad we went to a real bike shop (and I’m particularly glad it was kid-friendly). Despite my annoyance about what’s missing from the Laser, it is clear that we could have done much worse.

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January 13, 2012 · 9:28 am

Running around San Francisco

Until mid-week I was consumed with writing grants and reviewing grants. Both of these are a huge time sink, but only one (writing them) has any possibility of my getting paid for my time. I have a lot of ambivalence about reviewing grants, given that it seems to be a process where I crush people’s dreams on an all-volunteer basis. Then again, it would probably feel even worse if I took money for it.

So on Saturday Matt and the kids went solo to Oshogatsu Matsuri (Japanese New Year festival) at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of San Francisco (JCCCNC). This is a great event and I was sorry to miss it. They open up their gymnasium and put out tables where the kids can do thematic crafts, adults can pound mochi, and there are kendo and taiko drumming demonstrations, many of which involve our son’s classmates. If you bring a white t-shirt, they’ll screen a print of the art for the New Year on it. JCCCNC is strictly nonprofit, and all of this is free; they don’t even sell t-shirts in the event that you forget. We always forget and kick ourselves. In the Year of the Rabbit we were at least able to pull our son’s shirt off his back (he was wearing a sweater, we didn’t leave him naked) and get one. The logo for this year, the Year of the Dragon, which I have since seen on the schoolyard, was awesome.

She went right for the sensei

At least our kids got to hit people with bamboo swords in the kendo demonstration. Next year we’ll bring t-shirts. Always next year.

Then they walked to Everybody Bikes to fix a popped stroller tire and because they were outside for longer than one hour, and frankly almost a mile is a long way to walk with two kids and no stroller, stopped at the Old Jerusalem Café next door (no longer a hookah bar; we do have some limits). Matt was able to make good on his New Year’s resolution by signing up to take a bike maintenance class. I would have resolved the same thing but he thought of it first. It’s probably for the best as we don’t have the greatest history with any kind of maintenance, so if he is injured in any way I will know I’m out of my depth. At any rate Everybody Bikes offers classes on Monday evenings. We are all hoping for the best. Basic bicycle maintenance does not appear to involve power tools so that’s a big advantage.

We really need a way for one adult to haul two kids around outside the neighborhood, when we’re split up like this. Our son is willing, in fact eager, to bike, but hasn’t managed starting or stopping on his own, so leaving home, traffic and stop signs would be an issue. Long bike, tandem, long bike, tandem: decisions, decisions. For the sake of the hills I’d like a tandem—we could get some help from the stokers—but I’d also like to be able to carry the kids’ stuff around, which argues longtail. But either way we’ve spent a motherlode of money on bikes lately, and dropping the kind of money that definitely involves a comma on yet another bike seems… excessive. I’ll admit that in terms of value for the dollar our bikes are knockout performers; we’re on them 4-7 days a week in the middle of winter (granted, a California winter) after only a few months of riding, we ditched a very expensive campus parking pass, and we now fill up the tank of the not-exactly-fuel-efficient minivan less than once a month. But still.

On Sunday our son had a playdate with a friend from his old preschool while Matt waited for a new water heater, which they evidently spent dancing to the Black Eyed Peas, so I’m glad I missed it. Did I mention that we spent most the weekend without hot water? It made leaving the house at every opportunity really appealing. Our daughter had a birthday party at Acrosports, an old armory building that now holds circus arts and tumbling classes. Our son has been to a couple of parties there, but on the one occasion that we tried to sign him up for the class, was slow to warm to the idea of jumping off things and possibly hurting himself. This is a characteristic of his personality that has grown on me quite a lot over the years.

Running on the trampoline

Our daughter, however, has no such hesitation, and her only issue with Acrosports was trying to decide whether to go on the trapeze, the bungee jump, or the zip line at any given point in time. Matt couldn’t believe it was legal to put a preschooler on a zip line. I’m resigned to it given that she’s done more dangerous things without first putting on safety equipment.

Ultimately she ended up taking 2 trips on the bungee jumper, 3 on the zip line (“I want to go FAST!”), and I lost count on the trapeze. At one point she fell on her head after smashing into someone while swinging on the giant rope. When I picked her up she yelled, “I want to go again!” Although red-faced and obviously winded she ran around like she’d mainlined a stash of methamphetamines collected by a student preparing for the MCATs and in a rare moment of self-awareness she agreed, after 90 minutes, that she would in fact need a nap today.

We walked to Acrosports, meaning I carried her all the way there and back; we took the university elevator because I’m a glutton for punishment but not insane. It’s only half a mile but it’s basically a straight shot downhill and then back up (which is why I didn’t bike; there is little joy in that particular ride). Our neighbors who live up the block drove to the party. I still find this bizarre; parking is horrific so they ended up in a spot that was about 200 feet from where we boarded the elevator to go back home.

When our daughter was sleeping Matt took our son to the Exploratorium. This would normally have been a nice trip through Golden Gate Park and then the Presidio by bicycle but Matt brought his parents and nephew. To my knowledge, none of them has ever ridden a bike, and they hate driving in San Francisco, so ultimately Matt packed all of them into the van and drove there himself. It was easier for them, and we came home to celebrate his mom’s birthday; everyone got a cupcake.

So it was a lot of weekend, the kind that makes us happy to live in San Francisco, where there is so much to see and do and learn, but also a little overwhelmed. The kids were frustrated that they didn’t get to ride somewhere; our daughter spent Sunday night telling her grandmother about the holiday lights ride. I am eager for summer, when the days are less packed and we can ride late into the evening.

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