biking

Rolling Somewhat Merrily Along

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

When I started our town’s series of Kidical Mass bike rides for families, I was afraid no one would show up. Now that the summer has wound down and I’ve led four different rides, those fears have mostly been alleviated. But while I’ve had some success, the last two rides have shown that like many activist projects, it’s going to take a lot of hard work to get a big impact. Fortunately, I’ve also had some little wins that give me hope.

Going into this project, I knew that my town’s bicycle culture lagged behind that of D.C. and Arlington. While we struggled to get 10 people for our community rides, they would get hundreds. Rockville has substantially improved its bike infrastructure and policies, but we just haven’t attracted the sheer numbers of cyclists yet. On top of that, getting families to cycle is the toughest nut to crack and suburban parents are notoriously paranoid about safety. This was illustrated quite clearly when the East Falls Church Kidical Mass launch ride (a specific neighborhood in Arlington) had 32 people, while ours had 17, including me, my husband, and the organizers of an existing ride.

On top of not having as much of a cycling culture, my town poses other logistical issues for Kidical Mass rides. Being in the suburbs, businesses are more spread out, making it difficult to find destinations within a few miles of a starting point that are also on quiet streets. From my experience so far, parents expect to drive rather than bike or take transit to the ride, so you need to start and end in the same place, preferably somewhere with good parking. As Rockville has a number of rolling hills that challenge adult cyclists, I usually abandoned the “flat” part of the “short, un-trafficked, flat” routes recommended for Kidical Mass rides.

Knowing all of this, it wasn’t too surprising that we only had one family each for our last two rides. We had some adult helpers on both, so neither group was ridiculously small, but we aren’t attracting the numbers that a ride that has “mass” in its name implies.

Despite the low turnout, certain aspects of each ride were encouraging. On the August ride, I had planned to ride from a local nature center to Rock Creek Park, a lush gem that runs from the heart of D.C. into Montgomery County. But the ride has some serious hills, so my heart sunk when I saw a little girl show up with training wheels. I especially felt bad when I realized she and her mom had showed up for the July ride but she was too scared to even leave the sidewalk. Trying to hide my nervousness, I encouraged her to try the ride and let her know that it was okay to walk the hills. Much to my relief, she defied everyone’s expectations. She made it up many of the hills and wasn’t ashamed of walking up others. The route offered exactly the right blend of achievable and just-out-of-reach challenge. We turned around before we reached the park, but I was so proud that she made it as far as she did. It was such a huge leap up from just a month before. Even though her mom kept saying, “If I had known the route, I would have never brought her!” it was clear that she was glad she did. Even though she was the only kid there, her accomplishment alone made the ride worthwhile.

On the ride this past weekend, I was quite surprised that anyone showed up, considering it was a 50% chance of rain. In fact, I actually left Chris and Sprout at home. But one family with two kids in a trailer and an older lady interested in volunteering both made an appearance. While the dad of the family was an avid cyclist, his wife was much less experienced. She had just gotten a new bike and self-identified as a rather slow cyclist. They had been doing rides around their neighborhood, but this was the first community ride they had done. And despite the rain, she loved it! Afterwards, she promised to sign up for another community ride this weekend as well as future Kidical Mass rides. On top of making it good experience for her, they’re also interested in purchasing a Yuba cargo bike to replace their trailer, which would be an awesome addition to our Kidical Mass rides.

Our next two rides are going to be with our sister ride in nearby Gaithersburg, which has been around for at least a year. I hope that some of their experience rubs off on us!

Riding Along with Kidical Mass

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Last weekend, I led our second Kidical Mass Rockville ride and it went great! We started off at the Rockville Swim Center and wandered around the surrounding neighborhood. As a personal bonus, for the first time ever, Sprout smiled while he was in the trailer with his helmet on. Plus, he fell asleep part-way through the ride, meaning that he had least got a bit of a nap in.

Check out my post about the ride, along with a photo of the group, on the Kidical Mass Rockville Blog!

Kidical Mass Rockville Hits the Road

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Since I got pregnant, I’ve been thinking about how I would carry my baby on my bike. Biking is such a big part of my life that I couldn’t imagine giving it up or not including my kid in it. My research on family biking led me to Kidical Mass, a nationwide movement to encourage families to bike together, especially for transportation. While all of my bike volunteer group’s rides welcome younger cyclists, the idea of a ride for little ones where we wouldn’t have to worry about slowing everyone else down was appealing. Plus, I wanted to push back against the idea that new parents need to get a minivan and be even more auto-dependent than ever. As I was extremely pregnant when I first found out about Kidical Mass, there was no way I could organize it that season. (The thought of a bicycle seat immediately postpartum is pretty horrifying.) But I committed to organize Rockville’s first series of Kidical Mass rides this summer. This past weekend, I finally made good on my promise and found out if Rockville is ready for family biking or not!

As the spring season approached, I got serious about planning the rides: picking dates, putting it in our town’s recreation guide, writing press releases, pitching blog posts, and posting it to as many social media outlets as possible. For our first ride, I decided to start at one of our community centers and ride to a local ice cream parlor and back. At only 1.5 miles each way using multi-use paths, residential streets and a short hop on a bike lane, I figured the route was low-key enough for even fairly small munchkins to participate.

Unfortunately, I was terrified that my suburb – which most people in the area know for a huge multi-lane state highway – just wasn’t going to have the interest. While we’re actually pretty bike-friendly (Bronze level), but most people don’t realize that. Plus, suburban parents have a stereotype of being tied to their cars and overprotective of their children. Lastly, I have a history of events with mixed results. Often the ones I work the hardest on organizing have the worst turnout, so I was nervous I was going to create all of this hype for nothing.

Then the Kidical Mass DC organizer pitched our story to a reporter at WTOP, the D.C. area’s major news radio station. After quite a bit of phone tag, we finally had our phone interview. While I tried to stay on my talking points as much as possible, good little communications person that I am, I think I still rambled a little. Catching the interview on Friday morning, I actually punched the air, even though she did chose one of my more inane and vaguely defensive quotes. (In response to a question about safety: “I bike more cautiously with my baby in a trailer and I’m a pretty cautious bicyclist anyway.” So much for good sound bites.)

After the reporter told me that the interview was going to air during the next morning’s drive time, the opposite fear struck me – what if we had too many people? What if I had a bunch of little kids on bikes whom I couldn’t keep together and safe? The response to my panicked email to my volunteer group didn’t allay my fears, as everyone was either traveling or leading other bikey activities. Chris said he could sweep (stay in the back of the group and keep everyone together), but with his relative lack of biking experience, I hated putting him in that position.

When I woke up the day of the ride, I thought, “Thank God the weather is cooperating.” The sky was blue, and the temperature was blessedly low for DC in June. The wind was a bit strong, but it provided some nice cooling power. We hustled to get Sprout, the snacks and our baby gear in the trailer so we would have plenty of time to pedal over to the community center. The fact that we had to skip Sprout’s morning nap provided me with one more reason to worry, as I didn’t want him crying while I was leading the ride! Despite the breeze, incredible weight of the trailer, a broken traffic light, and me jumping a gear, we managed to get there a few minutes early. I breathed a sigh of relief at that at small mercy.

My nerves began to calm as people showed up toting small children in trailers and on their own bikes. Overall, six families with 17 people in total showed up! While most of the kids were in trailers, there were 3 little ones on their own bikes, along with two older kids. Much to my relief, the leader of our sister ride Kidical Mass Gaithersburg showed up and was willing to sweep. I gave a brief safety talk, we took a group photo and then we were off!

Kidical Mass Rockville launch ride

Or least off the curb. I cycled into the community center’s parking lot, only to find out there was no curb cut back to the trail. With some effort, I hauled my bike and the trailer up to the trail while everyone waited for me. Not an auspicious start.

Then, we had a few abrupt drop-outs. Waiting for everyone to cross the road less than a quarter-mile into the ride, I noticed our sweep had arrived but our group was noticeably smaller. We actually lost two families! In one of the families, the dad was on a bikeshare bike and the two girls were older, so they may have decided the ride was too slow and going to take too long for their taste. The little girl with the other family kept saying before the ride that she was going to ride on the sidewalk, so the large road crossing may have scared her. The Gaithersburg Kidical Mass guy said that dropouts occasionally happen to them as well – people’s expectations don’t always match the ride, even when you describe it well.

Thankfully, the rest of the ride went much more smoothly. The two kids on their own bikes were a hoot. They were up front with me for much of the ride and pumped up the rather substantial hill. The little girl kept yelling, “These hills are going to make our legs soooo strong! Strong legs!” Indeed. The little boy was equally as enthusiastic, although a bit of a danger to himself. I had to remind him multiple times to stay behind me. He took that direction as literally as possible, riding so close that he almost ran into the back of the trailer a couple times. While it was frustrating, these rides are designed to teach kids how to ride safely on the road, so teaching him proper etiquette was important.

My favorite part of the ride was hearing both of the kids say, “This was awesome!” While they liked the ice cream, they actually seemed to enjoy the ride itself the most. Cultivating a love of bicycling is so rewarding; I was glad to be part of that joy.

Sprout did pretty well this time around too. He didn’t fuss in the trailer and enjoyed hanging out at the ice cream place’s patio. He actually fell asleep on the way home, his head tilted to the side, weighed down by the helmet. A bit uncomfortable most likely, but otherwise a good reward for a job well-done.

Join Me for the Launch of Kidical Mass Rockville!

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Are you a Metro DC local? Do you like biking? Do you have or know kids who like riding their own bikes or mooching effort off of adults on bikes? If so, I invite you to participate in the very first Rockville Kidical Mass ride this Saturday at 10 am at Thomas Farm Community Center in Rockville. I will be the Pied Piper leading kiddos and their families not to doom, but rather to the much more pleasant prospect of ice cream.

Unlike the community rides I’ve lead in the past, this one is designed very specifically to target families with little kids. The route is only 3 miles long with a stop in the middle. Kids of all ages and abilities are invited to participate and we will ride at the pace of the slowest rider. (Even if that’s very, very slow.)

Kidical Mass – yes, bike geeks, it’s a play off of the Critical Mass rides – is a nationwide movement to get families on bicycles for transportation and recreation. While most Kidical Mass rides are in cities, there’s an increasing number in suburban areas, including the D.C. Metro area. With D.C., Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church, and Gaithersburg all hosting ones already, Rockville will bring the local total to six different regular rides.

I’ll be leading Kidical Mass rides in Rockville every second Saturday at 10 AM. To get more details on the other Rockville Kidical Mass rides throughout the summer, check out our blog. To find out about all of the other great community rides the Rockville Bicycle Advisory Committee is leading, check out our website, Facebook page, or Meetup Group.

Help make biking in Rockville cuter – join the Kidical Mass movement!

Cookie, Cookie, Cookie Starts With C!

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

I kicked off Bike Month 2014 on Saturday with a lovely day, cookies, volunteering and a baby who was less than enthusiastic about biking.

I volunteered for the now-annual Tour de Cookie, a fundraiser for the children’s charity the Treehouse and my town’s biggest bike ride. It’s purposely oriented towards being family-friendly, which is pretty unique for large organized rides. It has both a short route and long route that feature 10 different cookie stands, making it a bit of a “rolling bake sale.” There was a number of families with kids on trailers, kids’ seats and tag alongs. They even had a kids’ ride around the parking lot for little ones on tricycles and training wheels. Considering the number of people with small children, I was excited to promote the Kidical Mass rides I’m leading this summer.
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While I rode it last year, I chose to volunteer instead for a couple of reasons. I rode it last year to prove to myself that I could and show the world that a 7+ months pregnant woman could. While I wasn’t able to finish the route due to a broken spoke, I still considered it a success. This year, I lacked the pregnancy restrictions, but would still be carrying the baby weight in the form of my actual baby in the trailer behind me. Between the start interfering with his nap schedule and the fact that I didn’t think he was ready for a 12 mile ride, I decided not to participate in the ride itself. Instead, I signed up to staff the Rockville Bicycle Advisory Committee’s outreach booth at the ride’s family fair at the start / finish line.

Even though I wasn’t officially partipating, I still planned to bike over to the ride. As it was a beautiful day and the start wasn’t that far away, I even convinced Chris to come with us against his general preference of “not biking.” After Sprout finished his morning nap, we stuck him in the trailer and headed out.

The ride there was very pleasant and Chris did quite well for himself on the hills. We pedaled past a couple of cookie stands and even though we weren’t riding, mooched cookies off of them as volunteers. They were equal-opportunity cookie distributors. The cookie stands weren’t the only ones mistaking us for riders. As I rolled into the after-ride “fair” area, I happened to cross the finish line and the DJ called me out as a finisher! He said, “That has to count for two people!” in reference to the trailer. Obviously, I wasn’t going to correct him, but I felt a little weird about it.

The ride had a rather substantial set-up for the fair compared to the year before. Besides our booth, they had a huge variety of sponsors, including a local nursery school, Starbucks, a doggy-day care, the Bike to the Beach ride, a children’s book company, and the ever-ubiquitous Gutter Helmet. (Seriously, those folks were at the wedding show I was at years ago.) They had the Cookie Monster costume that RBAC used last year at our stand, along with a woman also dressed as a giant cookie. They also had a magician, a balloon artist and a really amazing lady on stilts.

Unfortunately, Sprout didn’t appreciate the festivities that much. He got upset when the magician made a loud noise during the reveal of his trick and then again when I yelled in his ear by mistake at the start of the kids’ ride. He was fascinated by the lady on stilts though.

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Compared to them, our bike maps and community ride flyers weren’t that exciting. Unfortunately, this meant that we didn’t have as much traffic to the booth as I had hoped. We gave out some information, but I’m not sure how much of our target audience we reached.

Fortunately, RBAC’s other efforts seemed more effective. The SAG van got plenty of usage between broken-down bikes and people realizing that they weren’t ready for the 40 mile ride that early in the season. Our group also helped with the ride marshalling and signage, which was substantially better than the year before.

After a couple hours there, we packed everything up and headed home as the clouds started to loom. After only a mile in, as I was heading up a steep hill, Sprout started to cry. I stopped to see what was wrong and the only things that seemed to be issues were that his helmet was over his eyes and he was overtired. I tried to comfort him, but as soon as I began pedaling again, he started wailing. As I couldn’t do much about the tiredness, I made the difficult executive decision to take off his helmet. I was more concerned about him choking himself with the strap from thrashing around than it not protecting him in some very unlikely theoretical accident. I felt horribly guilty – I could hear my mom’s voice ringing in my ears – but I didn’t know what else to do. Even though he was still displeased – he was giving me a grumpy baby glare – he stopped crying. About halfway home, he fell asleep in the trailer, able to lean his head back in a way that he couldn’t with the helmet on. When we got home, I lifted him out of the trailer and put him in his crib, managing not to wake him.

In some ways, this year’s Tour de Cookie was a logical follow-up to last year’s. Whereas I was pregnant last year, I had a baby with me this year. I shifted from being a rider to being a volunteer. I hope that as years go on, my role can continue to evolve and that one day Sprout will enjoy it as much as I do.

Biking with a Baby for the First Time

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 6 Comments

Biking with a Baby for The First Time - Thinking about bringing your baby on a bike via a trailer? This is what happened on my first ride with my almost one-year-old. (Photo: Baby in a bike helmet)

Biking with a baby for the first time is often a “interesting” experience for both the cyclist and the passenger. No one is quite sure what to expect. I biked with my son – who is just under a year old – for the first time last Saturday.

Of course, he wasn’t riding the bike – he was in a trailer attached to mine. I told him he should say, “Mush, mush, mommy!” I suspect I shouldn’t repeat that joke when he’s old enough to understand it. It went about as well as I could expect for such a new experience. He was mostly neutral with the potential for a more positive reaction in the future.

Getting Ready to Ride with a Trailer

Before I stuck Sprout on the back of my bike, we did some preparatory work. My parents gave me the Burley Honey Bee for Christmas, which is similar to their basic trailer. It has the one major advantage of turning into a stroller when you unhook it from the bike. Burley is known for being one of the best when it comes to trailers, so I was pretty confident in the quality and comfort level.

The trailer itself was easy to put together. At least it was according to Chris, who did all of the work while I played on the lawn with Sprout. Getting it on and off the bike was somewhat challenging. I had trouble lining up the precise spot on the bike with the right spot on the trailer hitch, but I hope it gets easier with practice. My awkward efforts did demonstrate the trailer’s safety. I knocked my bike over and the trailer didn’t budge.

After the construction phase, I tested out my bike with an empty trailer. It added a lot of weight, making it almost as heavy as the bulky Capital Bikeshare bikes. Otherwise, it wasn’t all that different from my normal ride. My balance wasn’t affected at all, unlike if I had a regular child seat on the back. I was most concerned about the turning radius, which was much better than I anticipated. The only thing I needed to watch out for was the additional length. If I wasn’t careful, it was easy to bump the trailer over the curbs of shared use trails. That isn’t that dangerous, but it would be uncomfortable for my little passenger.

 Heading Out Biking with a Baby

Once Sprout woke up from his afternoon nap, we were ready to make our maiden voyage. We decided to bike to a Ben & Jerry’s about a mile away. I had a hankering for sweet dairy and the start of summer. (Plus, food-based rides are kind of my thing.) It was a good distance, long enough for Sprout to get a feel for the experience but short enough to be tolerable if he didn’t like it. If we really needed to bail, we could always walk home. Plus, Chris isn’t nearly as enthusiastic about biking as I am, so a couple miles was a good warm up for the season.

Before we could leave, Sprout needed his helmet. Not that he understood, but I explained to him that besides the safety reasons, my mommy would be very, very angry at me if he didn’t wear a helmet. (My mom regularly scolds her students at school to wear helmets. There Would Be Words if her own grandson didn’t wear one in the trailer she gave as a gift.)

He wasn’t happy about it at first, but once I adjusted it, he stopped fussing. I also put a rolled up towel behind him for support. Trailer seats recline so much that they push helmets forward over babies’ foreheads. But as I was just finishing my other tasks, I glanced over and saw him chewing on the helmet’s chin strap. Hmm – that clearly wasn’t going to do him much good in an accident. After another round of readjustments with accompanying whining, we were ready to go.

Once we started, Sprout seemed to accept of situation, even if he wasn’t pleased by it. Looking at him with my rear-view mirror, I saw that he didn’t cry at all. But he didn’t smile either. He looked somewhat surprised and confused more than anything else.

I can’t blame him – it’s really different from anything else he’s ever done. The ride is far bumpier and faster than the stroller and completely different from the car’s highly controlled environment. He has a similar reaction to most things that are radically new, including foods that he really enjoys later on. It probably didn’t help that we had to wake him up from his too-long nap, so he was a little cranky.

Riding with him wasn’t that different than riding with the empty trailer. The main difference was that it was 20 pounds heavier, drastically affecting my power and speed. Last year, when I rode the Tour de Cookie seven months pregnant, I was so proud of being able to pass the guy towing a kid in a trailer. As I pulled our trailer, I realized I had less of a reason to be proud than I thought! I’m usually far ahead of Chris unless I make a concerted effort to go slowly. But with the trailer, he was able to keep up without a problem at all. Pulling the trailer will just make me earn my sweets even more.

In general, the ride went just well enough for me to consider it a success. I hope they it will just be the first of many rides we have as a family.

Since I originally wrote this post, we’ve biked together as a family many times. Read about how I reintroduced Sprout the next year to the bike as a toddler and how my identity as a bicyclist has changed since I became a mom. Be sure to follow us on Facebook!

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Past Reflections on Pedaling while Pregnant

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

So in addition to my guest blogging stint, a reporter actually requested an interview a few weeks ago! She had seen my Simple Bike guest post on cycling while pregnant and said she was writing an article on the same subject for the Santa Barbara Independent’s bike column. (If I knew newspapers had bike columns, I might have kept pursuing journalism.) Of course, I said yes. The paper published the article, which has a couple of quotes from me, earlier in the week.

Check it out: Pedaling While Pregnant – Women are Even Biking to the Delivery Room.

If you’re interested in the subject, I wrote a number of posts on my previous blog about my experiences:

Guest Post on Cycling and More Good News

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

I have a contributor post over at the local smart growth blog Greater Greater Washington on the progress my town has made over the past few years on improving our bicycle-friendliness. We still have a lot to improve on, but I’m really proud of what we’ve done as a volunteer for our bicycle committee.

Check out the post: In Rockville, a quiet bicycling transformation takes place.

In totally unrelated good news, Sprout has fallen asleep in his crib (as opposed to in my arms) for three days now! He once fell asleep once in his crib while Chris stepped out of the room to wash his hands post-diapering, but that was a total fluke. In contrast, this shows the slow transition is paying off. In other, other good news, Sprout has learned to clap on his own. As of today, he actually recognizes the word “clap” and will excitedly bang his hands together when you say it. Needless to say, I’m a proud mama.