On Saturday we made a valiant attempt to go on Kidical Massive, the Kidical Mass that was coordinated with others around the country. If you are not familiar with Kidical Mass it is an organized ride for families with kids. The idea is to get a big group of kids and parents together and go on a ride through a neighborhood. Some places (like Portland, OR) even get more adventurous and go on bike camping trips. You can read more about it here: http://www.kidicalmass.org/.
Our plans for the morning were foiled by nap time – R napped right up until Kidical Massive was scheduled to start and we couldn’t catch up with the group at that point. We still went on a ride through the Ballard Summer Parkways route and met some great family bikers at the parks, which was really nice. During the ride we ended up hanging out at Ballard Commons Park at the Sustainable Ballard festival for a couple of hours, had lunch there, and headed home around nap time.
This was the first time I’d seen a Kidical Mass in Seattle and I was bummed to have missed it. Nap time is more important though so I think we made the right choice. R was much happier all day with a good morning nap than she would have been had we woken her up to make it to the ride on time.
It’s been great starting to connect with other family bikers here in Seattle. There is a very active Facebook group that both Lurline and I have joined. It’s an active online community where I hear about events, can ask for advice, and can see what other families are doing. I really enjoy being a part of it. It’s also started to give me a sense of community I haven’t really had since grad school.
I’d like to transition some of that online community into real life community. I think it will happen gradually as I keep riding around town and meet other folks on the road. Every family biker I’ve met has been really friendly and willing to chat about their experiences and what works for them. It’s given me some great tips and a lot of inspiration.
I’ve actually found that Seattle in general has become a friendlier place since starting to bike with R. Whether it’s the interesting bike, the bike seat, or just the sight of a baby on a bike I get a ton more smiles than I have at any point in my six years here. People on the street will say things like, “what a cute baby”, “look at that baby on the bike!”, or similar things. They will ask me in the street about my Yepp Mini because they are thinking of carrying their kid on their bike. I met an older gentleman who was really interested in the StokeMonkey so we chatted about it for a while. He kind of reminded me of my grandpa with his enthusiasm over an interesting piece of equipment (for example my grandpa was super into our Volt when we visited last year, and I’m sure if he saw my bike we could chat for quite a while). It’s been really refreshing to get so many smiles and have so many random conversations.
R playing in the grass at Summer Parkways