I've been doing quite a few school runs recently as my wife has been on late shifts. My five year old rides on the trailer bike and my 8 year old rides on her own bike, which is getting too small for her. Luckily there are cycle paths nearly the whole way to school, so getting there is no problem. But I then have to bring all the bikes back to the house before I head on to work which adds a lot of time on to my journey as i'm going back on myself. It also takes a bit of time strapping the bikes together for the return trip. Although I was impressed with myself for coming up with a way of strapping that was safe and secure the novelty of hauling the bikes back home wares off after a bit.Luckily I've just found out that my parents in law may be buying house near the school, so i'll be able to leave the bikes with them and pick them up later. The only problem I can see now is when I get my daughter a bigger bike I wont be able to strap it to the trailer. I'm thinking of alternatives - possibly a Christiania for the school run and a Brompton for the solo part of my journey which I could carry with the kids in the Christiania.
Anybody else have any ideas?
4 comments:
I'm lucky enough to have a cycling girlfriend so our school runs are no problem.
I stumbled on this bike a couple of months ago and it would probably do the trick!
Happy riding,
Johan
Hi Dave,
Bromptons are fine apart from the gearing ratios, three-speed or five-speed and the fact that the standard brake levers are just too wide from the handlebars.
Nice blog!
http://www.livejournal.com/users/logologue/
I like the xtra cycle Johan, I wonder if I could ride it with 2 kids on the back. My route to school is mostly bike path so it should be ok.
There is something I like about Bromptons though. I'm not to worried about the gears. I'm actually thinking of moving towards simpler bikes with fewer gears - less maintainance, and there are generally only about 3 gears i use on my commute anyway.
Is there nowhere that you can lock up the daughters bike and trail-a-bike at their school? If not maybe its worth asking the school to provide somewhere you can safely stow the bikes.
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