Thanks to a Seattle Bike Blog reminder, I made it to my first Aaron’s Bicycle Repair Cargo Bike Ride. Cargo bikes are not a prerequisite, but I was deemed a cargo bike anyway, due to the fact that I carry so much stuff. The ride was really fun and I met a lot of great people. Quite different than a Spokespeople ride–there were not a lot of helmets and I only saw one hand signal.
Photo courtesy of Eric Shalit, TUBULOCITY
We rode along Nickerson which I learned used to be a four-lane road of speeding motorists, but is now a speed-limit-abiding two-lane road with bike lane on one side and sharrow on the other. In the past I’ve crossed the Fremont Bridge on the sidewalk, but today we followed the crew over the grated street. Not so fun; we’ll stick to the sidewalk in the future. The sidewalk is plenty loud and bumpy and exciting for the kids.
The ride ended at Gasworks Park–I love any ride that brings me towards home! The picnic was great fun…maybe even more fun than the birthday party we hosted at the same spot last weekend. Fewer train piñatas, but more beer. We hung out for quite a while, but the kids started getting restless so we were the first to bail. As it turns out, we left just before the egg hunt! So that’s three egg hunts we’ve missed in two days. We’ll just have to make up for it next Easter.
See many more phtos (mostly of my monkeys!) at Eric Shalit’s awesome TUBULOCITY.
Oh, and the best part: apparently Aaron’s Bicycle Repair has Legos! I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to learn about it. I might take the bus there because it looks uphill from Lincoln Park. My plan is to go on the next nice day and buy a bell…but I have a feeling I’ll leave with plans to buy more stuff. After looking at this photo of a super-family-friendly Xtracycle on TUBULOCITY I think I want my X sooner rather than later.
Daily distance: 17 miles
Cumulative: 217 miles
Family Ride 
I don’t know if I would say Nickerson is “speed-limit-abiding,” but it is way better. I’m so upset that I missed this ride. I even wrote the reminder post and I still forgot.
Ah, it would have been great to see you! I almost tweeted about it a day in advance, but knew that would jinx things and we wouldn’t make it.
If and when you get the Xtra, how will you deal with putting on a bus?
They don’t fit on the bus as far as I know. So far, I’ve only put my normal-sized bike on the bus once. I think I’d have to take the small bike for trips in which I anticipate a bus segment.