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Coming home from the circus school with Eldest Son and JQ.
Apparently this is a highlight of JQ’s week: when I asked her mum if JQ would cycle home with us, she replied “She’s talked about this more than the circus school.”
Who dares drive through the depths of the mystery puddle?
This journey is 98% on traffic free roads or traffic calmed residential streets, otherwise it would be a near nightmare. As it was we delivered JQ bouncing with independence and the achievement of transporting herself home.
She wants to come again next week.
Riding home with happy boys on the Xtracycle after a long playtime in the next town (The playaground is bigger than in our village). If you haven’t guessed this week was a break from work to be with the boys and fix all the things in the house we’ve not got around to since we moved in summer. I’ll be back next week with details of this and other stuff. Happy cycling and thanks for reading along…
I don’t know what is wrong at the moment, the work keeps coming. Unfortunately it’s usually annoying stuff like the health insurance asking how much we earn -for the third time this year. So todays post is a photo essay/copout, showing a fairly typical afternoon with the bikes…
Trusty steeds awaiting family. The Bafiets didn’t poop: that’s sand dumped on the drive for some reason. We were going to pick up Eldest Son from Circus School in the next town, so I’m hauling his bike and carrying Youngest Son on the Xtracycle, while Beautiful Wife has a go carrying Middle Son in the Bakfiets.
And away they go. The Bakfiets is heavy so it obviously goes faster than the Xtracycle downhill. That’s my excuse anyway.
Heading home, Middle Son now with me and smallest with Beautiful Wife as the way back is partly uphill. As far as I know there isn’t a single metre of dedicated bike lane in Ostfildern, and this is shared with pedestrians. It also becomes a gravel road in a few metres, but at least we’re away from the traffic to the right. Considering Eldest son has been learning circus skills for the last two hours, including tightrope walking and unicycling, he’s riding well.
The ‘big swing’: one of the best places in the boys current universe, and only accessible by bike or on foot. As an added advantage there are friendly goats to watch in the field alongside. What more could a small boy want? Perhaps a pack of chocolate dips, such as Middle Son is quietly finishing off in the on the swing.
Last part of the ride home on traffic free streets. Riding conditions like these are the reason we could get the bakfiets, as Beautiful Wife is very nervous about using it in traffic. Eldest son is a speck in the distance. Several parents in his school have remarked that he’s pretty fit compared to their kids. I don’t point out the obvious reason why this is: I find it’s not worth the effort.
We had to cross two slightly busy roads, but the journey was direct, straight, and 99% traffic calmed or traffic free . And this is Ostfildern, (“Four wheels good, two wheels baaaad”) so you can bet very little money went into making this happen. Most of the time we were on field roads, although to be fair they were signposted for bikes. A few improvements would be nice, like smooth surfaces on a couple of sections (Gravel is fine as a surface, but why the potholes?) and parhaps a set of lights on the crossings so we can stop traffic instead of having to wait in the centre refuge… sorry, a bit radical for Ostfildern there.
Ah, well. Beautiful wife is getting the hang of the Bakfiets and the boys think it’s the best thing since Christmas, so on balance I’m happy.
Time to fill in the form for the health insurance…
My goodness but its been a week since I wrote anything here.: as you’ve probably gathered it’s been a busy one. This week, Beautiful Wife decided it was time to master the Bakfiets, and that the best way to do this was to go out for the evening with me alongside on the Xtracycle. Even Ostfildern manages to have sufficient cycle lanes to avoid running along a road much, and we followed these to a restaurant in the next town.
Beautiful wife getting used to the Bakfiets.
Her verdict: great bike, but a bit of a pull on hills, and probably not good to ride wearing a short skirt. She also found it awkward to make corners in a hurry. This we discovered when we missed a turning and she had to do a 240 degree turn to fit into the cycle lane. This was in no was due to my bad navigation. Not at all. And the driver of the car following was very nice about waiting for us to manouvre. We made the restaurant comfortably and parked the bikes be the hedge.
Bikes onna date.
They are locked, although it’s not obvious. local bike thieves wouldn’t know that this is, let alone have a market for it, so we felt pretty safe, especially as we were sitting on the other side of the hedge. The meal was punctuated by overheard conversations like this:
“What is that?”
“Is it a bicycle?”
“Can’t be…”
Life is moving so fast at the moment I’m pushed to keep up with it, let alone blog about it. Apart from the bike tour, which I still need to write loads on, I’ve other people powered stories to tell. And I’m supposed to be writing a guest post for another blog, and…
In the meantime I’m trying to live in the real world, where both the Xtracycle and the Bakfiets are seeing a lot of use. Someone asked me to fetch and deliver an empty box which will soon find a use in a community theatre production or on some other project. Ironically the piano this box transported was made in Hamamatsu, Japan. The person who asked me to move this was convinced it wouldn’t fit on the Bakfiets, on the basis it wouldn’t fit into a car… Mwahahahaaa…
That's better...
All this schepping stuff about can wear a chap down, so here’s a new use for the Bakfiets. Shortly afterwards it was comandeered by Beautiful Wife to ride home. I was hoping she’d let me ride in the box, but she made some excuse about carrying the boys instead. I ask you…
Room for more...
I’m catching up after being in Japan and then riding across Germany for several weeks, so the trip report is likely to be delayed a bit.
In the meantime, the bakfiets is seeing lots of use, from picking up a bowl of plums to rides like this one with the boys and one of their friends. What you can’t tell in the photo is that we are going downhill, and they are all jumping about and howling as if this is a rollercoaster. There was a small mobile party going on there. Okay, so I did make the bike slalom back and forth a bit, but it’s nearly impossible to tip the thing when it’s moving and full.
So far the reaction is mainly positive: almost everyone who sees the Bakfiets smiles, and drivers seem to give us plenty of space and little aggression. I’ll report on hills etc and stuff as I get more experience.
The Xtracycle should be getting some well deserved rest, but is still being used a lot, as it’s clearly faster than the Bakfiets for errands not involving large objects or small children, and I’m still more confident on that in traffic. I’ll be doing some trial run commutes with it as well soon, so expect more photos.
Moving house didn’t allow much time for photographs so this small selection will have to be representative of the two weeks we spent shuffling things about. We did use a car and a van a couple of times as well: bed sofas don’t fit on Xtracycles (watch someone prove me wrong now) but much of the move was made with people power.
We’ve been looking for extra chairs for when we have guests, and we found this one on a pile to be thrown out. I rescued it literally with a few seconds to go before the refuse truck ate it. A bit of work with some wood glue and it’ll be a useful chair.
The handcart we used for bulky stuff couldn’t take the pressure, and the handle broke off in the old apartment, so we had to Xtracycle it over to the new one. (Well, we didn’t have to, but it was a fun challenge) We’re now debating if we should just fix it, or use the wheels to make a utility trailer.
All of the moving boxes were second-hand, and the ones that fell to bits needed recycling. It took a bit of creative thinking, and stomping, but they all fitted on the Xtracycle, and we made the four km to the recycling point with no incident, although a lot of curious stares from passing cars.
Now we’ve landed, and it’s time to give the poor abused xtracycle some maintenence: the brake blocks were worn to metal by the end of the week, I’ve got through another chain and cassette, and the tyres are developing cracks like the Sahara. Time to order the Schwalbe Marathon tyres I’ve been promising myself.
I’m blogging about bike parts. I need to get out more.
We’re moving to a new apartment on the edge of the village next week, and as our telephone/internet provider apparently can’t manage to change the account inside of three weeks, we’ll be without a broadband connection for that time. To make sure both of the people who come here don’t lose interest, I’ve a few photo posts stacked away to pop up automatically every few days until I return.
This seemed a good start: a sunny day, on the way to an early appointment, stopping to have breakfast on the way…
Early morning ride before work: It had rained in the night which had cleared the air: the muggyness of the previous day was gone and the air was sharp and clear.
The cloud had collected in the valleys making a set of monochrome layers stretching into the distance…
Days don’t start much better then this.
The Totcycle blog, which for some reason I neglected to link to, has a report on their Kidical mass event which they held over the weekend. As far as I can work out this is an all-age family party involving bikes, but without the “in-your-face” approach of Critical Mass protests. They obviously had a Bakfiets-load of fun and will be doing it again. In fact, it sounded like so much fun, I’m thinking of suggesting it to the local cycling club as a way to get families on bikes locally. After listening to several local politicians making excuses over the weekend for not improving infrastruture, (More on this later) I think this more grass -roots stuff is more the way to go in future: maybe then they will take a bit more notice, but either way we will get more people cycling which is good for everyone.
It’s pretty safe too. The photo was taken early yesterday morning while taking a suprise bread delivery to my Goddaughter’s family for her daddy’s birthday breakfast. A car free road perfect for relaxed riding.
