Our journey to family biking

When we lived in Carrboro between 2012 and 2015, I thought several times that it would be nice if we could bike to and around town, rather than driving there and having to deal with packing up, parking, carrying everything, and figuring out which parking location was best for the places we would be visiting on our trip.  It wasn't that we minded walking, except that it sometimes was.  With a baby who became a toddler and often had the patience of a...well, a toddler, it was helpful to have an escape nearby if naptime snuck up on us without warning or a simple no turned into a tantrum.  But our townhome was down a very long, very steep hill from town, and in a neighborhood accessible only by a highway.  So I put that idea off for later.

Once we were in the new house, I was dealing with moving in, setting up...oh, and being pregnant with the accompanying morning sickness.  To be honest, I had completely forgotten about biking beyond finding my son a tricycle at the next Kids' Exchange in Raleigh. We didn't live close enough to David's work for him to bike there or hop right on the bus as he had done before, so he bought a Park and Ride pass and went from there.  

It wasn't until after Katherine was born and life had become relatively settled into place again that I remembered about that idea I'd had of biking around town, but it was this article at A Cup of Jo that made me realize that there were ways to bike with children that didn't involve trailers and being unable to see or interact with my kids.  So I started researching.  

If you haven't already figured it out, when I start researching something, it's not an hour-long Google search.  It's reading everything I can find and over-analyzing as much as humanly possible.

We're two miles from the grocery store, two and a half from the library, and a quarter mile through the neighborhood from David's parents, who watch Robert for a few hours one evening most weeks.  That trip really made the decision for me, because when it's cold, or wet, or hot, it's far too easy (but extremely guilt-inducing) to load up both children in the car for the short trip rather than walk them, especially when it's dark and walking means I'd have to wrap one child and have the other clinging tiredly to my hand asking to be picked up.  Taking the wagon would work, but pulling the wagon while wearing a baby who wasn't yet old enough to sit in it never sounded very appetizing at nine p.m.  Besides, David and I were in desperate need of exercise since having children cut our dancing time down to about one night per week from four, and I wanted a good way to spend quality time with the kids.

So I decided that we would try this thing.  

Unfortunately, "trying" this thing wasn't half as simple as I had hoped, considering that our ability to try cargo bikes locally is...very small.  One local shop has a Babboe City, but I knew that I wanted a bike of very good quality, because I'd be loading it up with children and stuff to its limits.  Other than that, there were no cargo bikes available for testing in the area, so I had to rely on research and databases alone.

Our requirements were not particularly easy:

1. Robert wanted to sit beside his sister.
2. I wanted to be able to see and talk with both children easily.
3. I needed to be able to carry lots of cargo (library books, groceries, general stuff-that-comes-with-small-children) as well as the aforementioned small children.
4. I needed carrying all that stuff (and those children) to be relatively simple, or it wouldn't become the sort of habit I wanted it to be.
5. At least one child would probably fall asleep on any trip over twenty minutes, so we needed a way for them to nap comfortably.
6. It rains a decent amount here, and the winters are cold, so a raincover would be necessary.
7. Neither David nor I is mechanically inclined, so we wanted an internal gear hub and a chaincase.
8. I wanted to be able to bike in my everyday clothes, including skirts, so a chaincase and preferably skirtguard were important, too.
9. I'm 5'5" and David is 5'10", so we wanted a bike that would fit both of us, including a step-through frame because it would feel steadier while mounting and dismounting loaded.
10. This area is definitively in the Piedmont region, with all of the rolling hills that implies, including a decent sized one in the quarter mile between our house and David's parents' house.  There are hills everywhere.  Not particularly steep ones, by cyclist standards, but decent grades for sufficient distance to frustrate me on a regular bike to the point of sometimes walking.  And no one likes walking a loaded cargo bike.  So we wanted a bike that could be have e-assist added later if we wanted, and that felt steady even while climbing very slowly.

Through all the searching and reading and learning I did, it became obvious that a bakfiets or longjohn would be our best choice, based on our children's age and our needs.  E-assist would be amazing, but was out of our price range for the moment, unless we wanted to wait another six months to a year before buying one, and David was game to test his ability to bike everywhere without it, so we decided to get an unassisted one and see if we could manage without it.

Between all the definite necessities (IGH, step-through frame, chaincase, low center of gravity, load capacity), our price range, and what was actually available either in or shipped to the U.S., we were down to the bakfiets from bakfiets.nl and the Workcycles Kr8.  

 

The Kr8 was more expensive, but also lighter, bi-partible, and designed in an attempt to make the basic bakfiets even better.  I also liked every review I read of it, most of which had the conclusion that it's the best way to carry young children with other cargo, the only downside being that it's not great on hills or the fastest cargo bike around.  We figured that we could make the hills work, and we weren't looking for speed anyway, especially not with all the stoplights around here.

We ordered it a few weeks ago, and it should be here by the end of this month!  Let's hope my research paid off and we made the right choice.