Another year, another HBD love letter to my steel baby.
This past year was pretty typical—nothing out of the ordinary, but the ordinary is pretty spectacular with a Surly Big Dummy.
I took it bike camping twice, once with 15 WTFNB+ WeBike campers for work, carrying a bunch of extra stuff, and once with one kiddo.
Loaded with food for 15Loaded with most of the gear for 2
The most impressive carry of the year was hauling Shift’s 7 bike racks, which I rented for The Street Trust Alice Awards.
Admittedly, this wasn’t my easiest bike for the job so I switched to my Haulin’ Colin cargo trailer to tote them to and from the venue and return them the following day. Granted, my cargo trailer got a flat, which I’m sure I would have thought was a sign from the universe that I should have stuck with my wobbly wiggly way-too-heavy original choice had it taken longer than 30 minutes to fix.
The Big Dummy had another shared job with the cargo trailer for Central Eastside Altares Y Muertos Bike Ride with Milagro and The Street Trust. New this fifth year of the ride, I got to chauffeur a mobile altar with my trailer, but I needed the Big Dummy in the morning before the ride to carry in all the stuff (including my trailer-pulling bike). At the end of the day the best (only?) way to get all the things home in one trip was to carry the Big Dummy with the trailer. I bent the fender stay so if I do that again I’ll load more carefully.
Other than those especially fun jaunts, I made one long-but-flat IKEA trip, took a million grocery runs (including tonight—gotta make a birthday grocery run!), and towed bikes around fewer than a million times, but still a lot! And various other big carries, like bringing a dog ramp to mall to give to Secondhand Pet Supply.
It’s April! That means it’s 30 Days of Biking: a pledge to ride every day in April and share adventures with #30daysofbiking. I’ll kept up a thread on Bluesky, post on Instagram, Strava my rides, and put the most recent day at the top of this blog post.
April 18, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 18: Yet another day I didn’t get out all day and took a spin around the neighborhood. I’m going to run out of well-lit photo spots at the neighborhood market.
🚲 1.5 miles, 136.6 monthly total
April 17, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 17: Borrowed my kiddo’s bike today. This pâtisserie is finally repainted and is Barbie pink again. It’s been plain white for a while during its redo.
🚲 6.5 miles, 135.1 monthly total
April 16, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 16: Brompton day! I forgot to take a photo so here’s a pic of the Brompton in Seattle last month.
🚲 8.6 miles, 128.6 monthly total
April 15, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 15: The Franklin High AAPI Club was selling $3 (marked down from $5) musubi! Yes, of course with spam! I bought two, thinking someone in the family would be interested, but there were no takers so I got them both to myself!
🚲 13.6 miles, 120 monthly total
April 14, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 14: Yipe! Almost forgot to leave the house today, hiding from the pollen. I did my same little neighborhood loop as day 7, by the little market that sells all the usual essentials + switchblades and brass knuckles. Tomorrow will be more exciting.
🚲 1.4 miles, 106.4 monthly total
April 13, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 13: Very short ride to grab dinner for kiddos. Forgot to take a photo.
🚲 1.7 miles, 105 monthly total
April 12, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 12: Ladds 500! Today was the “8th first annual” Ladds 500 and it was a blast! I haven’t been in a few years and I knew it would be more crowded than I’m use to and it sure was! It was too congested for my team of three to get around all 500 times. I did 95 laps for team Hot Moms Ride Cargo Bikes (40 with a passenger on my cargo deck), 2 bonus laps as stoker on the back of a friend’s tandem, and three upon arrival so I’m going the declare that 20 miles of circles. I didn’t Strava the whole time, thus the need to calculate. But I Strava’ed enough to get a funny map!
🚲 29.9 miles, 103.3 monthly total
April 11, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 11: One small bike + one big chair in preparation for tomorrow’s one big bike + many small and big chairs.
🚲 9 miles, 73.4 monthly total
April 10, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 10: snax
🚲 2.2 miles, 64.4 monthly total
April 9, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 9: 9.8 miles to work and a bike shop and beyond.
🚲 9.8 miles, 62.2 monthly total
April 8, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 8: A threefer with groceries by cargo bike, then gym by single speed, then kid pickup by cargo bike + kid bike. Everything is nearby, though, so all that’s only 9 flat miles.
🚲 9.3 miles, 52.4 monthly total
April 7, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 7: Just 1.5 miles around the neighborhood at night…which was better than the phoning it in of last night.
🚲 1.5 miles, 43.1 monthly total
April 6, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 6: Tired, lazy, rainy, case of the Sundays. Finally late at night rode a bike inside the house to meet quota. Here’s a pic from a week ago in Seattle to make up for the boring, photo-free day.
🚲 0.01 miles, 41.6 monthly total
April 5, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 5: Twinning with another Crust romo at the bike racks by the pie shop during the day!
And at night: a spin with the Parkpre, lighting the way with a camping headlamp (and it worked great!)
🚲 18.8 miles, 41.6 monthly total
April 4, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 4: Aw geez, it’s so early in the month and I’ve already forgotten to document the day with a photo. I took my Parkpre out today, and here’s a photo of it from a month ago on the MAX light rail.
🚲 8.8 miles, 22.8 monthly total
April 3, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 3: Just a grocery run today, and a small one at that.
🚲 2.2 miles, 14 monthly total
April 2, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 2: A day with no commute and no errands! I rode down our street and back right before bedtime. It counts!
🚲 0.7 miles, 11.8 monthly total
April 1, 2025 #30daysofbiking day 1: I don’t know if I’ll have a theme for the whole month, but I’ve got one for the day: Cars, man!
While biking half a mile to the orthodontist this morning, my kiddo and I had to leave the bike lane go around a landscaping truck. Meanwhile a distinctly non-bikey looking woman was crossing the street nearby and acknowledged us with a, “Welcome to Portland, City of Cars!”
After the appointment the kiddo took a bus to school and I Bag-and-Dragged™️ the extra bike home. I stopped by what used to be my favorite pink portrait wall, but it’s white now.
Later in the day I escorted the kid to an after-school class and while waiting at a crossbike to cross a busy street, a school bus stopped to our left to wait for us and honked long and hard. The honk wasn’t directed at us, so I assumed it was meant to encourage their oncoming traffic to stop for us, too. Mind you, there’s no legal requirement to stop for bikes at cross-bikes, but lots of folks don’t know this, including this polite but loud school bus driver. Plus, the honk worked!
My least favorite time to pedal past a high school is at the start of lunch when so many recently-licensed drivers are fleeing campus as quickly as possible. 8pm after night classes isn’t that fun to navigate through, either, but unlike lunchtime it’s 50/50 parents to students so it’s a bit calmer. But not completely calm—tonight a big black SUV with its lights out barreled out of the school parking lot, zoomed right past us, careened around a traffic circle, and sped off. Cars, man.
Another year, another love letter to my now teenage mamabike! Although maybe she needs a better descriptor since she doesn’t do any kid toting these days. (Ideas welcome.) She’s not ready to retire, though. I carry oodles of non-human stuff with my Big Dummy–mostly weekly groceries, but those tiny, mundane trips are still the best!
The most exciting “groceries-plus” trips I took with the the Big Dummy over the past year were beginner-friendly bike camping trips for The Street Trust’s WeBike program that inspires trans people of all genders, gender non-conforming people, Two Spirit, and women (both trans and cis) to incorporate a bike into their lives. This year we took two trips–first west to Stub Stewart State Park and then east to Oxbow Regional Park. These are the only two true beginner-friends campgrounds near Portland, but I’m still holding out hope Dodge Park will reopen for camping one of these days–it’s definitely the easiest.
I’ve turned into a bit of a cargo hog. I brought nine campers on the Stub Stewart trip and carried all the food, some extra tents, and seven camp chairs.
For the Oxbow trip (pic below) I brought 16 happy campers and left the camp chairs behind, but still carried all the food, six tents, and a bunch of sleeping bags and pads. You know I love carrying all the stuff so I can feel useful, but I don’t like making a spectacle of myself so I am toying with the idea of distributing the food and gear a bit.
16 WeBike campers – yay!
I hesitate to say there’s nuthin’ the Big Dummy can’t carry, but some things are easier with a regular bike + Haulin’ Colin cargo trailer so I left the teenager to home quite a few times over the last year to carry bulky and super heavy things. Let’s just say it’s easier to dump those sorts of cargo loads into the trailer rather than more carefully arrange them on the Big Dummy.
Hauling a tandem, a longtail cargo bike, and some other various stuff.
As always, I did a ton of bike hauling because longtails with cargo sling bags are so good at that! I mainly bag-and-dragged bikes (see below), but I also did quite a bit of toting broken or precious bikes up off the ground–often upside down, because that seems to work best (see below below).
“Bag-and-DragTM“No rear axle? No problem! Upside down you go.
I was sad to think I may not have carried Pixie with the Big Dummy at all over the last year, but in looking back I found one last basket trip just a couple weeks after the Big Dummy’s 12th birthday. It was a visit to the urgent care veterinary clinic so not what I’d call a joyride, but a very necessary one.
As is the tradition on the special day, it’s time to forget about those other 364 and talk about today! Today was not eventful. I only carried my laptop and only went to the office and back–12.5 mostly flat miles (268 foot elevation gain, says Strava). I was worried it would get dark on my way home before I found a good spot to take the annual glamour shot (sunset was at 4:28 p.m. today, ugh!), but I was greeted with the most Portland sight ever early in the journey–a cat tree U-locked to a bike rack outside a Stumptown Coffee. Say cheese! *click*
Our sweet chiweenie (chiweenie = half chihuahua + half dachshund/a.k.a. wiener dog + half potato) and the world’s most amazing adventure dog, Pixie, died in October at age 15. She was starting to slow down and had let us know she wasn’t keen on going for bike rides anymore, but we thought she still had a couple stay-at-home “house cat” years left so we were taken by surprise and are still grieving her passing.
Pixie at Cape Lookout State Park after riding the Trask Trail for OPB’s Oregon Field Guide, 2019 (trip report)
Pixie came to us by happenstance nine years ago while we were in a pet-free lull and contemplating a pet-free forever. As much as I miss my little Rootbeer Balonybutt (one of her many awesome kid-given nicknames!), I’m still thanking my lucky stars that she fell into our laps and we got to spend so much time with her.
Before she was ours and we were hers, we’d met Pixie many times on Kidical Mass Seattle group bike rides. Her moms, our friends, had two clashing rescue dogs they valiantly tried to make work together for a couple years, but after a huge dogfight left Pixie with dozens of stitches we answered their Facebook plea and became temporary dog sitters…though for the other pup while “Franken-Pixie” healed from her wounds. Pixie’s sister was not our perfect houseguest–she didn’t like kids, gnawed Lego bricks, tugged the leash with all her might in an attempt to attack any passing bus, and was twice as big as Pixie so she didn’t fit in the bike basket as well. Oh! Did I neglect to mention that our friends trained both dogs to ride in baskets and run alongside bikes? Hallelujah! It can take a lot of work to bike-ify a dog so it was a huge boon that Pixie came ready to ride.
Pixie at Maryhill Loops during the Dalles Mountain 60, 2017 (trip report)
Once Pixie healed we alternated between the two dogs, swapping back and forth every couple weeks while our friends continued slowly working on reconciling the two. Their research led them to animal behaviorists. They chose the best one and made an appointment. Obviously “the best one” meant “long waitlist,” but we loved having loaner dogs for a couple months, especially knowing the animal behaviorist would fix everything and this was just temporary. Due to the necessity of keeping the dogs separated I got to take Pixie to the behaviorist and it was fascinating! It was also far away–it took a three-mile bike ride + three buses + one-mile walk just to get there. The office abutted a veterinary clinic, lending it an air of legitimacy and the behaviorist had a prescription pad (also legit!)–both dogs left with Prozac scripts. My friends also received a choreographed plan for a face to face (muzzle to muzzle?) meeting after a month of built-up meds.
The medicated meeting was a bust. Our friends were heartbroken, but kept at it with more research, more dog swapping, and more attempted doggie playdates. Ultimately, they admitted defeat and Pixie became our permanent charge.
Pixie in the basket in the middle of a four-day-long trip from Portland to Eugene, 2019 (trip report)
Admittedly, Pixie was only an adventure dog out of necessity. At heart, she was a homebody. If she had her way, her human pack would spend all day in the same room as her so she knew she and we were safe. For the first few years she had to sit on my lap to feel safe, but in time she just had to be in the same room. For a very long time–longer than the lap sitting years–she assumed anytime we visited a friend’s house she was being rehomed. Our friends got her from the human society when she was about four, making us probably her third home, but possibly her fourth or more.
She liked things quiet, no running or jumping allowed. Running might lead to roughhousing might lead to someone getting hurt, and she didn’t want to risk anyone getting dozens of stitches on her watch.
But as much as she liked chilling at home with little to no activity, she never wanted to be left behind and if given the choice, would always opt to come along on the bike so she joined us for countless adventures.
Pixie during one of her several bike camping trips along the Palouse to Cascades State Park Trail (Snoqualmie Tunnel in the background), 2016 (trip report)
Pixie LOVED cats and while most cats fled her overexcited prancing and whining, there is one special kitty who tolerated her…and toleration is high praise from a cat! Houdi Joe Pie is a Maine Coon mix (and therefore twice as big as Pixie!) who lives 100 miles away in Eugene, but they got to hang out quite a bit. Cramming my Big Dummy into Jolene and Houdi’s van to accompany them camping along the Deschutes River Trail was my personal favorite dog + cat adventure because I got to carry both critters on my bike.
Houdi Joe Pie (left) and Pixie go camping! 2017 (trip report)
Pixie mostly traveled by bike basket. At nine pounds she fit very comfortably in a somewhat thick dog bed (I dunno the make or model—it was thrifted from Village Merchants) in the Linus Delano basket on my Surly Big Dummy cargo bike, but she fared fine in the slightly smaller and more universal Wald 137 baskets on my regular bikes. The enormous Wald 139 on our tandem was great because in addition to Pixie and her chunky dog bed I could fit lots of other stuff, like two sleeping pads plus all the stuffed animals for a camping trip.
Pixie in a Wald 137 basket
The above photo shows my preferred way of basketing a dog (from bottom to top): 1) dog bed, 2) dog, 3) baby blanket, 4) cargo net.
Pixie in the big Wald 139 basket, Halloween 2016
Now Pixie wasn’t only a basket babe—she also had backpacks! I love our Timbuk2 MuttMover because I could bring her between Seattle, Portland, and Eugene on Amtrak (sub-20-pound dog + approved carrier ride for $24 any trip less than seven hours). It has zippered head holes at different heights on each side, though I always chose to unzipper the one of my left so people in cars could see my precious cargo, and because what’s the point of biking with a dog if no one knows you’re biking with a dog?!
The MuttMover was mostly just for train trips, but every so often Pixie and I would go somewhere on a basket-less bike and it saved the day.
Pixie in her Timbuk2 MuttMover backpack on the Chehalis Western Trail, 2021 (trip report)
I’m not a big backpack fan and suffer from chronic back pain so even little nine-pound Pixie wasn’t fun to wear for long spells. I’ve seen a lot of K9 Sport Sacks around and hoped that a snugger, higher dog might feel better, even if it wouldn’t work on the train. We never got around to using it much so I’m not sure it would have solved my back pain problems, but Pixie seemed to take to it.
Pixie riding high in her K9 Sport Sack, 2023
Pixie wasn’t a good candidate for a bike trailer since she was a boss b*tch alpha dog and needed to be out front, leading the pack, not being dragged behind like an afterthought. If ever one of my kiddos zoomed ahead of me, she’d whine anxiously and try to climb out of the basket. In fact, she didn’t really like anyone riding ahead of her so the best group rides for Pixie were always the ones I (I mean, Pixie) led. We took one very short bike trailer trip to the grocery store with a sick kiddo. It worked OKish with the kid keeping her company inside the trailer, but had she been alone back there she surely would have scrabbled her way out.
Pixie escaping the trailer, 2016
Two years ago we added a Larry vs. Harry Bullitt (a.k.a. bakfiets a.k.a. longjohn a.k.a. front-loader) cargo bike to our family fleet. The plan was for it to be a unicycle-toting kid vehicle, but by the time it arrived from Denmark the kid unicycle phase had ended. HOWEVER, Pixie was starting to act fed up with #basketlyfe so the Bullitt found a new purpose and its spacious roost extended Pixie’s riding lifetime. We started out with her dog bed in the box which a cargo strap wrapped around the bike and through her harness to anchor her down, but eventually I invested in a doggie car booster seat (which I’m only aware of thanks to a chihuahua friend who rides in one on a bike’s front rack) and that provided a great, safe, comfortable vantage point for the old girl.
Enthusing over the the Bullitt makes me feel bad for the Big Dummy so I need to sing its praises, too. The beauty of my Big Dummy longtail cargo bike is that Pixie had her dedicated space at the front of the bike and I could load up whatever I wanted on the back and it didn’t impinge on her throne. This was not only good for camping trips with lots of stuff, but also little in-town adventures that required toting big cargo loads.
I’m not sure how to wrap this up because I’m not ready to close the Pixie chapter. And maybe I won’t–I should write a recap of our last epic bike trip in which we pedaled from Seattle to just over the Canadian border and back. Coming soon. In the meantime, hug all the members of your pack for me–human, canine, feline, etc–and remember: no roughhousing.
It’s April! That means it’s 30 Days of Biking: a pledge to ride every day in April and share adventures at #30daysofbiking. These days I find the everyday posting much harder than the everyday riding so no promises, but I’m gonna give it a try and post to a running thread on X, on Instagram, Stravaing all my rides, and putting the most recent day at the top of this blog post.
30 Day of Biking 2024 wrap up: I made it! Only made possible by the fact that the WordPress iPhone app is much better than last time I tried to use it. It’s just too hard to blog from my computer these days. Short phone-composed posts are better than nothing!
Halfway through today I realized that if I biked 25 more miles I could round out the month with 500 miles. Not that 30 Days of Biking is about mileage, but it’s the only time I bother paying attention to my mileage. I tally my miles so I have a sense of what an average month is like, but that ends up making it fun to follow the numbers and it makes me want to boost them up if I can. However, rather than try to cram in 25 miles, I ended my 30DoB with a much-more-fitting 2-mile cargo bike trip to Grocery Outlet for 50 pounds of fizzy water (for a work event—I am not super into fizzy water like my Gross Out checker suggested). Wouldn’t a cargo bike errand have been the most perfect end to my month?! Well it doesn’t matter because I had to pop back out for kiddo cold medicine. That was 2 more miles done on my little bike because I didn’t want to take the fizzy water off my big bike. Obviously it occurred to me that just 10 more grocery store trips would get me to 500 miles for the month.
I didn’t do anything epic this month, but I did all the usual awesome stuff: carried lots of large and heavy loads, rode a bunch of different bikes, biked with lots of friends, tested lots of route, made so many grocery runs I didn’t even mention most of them, and tried to create a better bike situation for aging Pixie-dog. The most glaring omissions are finding furniture on the side of the road and going on a camping trip. And going on a family ride! All those years and years and years of family rides (our first 30 Days of Biking was in 2010) has resulted in two independently-biking teens so I’ll ride with one at a time to appointments, but that’s about it for family rides these days. It’s a good thing, but I miss my little passengers.
April 30, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 30: I started my day with a bunch of not-biking: 10-minute walk to catch a bus to catch a second bus to another 10-minute walk to then pick up a bike.
🚲 24.7 miles, 486.2 monthly total
April 29, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 29: Forgot to take a photo so here’s one of the right bike, but the wrong pants from Saturday. Took the work e-bike (and black pants) to work and back today. ⚡️ZOOM⚡️
🚲 12.4 miles, 461.5 monthly total
April 28, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 28: yuuuuucky weather today so I wimped out on my weekly childhood bestie ride this week and insisted we walk instead. To a bakery. For malasadas. Because I thought something sweet would brighten my sour, soggy mood.
But then I got on the bike for The Portland Trifecta (food cart pod, little free art gallery, bike test ride) 🥡🖼️🚲💕 with a visiting Seattle friend and it rained and drizzled and cleared and repeat repeat repeat all afternoon long.
🚲 22.5 miles, 449.1 monthly total
April 27, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 27: One of my neighbors was sitting on her porch (not that today had porch-sitting weather 🥶) and shouted, “I like your pants! Cutesies!” as I rode by. Most of my wardrobe is black or grey. I’m not sure if it’s because that’s what I like or because that’s all I find that fits me at the thrift stores. I mean, it’s both, but I don’t remember which came first. I found these “cutesies!” pants at the Goodwill bins in Glendale (LA, CA) so they’re not locally sourced.
All but 2 of today’s miles were on an e-bike so that was super fun! But also super chilly because it was so awesomely easy 🔌⚡️ 🚲 34.9 miles, 426.6 monthly total
April 26, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 26: I like biking to the Clackamas Kaiser (routine kid medical appointment). Our route is mostly multi-use path that connects to a red, grade-separated bike lane (Red! Like in the Netherlands!) to get to the medical center. The red lane ends at the corner of the medical center and rather that continue uphill straight in a regular painted bike lane in the stroad, we turn right on the flat sidewalk. The opposite direction of our sidewalk block features a contraflow bike lane in the one way road, and I do love a contraflow bike lane, but we stick to the sidewalk for the other direction, too, because a contraflow bike lane that ends in a stroad is just too confusing to navigate out of. Today we saw a person driving their car the wrong way on this one way street—that was a first for us! And not at the edge, over the bike lane, but smack dab in the middle of the street. I think they were probably trying to get to one of the nearby shopping centers and turned a block too early and didn’t want to navigate through the medical center parking lots to correct their course. I have no idea if they could see my incredulous stare from the sidewalk due to the dark tint on their front windows. But hey thanks, wrong-way car, for inspiring me to do some Googling and learn about Oregon tint laws and tint percentages in general. I’d say this car was sporting 20% instead of the 35% max, which runs the risk of a $360 fine. The more you know!
After the appointments we hopped the MAX and rode three stops on the way home. Portland high schoolers ride transit for free so I only had to pay for me. I love biking around on my own schedule rather than having to wait for buses and trains, but if I had a free pass I’m sure I’d ride transit much more often.
🚲 25.2 miles, 391.7 monthly total
April 25, 2024 # 30daysofbiking day 25: I thought I’d have a fun errand today (carry a kid by cargo bike to pick up a bike from the shop), but instead I worked from home all day and only stepped outside for tiny dog walks. I was going to just skip, but decided to phone it in inside instead. I’ve biked down the hallway in years past so stationary pedaling is new for me for 30DOB. If I put enough weight in my Big Dummy basket it lifts the back wheel off the ground and the Brompton was just about heavy enough.
🚲 0.00001 miles, 366.5 monthly total
April 24, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 24: Carried 60 pounds of fizzy water to work. Semi-regular ✨THANK YOU✨ to TacomaBikeRanch for selling me his old Xtracycle WideLoader for a song (10 bucks!!) 12 years ago. Love this thing!
🚲 14 miles, 366.5 monthly total
April 23, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 23: I don’t like fixing flats I don’t like fixing front flats I really don’t like fixing rear flats I don’t even know how to fix rear belt-drive flats. An ode to my Haulin’ Colin trailer that made it super easy to ferry The Street Trust’s Vvolt e-bike a quick little 1.2 miles to the Something Cycles bike shop.
🚲 16.9 miles, 352.5 monthly total
April 22, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 22: 100 helmets in my Haulin’ Colin trailer. They looked more impressive, but felt much lighter than the 50 locks I toted before fetching the helmets this morning. I’ll admit I like my big, impressive-looking, but light loads, heh.
🚲 18 miles, 335.6 monthly total
April 21, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 21: 2 of today’s miles were a trip to food carts with a friend from Seattle who was passing through town!
🚲 20.3 miles, 316.4 monthly total
April 20, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 20: weekly ride with westward with a stop at Tito’s Taquitos in Beaverton—so good! Then I hopped the MAX to get extra east on my way home. It was my first visit to the new Gateway North MAX Station. The “A Better Red” project is rad, but I hadn’t realized it ate up part of the I-205 Trail multiuse path.
🚲 52 miles, 296.1 monthly total
April 19, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 19: 24 miles on the small bike with no photographic evidence, then 2.5 just-as-exciting miles with the big bike to bring a kid bike to Bike Frequency’s new location (2 doors down from the old location) for a tune up.
🚲 26.5 miles, 244.1 monthly total
April 18, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 18: Did some errand running and route testing in Milwaukie. I adore little car-free cut-throughs, but this one was too narrow for my bike with the Xtracycle WideLoader attached. Plus it’s paired with 20 feet of gravel so it’s not the best to take newbies on anyway. Ah well! I’ll be back without the WideLoader (and without toting 50 bike locks 💪 along for the ride) because like I said, I ❤️ lil cut-thrus.
🚲 14.3 miles, 217.6 monthly total
April 17, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 17: There was so much road construction on the way to and from work with no marked detours that I felt mildly lost the whole commute. Good timing, though, with all the warnings I’ve been seeing about work zone awareness week. Often it’s fun to be forced a block or two off the norm because I get to see new things. Today the most notable unusual thing I biked by was the “Honk if you love Elvis” van. I’ve seen it a few times before, but never regularly. I didn’t stop to take a picture, so here, instead, is my bike outside Nayar Taqueria. Last time I was here I forgot a lock, so this orange grenade “stroller lock” (this lock is of the caliber moms use to lock their baby strollers at Disneyland) I got at One on One Bikes eight years ago is a big step up. The day of the forgotten lock I thought some dude was casing my bike, but he hadn’t noticed the lack of lock and was simply excited to peep a Crust Bikes headbadge up close.
🚲 15 miles, 203.3 monthly total
April 16, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 16: Rode a regular bike to work and brought my cargo bike home. Almost forgot to take a 📸 so here’s the custom sticker on my fork my friend Jen made for me 😊
🚲 14 miles, 188.3 monthly total
April 15, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 15: Birthday kiddo pickup, birthday sushi pickup, trying to keep up with kiddo.
🚲 6 miles, 174.3 monthly total
April 14, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 14: 10-mile pedal to a 6-mile walk around the southwest hills. I get to see a lot of cool things biking, but slowing down to walking speed always reveals even more. And sometimes things are aimed at the sidewalk instead of the street, like the sign for a lost cat named “soup of the day.” Hope you find your way home, little buddy!
🚲 20.6 miles, 168.3 monthly total
April 13, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 13: Bullitt’s first Goodwill drop off. My cargo straps are on my Big Dummy that I left at work yesterday so I tied two old holey tubes together around the box. Then my soon-to-be 17-year-old (what!) and I fetched birthday cake ingredients, grabbed dinner, visited the free range neighborhood chickens, said hi to a goat, and hit the dirt jumps (well, one of us did that last one).
🚲 2.9 miles, 147.7 monthly total
April 12, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 12: Tabling supplies toting day! There was a chance of rain so I protected my precious cargo with a picnic blanket. I haven’t been this way for a bit so while I knew there were changes happening to the road through Rose City Golf Course, this was my first look at them! A low curb is going in the middle of the street to keep one-way cars on one side and bi-directional protected bike lanes on the other. At the end of the day I left my cargo bike at the office and took my Parkpre home. I’d conveniently left it at work a couple weeks ago.
🚲 16.5 miles, 144.8 monthly total
April 11, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 11: I took the Bullitt to errands today since my Big Dummy is still covered with tabling stuff. Originally purchased to be a kid-driven unicycle-carrying vehicle, I think it’s time to just admit that it’s my bike now :) Which means I should swap out its saddle because *ouch* it came with a hard little seat.
I learned this novelty bike-shaped bike rack that’s a pain to park a normal bike at was great for the Bullitt! And I only wheeled over to try it because I was having trouble getting the Bullitt close enough to lock to the regular staple rack. Go figure!
I also took the Bullitt to the grocery store for the first time ever. I saw my nextdoor neighbor in the parking lot and she said, “Let me know if you need to buy anything big and I’ll drive it home for you.” And I said back, “No, Sharon, let ME know if YOU need to buy anything big and I’ll bring it home for YOU!” Good times.
Note: I only bought half our usual amount of groceries so I can’t speak to capacity versus the Big Dummy just yet. Since I didn’t buy anything fragile I rode the Bullitt on gravel for the first time! It did great. I think the Big Dummy is definitely more of a mountain bike, though. Plus I’m not a pro bakfiets driver yet.
🚲 2.6 miles, 128.3 monthly total
April 10, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 10: I toted tabling supplies home from work for a shorter ride with them to an event in a couple days. A neighbor yelled, “Get it, girl!” at me as I pedaled by 🤣
🚲 12.5 miles, 125.7 monthly total
April 9, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 9: I didn’t take a photo of my work commute because on the way home I was distracted by loose bunnies. I leaned my bike against a tree and captured one and put it back over its fence, and the second one put itself back under its fence before I could grab it. Once I stowed my bike at home, Pixie and I walked back by the bunnies to see if all was well….but it wasn’t because now the bunnies’ yardmate chihuahua was loose! I’ve found this little guy on the lam before. In fact I’ve found about a dozen loose little dogs in the neighborhood and it’s definitely easier to get them home on foot than on bike. Now I know that goes for bunnies, too!
🚲 14.8 miles, 113.2 monthly total
April 8, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 8: Work and back. Chilly today, but no rain while I was out!
🚲 12.4 miles, 98.4 monthly total
April 7, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 7: It took me all week to use a bike besides my cargo bike! How interesting. It’s the best bike and so useful, but it’s nice to be zippy sometimes. And I can fit a regular-sized bike on the MAX light rail. Like most weekends, I hung out with my longtime pal Miwa today. We used to swim together as kids in Albany (the California one), then we started walking together during lockdown, and now we bike together!
Lately we’ve been biking to Beaverton or Hillsboro, but today we mixed it up with a never-again-too-hilly ride to the MAX to Beaverton. It was a terrific adventure! With bonus stops at Sesame Donuts, BG’s Food Cartel, Universal Cycles (and now I remember this is not the first time I’ve biked us over there on a Sunday when it’s closed), and Trek Beaverton for tubes, tubes, and more tubes.
🚲 36 miles, 86 monthly total
April 6, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 6: Today’s theme was animals. On the way to the pet store I herded a bunch of chickens in the middle of one our gravel roads back into their yard, and then on the way home I visited neighborhood goats. Then I headed back out to feed a friend’s cat for more small miles and more animals.
Having a big cargo bikes means I can combine trips the way people in cars do. I don’t normally get Pixie so much food, but they only had the 28-pound bag in stock. So I got that an a freebie 5-pounder of a new brand and they fit fine with a week or two of groceries.
🚲 4.5 miles, 50.5 monthly total
April 5, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 5: Zero school + 1/2 day work = double Lego! First stop was Bricks & Minifigs for their big bins of used Lego sold by volume, then on to Lloyd Center and Brickdiculous for a Lego set, minifig, and viewing of a sweet bus display in their gallery area. And a bonus for me: an awesome new Pinball museum called Star Tropics right next door.
Did you happen to notice my lock job? I came out of Bricks & Minifigs to discover I hadn’t connected the cable to the U, leaving my kiddo’s bike unlocked. In my defense it was hailing when we arrived so I was a bit distracted. I didn’t have a saddle cover with me, but I did have my rain pants so I wrapped them around both saddles keeping them nice and dry.
🚲 15 miles, 46 monthly total
April 4, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 4: Hooray for hybrid—I worked half the day from home and half from the office. I celebrated the kids’ last day of the school quarter by picking up pizza from Baby Doll Pizza on my way home and bundled it up into two Trader Joe’s cooler bags because they’re somewhat insulating and super cute.
Life with independently biking and busing teenagers is pretty cool, and as I approached home I realized my timing was looking good to intercept a kid leaving afterschool D&D at a game store halfway between school and home. I ended up making it there a couple minutes later than perfect, but I caught up a block from the place!
🚲 13 miles, 31 monthly total
April 3, 2024 # 30daysofbiking day 3: I’ve never stopped to check out this newish something-or-other in the neighborhood because I’m usually a block or two away. It’s the world’s sweetest doggie stick library!
🚲 1.75 miles, 17.8 monthly total
April 2, 2024 #30daysofbiking day 2: Tuesdays are office days and today was a spectacular commute because I rode in and out with a coworker for her very first bike commute! And then I impulse stopped at St. Francis Ice Cream on the way home for vegan strawberry for the kids and Pixie Lix for me. Obvs I chose it for the name, but also: it’s cookies and cream + rainbow sprinkles so the flavor is 💯
🚲 14 miles, 16 monthly total
April 1, 2024 I wasn’t sure I’d make it out today and thought I’d either blow the challenge on day one or ride a bike down the hallway late at night (which is totally legit), but my sweet kiddos convinced me I should grab burgers for dinner so I traveled a whole mile (each way). I dressed partially for the weather I want: shorts and flip flops, and partially realistically: puffy and thick knit cap. Worked fine!
I took mostly paved roads over (just one gravel block) and as many as possible gravel blocks home. The gravel blocks have few, if any, cars on them which is reason enough to always use them, but my chosen route was planned to use the crossings and stoplights I like best in each direction. Also, this route meant I could snap a photo by our local dirt jumps for ya! The Big Dummy’s wheelbase is too long for things like this, but sometimes I like to crash and embarrass myself here on a smaller bike.
I’ve been remiss at posting, but my Big Dummy is still going strong. The two missing anniversary posts could say the same thing as this one: it hasn’t been the most exciting year for the old gal, doing more one-mile grocery store runs than anything else, but that stuff is the jam that holds a bikelife sandwich together.
I had a bright (or silly?) idea shortly before the Big Dummy’s 10th birthday to make it feel lighter and faster. Not necessarily to be lighter and faster, but to feel lighter and faster. I took the Xtracycle Hooptie off (and Pixie and I biked it up from Seattle to Vancouver on a regular bike to deliver it to a friend) and Splendid Cycles replaced it with very small Tern Sidekick Flat Bars. I also swapped the flat pedals for SPD hybrid ones (flat on one side, clipless on the other). I rarely carry kids these days, and would feel too clumsy to clip in with passengers, but clipping in is a great way to feel and look faster. I’d been running a free balloony white tire on the front and having that and the rear tire swapped for Schwalbe Pick-Ups is probably the best speeding-up change. I also had my long-broken front dynamo light replaced…and then recently broke it again so now it’s held in place with duct tape yet again, sigh. More recently than the big tune-up with all the little changes I thought I would need to replace my cargo bags, but Barb at Splendid Cycles was able to repair the holey one! The non-holey one could use some refurbishing, too, so I’ll bring that in at some point this winter.
In non-Big-Dummy-cargo-bike news, and relevant to the birthday day, we are now a two-cargo-bike family! My 14-year old had a brief stint as a unicyclist and wanted to be able to tote his unicycle around by bike since it’s too slow and tiring to go long distances with just the one wheel. First we found an old car bike rack at the thrift store which we disassembled into two pieces and zip tied part of it to his rear rack. It worked pretty well, but when he said he wanted a cargo bike instead my heart leapt! I assumed he’d want a little longtail to be like me–maybe a Bike Friday Haul-a-Day–but he had his heart set on a bakfiets. Oregon doesn’t currently let anyone under 16 ride e-bikes so his Larry vs. Harry Bullitt is not assisted, but it’s pretty zippy! He’s no longer unicycling so I use the Bullitt more often than he does. It feels faster than the Big Dummy so before realizing today was such a special day I’d already planned to ride it for work since I had to carry a lot of stuff and needed to be zippy while leading a How to Grocery Shop by Bike clinic and group ride for our ride-to-own e-bike program.
After work I needed to take my former-unicycler-now-roadie’s indoor trainer and a road bike wheel to River City Bicycles to have the cassettes swapped. I can’t do much more than change a flat (and changed one this morning quite quickly as a matter of fact!) and use my chain tool for craft projects, so I needed a professional with a chain whip for this. I had planned to stick my Xtracycle WideLoader on the Big Dummy to carry the trainer, but as the day wore on I had to admit that the Bullitt would be much more convenient to carry the heavy little trainer.
I’ve never not ridden the Big Dummy on its birthday so I took it out to do what it does best and went to the grocery store this evening. So I ended up riding the Bullitt 42 miles today and the Big Dummy just 2 miles. Maybe I’ll have to belatedly post about a summer camping trip during which the Big Dummy carried 6 tents, dinner and breakfast for 22 campers, 5 camp chairs, and a million snacks.
The Shotgun Bike Tow Rope, like most bike tow ropes, is designed for mountain biking and I’ll admit we’re not big mountain bikers, but I’ve long seen the benefits of have a means for towing kids uphill, paved or not. Despite intuiting how useful a tow rope could be, I hadn’t used one (a “real” one, that is) prior to the Shotgun since I didn’t see a way to tow the two kiddos at once. Having kids close enough and size and ability that I could carry them together on my bike was wonderful when they were little, but having them always wanting to be doing the same thing at the same time made towing unworkable. Back in the day I toyed with the idea of getting two tow ropes and trying to tow the kids side by side, but was told it’d probably only work to tow inline with me towing one kid who then towed the other and I knew they wouldn’t be amenable to that.
Attaching the Shotgun Bike Tow Rope My Big Dummy is a foot longer than a regular bike so rather than lasso the rope over my saddle as designed I looped it through the hole at the back of my Xtracycle FlightDeck. It seems very versatile in terms of attaching to various parts of your rig if the back of your bike has a lot going on that might get in the way of the traditional saddle lassoing method. That said, I also did some towing with a regular bike to confirm it didn’t feel weird to sit on the strap and it was perfectly comfortable. I assumed this product designed for mountain bikers in two-part baggy mtb shorts over padded liners might not feel the same with unpadded mom jeans so I’m happy to report I was wrong. As for the trailing end of the rope, I towed the kids attaching it to their bikes using both methods–quickly slung over the stem and carefully clipped under the stem (see the video at the bottom of the page for details). Both felt secure.
Towing both kids around the park (and then towing one home while waving a big stick around and not pedaling whatsoever) was a lot of fun, but wasn’t the hardiest test of what the Shotgun Bike Tow Rope can do. Enter a long ride to the pumpkin farm. Into a headwind.
First I should note that I’ve done my fair share of DIY towing using long non-stretchy cargo straps, dragging the kids around on their bikes, skateboards, longboards, and snowboards. The kids love it and I find it fun for the novelty, but it’s a heck of a lot of work! I’m glad to have had all this DIY towing experience because it’s made me uniquely qualified to say the Shotgun Bike Tow Rope is AMAZING! My 14-year old has a creative pedaling cadence that makes riding a tandem together or towing with a non-stretchy cargo strap very unpleasant for me, but the Shotgun completely dampens any jerkiness happening behind me! We linked up for three miles in the middle of our 16-mile journey to the pumpkin farm on a very slight uphill and into a headwind and while it was tiring, the stop-and-go pedaling happening behind was impossible to detect. I could tell when there was absolutely no pedaling happening for long stretches of coasting because I had to work harder, but the pedal-pedal-coast……pedal-pedal-coast…… typical of my co-tester didn’t register.
DIY towing three years ago:
Proper towing with the Shotgun Bike Tow Rope this year:
As noted above you can purchase the tow rope à la carte, but the hip pack is adorable. I love that the waist strap adjusts big enough to fit on me so I’ve claimed the hip pack as mine. But I also love that it’s designed to be worn by the kiddo. Having the towed kid in charge of bringing the tow rope and tasked with carrying it is just brilliant. The pack is covered with cute animals riding bikes (whom you can find in the book “Shred Til Bed – The MTB Animal Alphabet”, available on the Kids Ride Shotgun website) and it comes with cute stickers, too.
We all have 26-inch wheels these days and the tow rope works for all sizes of bikes. The website FAQ states the tow rope is designed for kids, but works for adults, too (it’s rated to 500lb). When I posted one of our test runs on my Instagram, BikePOC PNW adventurers commented that they bring theirs on all BikePOC PNW group rides in case of “catastrophic mechanicals.” I don’t know if this means they often haul adults with broken chains 50 miles up gravel mountains, but that’s certainly what I’m picturing.
The tow rope ships free to the US from New Zealand (free US shipping on all orders over $39). If you’re in Portland, like me, you can find them at REI and The Outer Rim–check the find a stockist page for other retailers in any area.
It’s April! That means 30 Days of Biking and biking every day and hopefully blogging about it each day.
What a difference a year makes–I’m still amazed 30 Days of Biking was so easy to do this year after how hard just getting out of bed was last year. Looking back at 2019’s 30 Days of Biking I see I called that a “slow month” with just 503 miles due to a sickly kid. The previous month the school commute + work added up to 734 miles so that was my norm back then, wow. So this year, biking 541 miles this month with nowhere to go is quite the feat.
As always, it’s not about the miles. I still think getting everything done by bike while biking very few miles is the real deal and sets a great example. But I admit I like spending one month of the year tallying my miles and seeing big numbers. In fact, I realized if I rode 13 miles today I could hit 550 for the month, so that’s what I did.
Holgate Trail
Pipeline Trail
Elderberry Trail
I’m not spontaneous enough to bike 6.5 miles with no destination and then turn back to hit my 13-mile quota so I routed a test run to Powell Butte, using the Pipeline Trail friends told me about on Instagram. It’s apparently the gentlest way up. I couldn’t tell how to get to the bottom of the Pipeline so I took a different trail on the way up, figuring it’d be easy to figure out Pipeline on the way down. It all worked OK on my road bike (I was testing to see if I could bring my friends on their road bikes, but I don’t think it’s quite that road-bike-friendly), but I’ll be back on my Straggler or my kid’s mountain bike. Even the trail that wasn’t named Pipeline had a pipeline on it, which I found cute.
It seems fitting that I ended the month with a ride on my road bike–it goes to show how much my riding has changed lately. I didn’t even use my cargo bike to pick up school lunches today–I walked! I’m rarely in family biker mode these days and have been thinking about archiving this blog. I’m awfully change averse so it probably won’t happen too soon. And hopefully my kids will humor me with one more ride soon so we have one last ride to write about.
It’s April! That means 30 Days of Biking and biking every day and hopefully blogging about it each day.
Just two tiny trips today, both on the cargo bike with Pixie in the basket. First Pixie and I fetched school lunches for the kids, and then we biked through the Dairy Queen drive through for the kids’ dinner. We were in line behind two families on bikes and a scooter so that was cool!
It’s April! That means 30 Days of Biking and biking every day and hopefully blogging about it each day.
It finally happened–a day with nowhere to go. I’ve been wondering if I’d skip riding on a day like this, but I borrowed my 14-year old’s bike (which used to be my bike) and rode around outside a little tonight while Pixie walked alongside. Now I really feel like I’m doing 30 Days of Biking.
Family Ride 