Katja Miller: Madsen Bucket Bike Devotee

mom demonstrates her Madsen

From the moment I first saw the Madsen website, I knew I had to have one. I’m a single mom of three, and I’d been looking for a way to safely bike with three small children for quite awhile. My friend Gemma, who lives a car-free existence with three kids in the bike mecca that is Portland, Oregon, sent me a link to the Madsen website with a note attached, “This is what you need!”– and boy was she right.

I was enchanted by the idea of hauling up to four kids on two bench seats within the frame of the bike, rather than towing them behind. Madsen is a Portland-based company that is using the Dutch Bakfiets model of “bucket bikes” to make the SUV of bikes for Americans.

My path to Madsen ownership wasn’t a short one. But when ours finally arrived a few weeks ago, it was beyond love at first sight. The bike is amazing. It’s everything I hoped it would be and more. Beyond being comfortable and easy to ride, our Madsen represents freedom to me in terms of my ability to ditch the car and hit the trail with three boys under the age of 6 in a safe way.

smiles and helmets

For me, biking is an important metaphor for life. With effort, and under one’s own direction, the path lies straight ahead. I want my boys to know that the car is not the only way to travel, that this town is set up for bikes, and that while it requires energy to travel, we have the power to use our own energy for efficient transportation. Plus, biking is FUN and a great form of family exercise. We live close to the B-Line and it’s a pretty easy zip down the trail to school, BloomingFoods, Farmers’ Market and WonderLab. It’s also a pretty easy ride to Bryan Park, Chocolate Moose, and the library. In addition to hauling kids, our Madsen–which my boys and I have named BeBe–is a great grocery hauler. The bench seats are removable and the bucket is 40 gallons. The possibilities for transportation of goods is pretty boundless.

Perhaps the biggest benefit that BeBe has afforded us is something I couldn’t have identified beforehand. The boys are learning the importance of sharing and community in a truly profound and visceral way. Because I would like nothing better than to see a fleet of Madsen’s in town, I have offered the bike to everyone and anyone to take for a spin. Initially the boys didn’t want anyone else to ride the bike. Now they eagerly ask people to ride it and enjoy the look on their faces when they can see how much it is universally enjoyed and appreciated. And because we are now daily bike commuters to school, we pass the same people en route to their jobs, school, or out for regular exercise. That sense of recognition, that other people are doing as we are, is an important part of their self-identification. It’s fostered numerous conversations as we cruise.

I’m infinitely grateful for our Madsen. The boys are quick converts to the cycling way of life. They don’t want to take the car anywhere anymore. I couldn’t ask for anything more than time spent together, out in nature, using our bodies and getting where we need to go.

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Doing Something Right, by Mike Brauner

My daughter’s cycling days almost ended before they began. At least that was my fear at the time. I was fitting her brand new helmet to her brand new one-year-old head for the first time, when the unthinkable happened. I accidentally snapped up a bit of tender skin under her chin in the plastic clasp. I still remember her look of disbelief in that momentary delay before the crying began. My fear was that she would forever after have an aversion to wearing a helmet, and we would never be able to ride again. Thankfully, I don’t think she remembers the actual incident, as it was probably more traumatic for me than it was for her.

Except for a few breaks here and there, I have been an active cyclist my entire adult life. There was the motorcycle, nursing school, the obsession with fishing, and a few less noteworthy diversions, but cycling has been a constant. My interests in cycling cover the spectrum, from transportation and recreation, to competition and fitness. Up until the time that I went back to school for Nursing and M was born, I was still riding in road races with a local team. That is why I am happy to be pursuing a new avenue, which is riding and spending quality time with my daughter.

As I mentioned, our first outing was when M was around one year of age, about the time she could reliably hold up her helmeted head. The helmet was purchased from her pediatrician’s office where they are sold at a discounted price to promote bicycle safety. Our first vehicle was a trailer that was bought from a garage sale. Bike trailers seem to be a fairly common item at garage sales around here and can usually be bought for under $50. I have also tried using bicycle child carrier seats, and have witnessed many happy parents and kids riding with them. The bike seat is less bulky than the trailer, and seems to provide a certain closeness to your child that the trailer doesn’t, but I have gotten the most use from my trailer, because of its low-to-the-ground stability and its 80lb carrying capacity. This is particularly important as M is approaching 40lbs, and the trailer is used for shopping when heavy items like potting soil, charcoal, and bottled  beverages are routinely transported.

 

preschooler in her cannondale trailer

Bloomington is a great town for cycling and safe riding can be found on the many designated bike routes and marked bike lanes. Safer yet are the rail trails. The Clear Creek trail on the south side is great for recreation and provides many miles of largely uninterrupted riding, and the new B-line trail, contiguous with the Clear Creek, bisects the down town area in a north-south direction. I am fortunate to be able to take the B-line almost all the way from my house near 1st street to M’s school on 17th. As a long time cyclist I feel that drivers in Bloomington are fairly considerate and aware of cyclists, and when you have a child on board there seems to be a little extra care taken by the surrounding motorists. Still I take as few chances as possible and carefully pick a route that uses the least traveled streets, bike lanes, and trails.

There are benefits to bike riding with your child, whether for transportation or for recreation. In fact, it can turn transportation into recreation. We all know the health benefits and the sense of wellness we get from regular exercise, and at no time is it harder to get in a good workout than when young children are on the scene. Combining shopping, library trips, Wonderlab visits, and the like with a good bike ride gives me some exercise time I wouldn’t have had if I had taken the car. By far the greatest benefit to bike riding with your child is the time spent together having fun outside enjoying a healthy activity. It truly is a bonding experience.

One of my proudest moments as a parent came this spring on a school day morning after a not very restful night’s sleep. Feeling fatigued and not much like riding, I gave M the choice of whether to take the car or the bike to school. I was predicting that she would opt to take the car, thus letting me off the hook for the bike ride. To my astonishment M said to me “Let’s take the bike, Daddy.” At that moment I was reinvigorated by the thought that maybe I was doing something right.

 

For more information about Bloomington Bikes Week click here.

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Mechanics Matter, by Venus McCoy Glasgow

Michael and I met on a bicycle trip. He was the mechanic for a local group in town called deCycles. We rode across the country and had many fun adventures before children. Michael deals in used bicycles parts and sells them all over the world. Our house is like an eye spy book for bikes! To stay fresh in the saddle, I taught a cycling class at the YMCA. Michael tries to mountain bike in Brown County every chance he gets.

father and son with balance bike

Our son started on his own balance bike at 18 months. Last year at 3 ½ he pedaled a bike for the first time. He will probably ride on pavement this summer. We have kept him on grass in case he falls. I can’t wait for him to get a taste of freedom on the Clear Creek Trail!

Even with that much love for bikes we have a hard time fitting cycling into our family life. We are pretty excited to put our baby in the trailer next to our older son.

preschooler in trailer

Things to think about:

Getting used to a bike seat can be painful. If you hang in there and make yourself ride through the pain it will go away.

If your bike squeaks or rubs take it in for a tune up. Bicycles should be tuned up at least once a year.

Take your set-up to a bicycle mechanic and have them check every connection. Make sure you find a mechanic that helps you feel comfortable about the mechanics of your bicycle. Write down the details, like how much pressure to put in your tires and how to lube your chain. They can help you come up with a checklist to use before you ride. We have great mechanics in town. I personally like Bikesmiths. Tip your mechanic like a waitress.

Always make sure that your child’s helmet, and your own, fits securely. Take the extra time to adjust the size. We always tell our son to look at the moon while we buckle his helmet.

Keep your equipment clean. You will be surprised at how much detail you will notice while cleaning. Also, mechanics will care more about your bicycle if you show them that you personally care.

 

Click here for more information about Bloomington Bikes Week.

 

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Ordinary Cyclists, by Ravi Jonnal

My wife Mary and I have been ordinary cyclists for about ten years. By that I mean whenever it’s practical to get somewhere by bike instead of car, we do it. Sometimes, even if it’s impractical. Most of those years we lived in Bloomington, which does much to facilitate ordinary cycling. We commuted by bike, shopped by bike, and took bike rides for fun. We explored country roads outside of Bloomington and rode to Brown County State Park to camp. Sometimes we traveled with our bikes too. For our honeymoon we spent a week riding (and ferrying) our bikes around islands in Hawaii, camping on beaches for $5 a night.

In the spring of 2008 we learned that Mary was pregnant. Mary’s pregnancy didn’t impede her riding much. When she could no longer comfortably mount her road bike we bought an old Puch mixte with a step-through frame. She rode the mixte into late November, a few weeks before our son S was born. And soon after he was born, we each resumed some routine biking, while the other was home with him.

Meanwhile, we began to think of ways to bike with S. Official recommendations (from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute) are not to ride with children younger than twelve months, and there are some data to support these. Mary and I took these recommendations with a grain of salt, and when S was six months old, I began to periodically test his helmet-wearing abilities around the house. By eight months of age we felt that he could hold his head—and the helmet—up reasonably well. We had bought a used Burley trailer off Craigslist during Mary’s second trimester, and we were eager to try it out. So late in the summer of 2009, against the official recommendations, we took S for his first, brief trailer ride—to Uptown for brunch with friends. He loved it—especially the parts, near our house, where we allowed him to take his helmet off. For our remaining year in Bloomington we biked with S frequently, and by the time we moved to Indianapolis in 2010, he’d spent far more time in the bike trailer than he had in a car.

helmeted toddler standing next to bike and trailer

At some point we decided that we wanted to have a bicycle child seat too. We considered both front-mounted and rear-mounted seats, and decided we liked the front-mounted seats better. We bought a Yepp Mini which, like most front-mounted seats, puts the child just behind the handlebar, straddling the stem and headset.

There’s much debate about the safety of bike trailers and seats, individually and comparatively. The intuition of many parents I know, some of whom are ordinary cyclists like us, is that trailers have poor visibility due to their low profiles. Manufacturers have tried to address these concerns by including tall, brightly colored safety flags with their trailers, but really those don’t change the profile of the trailer very much.  Nevertheless there is some data to suggest that trailers are slightly safer than infant seats. The sample size is pretty small (49 injuries over the 9-year study, 6 involving trailers) and the authors cannot conclusively say that trailers are safer. The data were taken from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, whose database is available to the public and quite interesting to peruse. I spent a few hours looking at it, and it was difficult to assess the absolute risk involved in using a bicycle trailer or infant seat. What was clear, though, was that accidents involving baby-biking were far, far rarer than accidents involving nearly any ordinary household implement (vacuum cleaners, radios, and even pillows).

Truthfully I’ve never felt unsafe riding with S. Of course these are anecdotal observations, but I find that drivers give me more attention, more courtesy, and a wider berth, when they see I have a child with me. Initially I had some worries, but these were fleeting and easy enough to vanquish with excess caution. Occasionally I felt that having S in the seat made the bike harder to control, and sometimes I worried that I might clip a car or a curb with the trailer, which requires a wider path than the bike. I always knew, though, that S’s helmet was on securely, and that even a three foot fall from the Yepp was unlikely to injure him very badly. With the trailer I crossed intersections very carefully, and avoided difficult intersections altogether. And after a bit of practice, both conveyances felt completely safe. The trailer is great for a long ride where your child might sleep, or if you need some extra cargo space, e.g. on a trip to the grocery store or farmer’s market. The front-mounted seat is a wonderful way to ride with your child too—it gives him or her a great view of the road and allows you to talk.

parent and toddler with bike and trailer at Bloomingfoods

We have spent much of the last year trying to decide where to move. We’ve traveled to various cities across the country, interviewing and exploring. One of the first questions I ask prospective employers and coworkers is what the bike culture is like. The strange answers—and blank, uncomfortable stares—I have received in response reminded me repeatedly that we had been spoiled in Bloomington. The plentiful bike routes and trails, and maybe more significantly the constant presence of other cyclists on the roads, make Bloomington an ideal place to raise a biking family.

Some links:

Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute’s page on biking with kids:
http://www.bhsi.org/little1s.htm

Study on safety of trailers and seats:
http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/154/4/351?
maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=trailers&searchid=11046933861
47_392&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&journalcode=archpedi

CPSC database:
https://www.cpsc.gov/cgibin/NEISSQuery/home.aspx

Advice on trailers and seats:
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/bike-trailers/buying-guide.htm
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/opinions/childcarriers.html

Front-mounted seats:
http://www.rei.com/product/815610/yepp-mini-front-bicycle-child-carrier
http://www.rei.com/product/831288/ibert-safe-t-seat-child-carrier
http://www.co-rider.com/co-rider.com/index.html

Trailers:
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/opinions/trailerguide.html
http://www.burley.com/home/bur/listitems_55/comparison.html

 

Click here for more information about Bloomington Bikes Week.

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BABS and Bikes Week

In recognition of Bikes Week, and in support of Bloomington’s Bicycle Friendly ambitions, we will be celebrating family bicycling all week here on the BABS blog with guest posts from a cross-section of local parents who will share their cycling stories and tips.

Hopefully, dear readers, you will be inspired to dust off your helmets, check your tire pressure, hitch up your trailers, and join us for a group ride on Saturday! Our “kidical mass” will assemble at the Farmers’ Market at noon and proceed at a leisurely pace down the B-Line to BABS, where we invite you to refuel, mingle with other cycling families, and talk about how to make Bloomington an even safer place to ride with our children.

The City of Bloomington has set itself the ambitious goal of joining cities like Boulder and Portland in earning a Platinum Bicycle Friendly designation from the League of American Bicyclists. Last November, BABS was one of dozens of local organizations that supported the passage of Resolution 11-15, directing the City to adopt the recommendations of a citizen task force charged with mapping out a path to Platinum. The City Council did indeed pass Resolution 11-15, but as Council President Susan Sandberg reminded the audience at the time, Breaking Away: Journey to Platinum is an advisory document only. The report itself makes clear that it will be up to Bloomingtonians to hold the City to those goals.

There are action items in that Platinum Task Force report that matter to you and your family, and in this first Bikes Week post I would like to point to two of them.

Vulnerable Road User Law (see 2-17, 3-15, 4-10): The Bloomington Bicycle Club has proposed that the City adopt a “Vulnerable Road User” resolution similar to laws passed in some twenty states. You can think of this as a “three-foot” rule (i.e., cars must allow for at least three feet of clearance when passing), but keep in mind that this proposal protects a much larger class of road users than just bicyclists, all of whom must be respected by motor vehicle operators through yielding in certain situations. It is possible that this issue will have to be resolved on the state level.

Sunday Open Streets (see 1-6, 2-13, 3-10): Ciclovías—the temporary closing of city streets to motor traffic, often in concert with festivities—originated in Columbia decades ago. The practice is spreading nationally, and the Platinum Task Force proposes that Bloomington join like-minded cities with an event called “Sunday Open Streets.” A designated loop through the city would become, in effect, a linear park for a day!

There are many more actions advocated by the Platinum Report that could improve the quality of life in Bloomington. But their implementation is not inevitable. If you would like to see bicycle boulevards and ciclovías, Safe Routes to Schools and more bicycle parking, then read the report. Contact your City Councilmember. Remind them that they adopted this advisory document and inquire on the progress of those items that matter most to you.

I hope that you enjoy our Bikes Week posts. Join us on Saturday afternoon for our “Market to BABS” family ride. See you on the B-Line!

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