Out for a ride all day

**Warning This post has lots of kid carrying bikes in it! Don't think you need a fancy bike to get out with your kids. It's easy to rig any everyday bike with a kid seat or two to get out with your kids.  Or just go out with their bikes! We use quiet routes around the city to get out. There's info in
our good routes and other getting around posts that talk about quiet streets we use. (The p.p.s. below has our route for yesterday in it.) Other posts on the site have info for simple ways to get out together and places to go with kids on any kind of bike.


Well, when we left the house this morning it never occurred to any of us that we’d be out until late at night. But, here we are, just in the door, and it’s just after 11. What a beautiful day! Mom and the kids pedaled off to school, Mom then did errands and hung out with the small guy while the other 2 were at school, Dad biked off in the other direction to work, and then at about 4 we all rode to meet at a bakery together. Everyone was covered with cupcake icing and staring through a sugary haze when Dad finally arrived. Dad had swapped bikes at home, switching to the big blue tandem with the kids bike trailer on the back, so the guys had their own bikes to ride around Oz Park or the lakefront. Small people seem to prefer the box, though:

The Tandem, with its newly fixed Shimano 8 speed hub (8R25 guts in a 8R20 shell, originally the wheel for the Bakfiets) had a small problem with the not so highly regarded (M31) Roller Brakes - they fell off their splines or something and just clicked clicked clicked instead of slowing down the bike. We wound up spending awhile at Dutch Bike getting it re-installed right. Now they work well and we had a nice long chat with Vince there and a Nice Lady who happened by, trying out a Yuba Mundo from JC Lind. She let the kids climb on the back of her bike with the kickstand down and it didn't fall over. 
Evening was falling when we left.
After stopping at Oz Park and then a long supper we skirted the lake through the Gold Coast and up Wabash through the Loop to swing west home.

Golden Peppers

  On Peoria there was an empty ‘golden peppers’ container (a giant plastic jar for 400 lbs of pepper slices) on the sidewalk for scavengers, the only one left of about 10 that had been there earlier. Into the box it went with the 10 year old; the panniers and the kids bike trailer on the back. The box bike was carrying more than you can fit in a car most of the day. 

Too bad the apartment doesn’t clean itself while we’re out. 

Tomorrow is supposed to be even nicer. Will we see you out on your bike? 


p.s. check out this comment on the recent John Cassidy New Yorker blog piece about bike lanes, on the Economist web site.
p.p.s. We take quiet routes from Lincoln Park to the Loop along the Lake and to the West Side. We take Belden east, ride through Lincoln Park and use N. Astor in the Hold Coast. Going south we walk ride the sidewalk on N. Lake Shore Drive to Oak St. and walk Oak west to Wabash. We ride Wabash south into the Loop and take the river walk when we are going to the West Side to Lake, sidewalk it on Lake to Peoria and use Peoria north south in the West Loop.