Bike commuting with kids
Biking to and from daycare with my kids takes a little more time, but it also gives us a little more time
Some think we’re riding bikes just for fun, and they’re surprised to hear we’re on our commute. The path is nice enough that people park their cars at the end to walk their dogs, or just themselves. I’ve been tempted to do the same when we didn’t live as close. To take in the smell of cool salt and fresh algae on warm days, with the asmr of waves lapping on pebbles mingled with the grind of a seiner just passed. The muffled hum of an outboard on a small skiff, mixed with cackling of seagulls and eagles. The crackling of sea urchin shells dropped on the asphalt by ravens, who with their cloudy sideways eyelids blink at us from their perch on the guardrail. They make a sound like two pieces of dry wood knocking together, then roll silently off the railing to glide ahead along the beach below.
Sometimes we can’t see the water for the fog, but can still hear an approaching ferry or barge, which we’ve learned to distinguish by their rumbles and horns, like we did the trains below our house in Colorado. Tugboats hauling container barges sound more like the passenger trains’ lighter rumble, with more frequent frantic blasts of the horn. The ferries sound more like freight trains, having a deeper rumble and fewer, more serious blasts of the foghorn.
Watching passing fishing boats, some of which I used to work on, I know I’d still enjoy working on the back deck. I enjoy the elements, but now my job is with my kids, and I’ve found this way to enjoy both.
Over the whir of my bike tires, my head turns toward the sharp wet exhale of a surfacing sea lion. Smaller snuffs from sinuous river otters. We have yet to notice whales along the bike path, but I think we will.
By making this an everyday thing, I think we’re doing the opposite of wasting time. On sunny days when the kids are in a good mood, it’s true fun. On really rainy days, I grin at the idiocy of it. When the kids are cranky, though (usually because I didn’t bring enough snacks, or I’m in a hurry, or both), getting somewhere on bikes is still at least an accomplishment.
I’ve done a lot of stuff in my life based on what I thought would make the better story. Sometimes a story to tell or write for others, sometimes just a story to tell myself. To feel like I’m making the most of my time. For that reason, I’ve done stuff that was a lot more pointless and dangerous than biking to town with my kids. Mountain biking, sea kayaking, backcountry skiing and snowboarding, rock climbing, ice climbing, tobacco, drugs, alcohol. Combinations thereof. But biking my kids to school isn’t as pointless as all that. I feel a lot better having an adventure with the more wholesome goal of just getting my kids to school.
Sometimes biking does feel dumber than driving in a car though, or even some extreme sports. It’s easier to guess which way an avalanche will turn than an inattentive driver.
Even riding around parked cars—always checking over my shoulder that no moving cars are about to pass me—I’m still waiting for the day I skirt a little too close as someone opens their door. When a car is about to pass me as I approach a parked car, I either have to stop if it’s a sharp curb to the sidewalk, or if it’s smooth and no one’s walking or biking there already, I turn onto the sidewalk, where I also wait for the day when someone opens a car door or backs out of their driveway, or steps out from behind a car. Thankfully, my commute is quiet enough that even at rush hour, there are rarely cars passing in the road and people walking on the sidewalk at the same time and place where I’m biking, so I can seep at least the illusion of safety from the cars passing at 30 miles per hour.
A quiet side street is where I’ve had my closest call, though. As I was biking through an intersection where I didn’t have a stop sign, a car pulled up and stopped at the stop sign on my right, then they immediately started again and almost T-boned me. I was fully in front of them, wearing a neon green raincoat, yet they put their foot on the gas. They weren’t going fast, since they were just starting, but even at 5 or 10 miles an hour, I imagined what the bumper of their midsize suv would feel like against the outside of my leg, what it would do to my bike and bike trailer, and my kids. Their little helmets and five-point harnesses had never seemed so insignificant. In the driver’s defense, they had an elementary-aged kid riding shotgun, and I know that there are few more distracting and infuriating variables to a driver than their own flesh and blood riding with them.
They stopped less that two feet away. I gave Jesus a biblically incorrect middle name, then looked at my kids and asked if they were ok. They nodded wide-eyed. As I biked away, the driver yelled “You scared me!” out the open window across their kid.
I think I said, “It’s ok.” But I thought, I scared them? And wished I’d said that.
I don’t miss driving with my kids. If you count all the times I took my eyes off the road to hand something to one of them in the back seat, or to take something away, or to break up a fight, or I got into a screaming match and went blind with rage, I think there must have been some close calls there too.
My kids don’t miss driving either. They did at first, throwing fits when I picked them up from daycare with the bike trailer, but no more. I recently got fenders for my bike, which are nice for the kids even on dry days to keep the sand out of their eyes. I’d been forcing them to wear sunglasses or putting the clear plastic cover over the bike trailer on rainy days, but their sunglasses got so scratched that they didn’t want to wear them and the cover got so caked in mud that they didn’t want it on even in the rain because they couldn’t see then either. They like looking around at least as much as me, if not more, since they don’t have to watch where they're going.
So I sprung for some fenders from the local bike shop, for $42. Plus an extra sheet of plastic called an Ass-Saver that’s meant to be a simple fender that attaches to your seat post. The bike guy threw that in for free, because even the wrap-around back fender didn’t go quite low enough to keep road grit off the kids. He suggested extending the fender by riveting the Ass-Saver to the end, but I was able to pull the mounting screws from the fender and sandwich the Ass-Saver in between. Then I Krazy glued the bottom end to match the curve of the regular fender so it wouldn’t hang up on the trailer. The kids love the shiny fenders and the zebra-striped Ass-Saver, and I love that they can’t read what it says. And we both love that they don’t get blasted with sand, or sea urchin shells, or bike chain oil.
I also paid $12 for a “Ding-Dong Bell,” which is what it sounds like. I’ve found that yelling at people puts them on edge. People will jump at a “Hello,” even if it’s just loud enough for them to hear from a safe distance. “On your right,” or “On your left,” seems to only add confusion to the shock of getting snuck up on. People become directionally challenged, stutter stepping side to side, or two people in a group lurch toward one another and collide. I’ve had to add, “Don’t panic,” a couple times, along with the usual, “Thanks” as I pass clear. The “Ding-Dong Bell” on the other hand, sounds like a classic doorbell. It elicits more of an, “Oh, someone’s here, I wonder who it is?”, rather than a “Someone’s here, how do I protect myself?” A doorbell rather than a security alarm. Even on a “bike path,” the bell makes it a little more clear that a bike is approaching, rather than someone running, possibly fleeing something worse.
I used to drive an hour each way to work, covering 35 miles and getting a tiny fraction of the experience that I do biking 2.5 miles with my kids. Even when I keep them in the trailer so I can pedal hard and make it in 15 minutes, I’m getting exercise and we’re all getting fresh air. We did something together, something useful, and we had a pretty good time doing it.
