Here's a picture of us out on our morning routine hauling the kids across town to school. Our friend Andrew was stalking us apparently and snapped this shot of me, our craptastic trailer filled with two kids, my wife and our Whippet Zipper (in his coat - it's a bit brisk today).
The great thing about using the bike for transportation is that you get your exercise in while doing things you have to do anyway (like take the kids to school). People are always surprised when they pass us in their cars on the way to school but we still beat them there, since we don't have to park and walk the kids in. We pull right into the playground and we're there. After you get used to that, searching for parking feels even more galling.
And re: the trailer, we actually put in our order today for its replacement. We could only find one trailer that could fit growing kids, since the industry seems to think trailers are for weekend jaunts to the park with a couple toddlers, not an actual way to leave the car at home for most trips. So we ordered the Chariot Corsaire XL, for the whopping cost of almost EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS!! You read that right. You can find cheaper ones, but none this big (and it's not even that much bigger...).
But dang, 800 bucks...
I was going to get mad about that SUV following so close, but then I realized that it was parked :) $800 is a stack of cash, but comes with the perfect justification that I use for any and all cycling-related purpose - cheaper than driving!
ReplyDeleteI flipped off that SUV just to be on the safe side.
ReplyDeleteAnd this photo is a perfect example of the state of bike lanes in Santa Monica. You can see that as we are approaching an intersection, the bike lane has vaporized and we're out there between parked and moving cars, right turn lanes, etc.
It's not so bad on this side of the intersection, it's the other side that it's bad, because as the cars cross the intersection there is no space left for us. We often just head up onto the sidewalk until we get to where the lane starts up again. Sucky.