Not Cargo Bike - cargo stroller!

Cargo Bike

Sunday, Feb 8th, I retrieved our Cargo Bike from the bike shop. I had brought it in because snow and slush pushed the belt out of alignment. Another owner of the same model cargo bike remarked that they had encountered similar issues in the snow. Going forward, I will not ride the cargo bike on days where there is a lot of snow and slush in the streets. A little limiting, but nothing tragic.

On February 9th, I took my kids to the Domes for the afternoon. This is normally an easy route, but snow in bike lanes and on the Hank Aaron trail made it less pleasant. Unfortunately, we were almost hit by a car twice, once on the way there, once on the way back.  By the time I got home I was very shaken and decided to take a break from riding the bike with the kids. I felt very unwelcome on the roads.

Kindergarten Commute

This past week I continued to bring my son to kindergarten with a combination of bus and jogging stroller. Starting this year, the #33 doesn't run between 9AM and 3PM, so it can only get us TO school, not back. In previous weeks, I could leave my daughter with my wife at home during these trips. But this past week my wife was busier so I had to bring my daughter with me. This meant I was jogging with our double stroller, which is something I had never really considered doing before. It turns out it's really not that harder than pushing the other jogging stroller.

I'm actually kind of thankful that our cargo bike was unavailable for use for a few weeks. Otherwise I never would have started doing bus/stroller for school drop offs. Even once I'm riding the cargo bike again, I think I'll keep bussing and strollering, at least on some days. My son likes the routine of riding the bus and I enjoy the runs. The runs to and from school feel different than "jogging" for exercise. It feels more "purposeful," like my run is actually "transportation."

Weekend Excursions

I was foiled multiple times on my commute to work Saturday morning. Once by the Hawley Road closure on the way to work. Then after work, I wanted to go downtown to meet some friends. The ideal path would have been to cross the valley at the 27th or 16th street viaducts, but both of these are closed. This is very frustrating to have three major north-south routes closed at the same time. I should have crossed at 35th street, but I was already too far east when I realized the extent of the closures, so I crossed at 6th street.

After our meetup, I suggested to my friend (who lives in Wauwatosa) that he take the CT1 home instead of a rideshare. He had never taken the bus alone, but he downloaded the appropriate app and made in account in a few minutes. I didn't hear any terrible stories, so I think it worked out okay! He lives very close to a CT1 stop, so maybe he'll consider it as an option going forward.

Sunday the whole family and I took the #21 bus to the Lower East Side to meet some friends at a restaurant. We missed our bus (first time in awhile) but it was only ~15 minutes until the next one came. Not normally a problem, but in our case, one member of our family had to go to the bathroom pretty bad, so that wasn't great. 

Our friends drove to the restaurant with their daughter. When we were done, they invited us back to their house, which was about ~1 mile away. They offered to do two runs with the car to get us all there, but my wife suggested that she ride with them while I run our kids in the double stroller. It worked out fine! My two weeks of training -- pushing the double stroller while running -- paid off. Running as transportation!

Early this morning (Monday), we took the #33 downtown to meet some friends. As previously mentioned, the #33 doesn't run between 9AM and 3PM, but this isn't a big deal because we live a 15 minute walk from a stop on the #30, which is a very frequent bus route. It's also pretty crowded, which can be tricky sometimes with the double stroller. My kids often like to sit/stand on a seat of their own, but when it's crowded, we have to tell them no, which is too bad.