Taking the Kids on bike rides.
I started to take my kids with me on the bike rides! I was not sure at first what was going to happen when I decided to put them in The Charriot but they were very good with it. My daughter wanted to go as far as we could go and my son was happy to be outside getting the fresh air. He hates his helmet and kept trying to get it off though so I need a better helmet for him. He is only a 1 year old so he does not know why he has to have it on and he just knows he does not like it.
There are a few very good things about taking them on the rides with me. One of those things being it puts a lot of load on the bike and that makes me have to work harder to keep a good pace for a ride. I can not just coast along the bike will just stop if I do that so I have to keep pushing the pedals down to get anywhere. This would be a bad thing but I could use the extra effort sometimes to make sure that I am still progressing in the journey. Putting more power into the bike means more exercise for me. I also have gained the confidence to ride this a fair distance with out worry. I went in the streets and in places where there are bike lanes but also cars are passing by and so far things were good. I had a few people stare thinking its odd or what not but that is what it is and does not phase me. I think I will be able to put the kids in this and go to the beach or go down town if there is an event and not have to drive there like I would have prior. Not having to pay for parking or waiting for a spot sounds awesome to me. My spouse is also able to take one of my bikes and ride with us so it work out for the whole family.This also means that instead of me just taking off in the morning for a ride we can all take off in the morning get out side and have more time to do things together on the weekends.
There are a few downsides to riding this bike with the kids. One of them is I have to keep the plastic gaurd down on any gravel or dirt roads. If the rain protection plastic is not down then all kinds of dirt gets in with the kids and that is not awesome if we are going somewhere with the ride. I don't want to show up downtown for an event and my kids are covered in dirt and grime becuase the rain gaurd was not down. I am over exaggerating the problem but its still something I don't care for about the design of the cart. The front mesh could have been set up a bit better to allow the air flow and block the dirt like schwinn knew it was going to be behind a bike and yet the holes in the mesh part are just too wide. Another downside is the hill are very hard to climb up. Now this is a bit of a good thing but its more bad side because I would like to get up hills a little faster but the bike does not have any lower gearing and that means I just have to pedal pedal pedal to get up the hill. My legs were done after doing this two days in a row. I live near a few medium size hills to climb up and its right now harder than it is a work out. Also the bike attached to the cart is very old at this point and it was never the best bike to begin with. Its not a bad bike but it was never an awesome bike so there are problems it shifts horrible even after a tune up. The chain sometimes just skips landing on the cogs when shifting and its just an okay ride for me. I made sure the brakes are working just fine so I can alsway stop the bike its the giong forward that sometimes is harder than it should be. The last downside to this set up is a me problem. I become dripping with sweat almost right away when I am riding The Charriot. It is to the point where in the picture I took of The Charriot next to a horse my shirt and pants were soaked like I jumpped in a pool. It was a mildly hot day out but nothing that should have been that bad and yet it was so much more effort I needed extra water and ended up getting dehydrated half way through. I thought about it beforehand and put extra water in the back of the cart so I had more but if I had not then I would have had a very rough ride back home or I would have had to find a way to stop and purchase some water. This is not going to be a viable solution to go places in very hot summer days as I would be soaked.
Here are the stats from my last few days of the journey. I went for a ride twice yesterday once by myself on my gravel bike and one with The Charriot. This was a bit of a silly idea for me but I made it just fine and did not have that many problems myself. I did drink a lot of water once I got back home but it was the start of my dehydration. When we woke up today we went right out for a ride and I did not drink much water before leaving as 2 hours of riding and drinking water before leaving would mean I would have to pee so I did not drink much... This was another factor to the dehydration problems I had but I still think that was a good idea as there is no place to go the bathroom once we start going. Most of the stores that would allow you to stop and and go the bathroom in them would require a purchase or something like that so I do not want to have to pee on the paths we were taking. After riding the trails a few times I am staring to think that places should put in public restrooms and open them to the public for use more often. Like there are a bunch of parks that we pass by that have funtioning bathrooms but they are not open unless there is a sports game happening there. If there happens to be a game happening its also not really meant for the general public to use the bathrooms its mostly for the game and the people involved in the game to use. Slight restroom tangent aside the amount of biking over the past two days was just a small touch too much. I am still planning on doing a 100 mile ride in the next few months so I need to work on getting more miles in than 36 one day and 16 another. Overall miles for the week did end up at 102 but I want to do that in 1 day so I will have to keep at getting miles in. I will not be doing that with the kids I will be on the 100 mile ride solo so its also not quite the same as I am sure I could have covered much more ground and felt much less soar if I did the same amount of miles with out The Charriot. I am going to get more and more miles in until I feel like I can pull off the 100 mile ride so more to come on that.
Before I end this blog entry I purchased some new things for my camera set up. The audio on the video was all wind noise and nothing else so I got a new lav mic and furry windscreens. I know what they are called by others but that name seems a bit morbid to me so furry windscreen it is for me. Anyhoo I test the set up out on my last ride and the wind noise was mostly gone and you could clearly hear my voice but the cord got in the way a few times and the windscreen fell of a bunch too. I do not want to start vlogging my journey with bad audio so I am going to figure out those things before I attempt to get any audio in a video. After testing the video out a few times I think I do understand better placement of the camera though so I should have better video clips while I try to sort out the audio stuff.
Comments
Post a Comment