Spoke decorations! To get ready to celebrate our Bike Bus for this upcoming fall, I made some spoke decorations to give to the kids as a celebration of our rides to school and as an incentive to continue doing so. About our Bike Bus We run our Bike Bus to school at least once per month, and more often when other kids decide that they want to join in. We have a rough schedule of “stops” and when we’ll be there. Kids join in along the way, usually with parents, though some of the kids are now old enough to ride with less adult supervision. It’s the most fun and joyful way to get to school. You get to skip the car dropoff line, get healthy physical activity, hang out with friends, and help promote cleaner air, all at the […]
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U-Pick Cherry Picking by Bike in Brentwood (2023)
This year we rode our 3rd annual bike ride to Brentwood, California to visit G&S Farms to go cherry picking in Brentwood. Our original ride to cherry picking was great, and we’ve wanted to continue the tradition every year. Getting there isn’t very easy by transit, but it can be a neat multimodal trip from Oakland and other parts of the East Bay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbpQBpZXD0U&feature=youtu.be Cherry Picking by Bike in Brentwood 2023 – Some stuff was different than years past. BART Bus Bridge This year, due to track work that was being done on the BART tracks between Rockridge BART and Orinda BART, there was what they call a “Bus Bridge” between stations. There was no direct train service, but there were free courtesy shuttle buses at both Rockridge and Orinda stations. This is normally a bit of a hassle, […]
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A tale of stolen bike recovery
Having a bike stolen can be frustrating and heartbreaking. We don’t always have success stories, but here’s one about a stolen bike that was recovered: The bike theft One of our bike bus friends had their bike stolen. It was a custom build that they had spent a lot of time and money on, and they rode it with their child with our Bike Bus. Their garage door was left open by mistake one day, and within a short amount of time, two of their bikes had been stolen. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a hidden AirTag Mount (I make them in here in Oakland) or some other type of holder or tracker for locating their bike. They emailed our Bike Bus and Bike Parade groups, telling us what had happened and asking us to keep an eye out for their […]
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Kids Bay Area bike rides: Dirt World in Richmond
Kid Bay Area Bike rides: Dirt World Bike Park in Richmond I decided to take a different route home after teaching a bike class that ended at Richmond BART, and headed to Dirt World in Richmond (4 21st St, Richmond, CA) to check it out. I’d heard for a while now that it was a fun place to take kids to ride on some dirt and do some small jumps. But I hadn’t had the chance to go. (here is their Facebook page, which appears to be their main information hub) Dirt World was finished in 2018, 4 years after Dennis Hoskins II and Jasmin Malabed conceived of the idea and led construction. They wanted to build a place for their son and other kids to practice BMX skills and mountain biking. Construction companies donated dirt, and a large group […]
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Moving up a size: Switching from a 20″ to a 24″ kids bike for a growing child
It finally happened – after talking about the next bike for 6 months, we finally got a new (to them) bike for our kid. Why buy the next size up kids bike? What is the next size up? Our kid was riding a bike with 20″ wheels, and we opted to go the next size up, which is a bike with 24″ wheels. I’ve found that a bike with 20″ wheels seems to work for most kids aged 6-9 or so. And 24″ bikes work for most kids aged about 8-11. So there’s some overlap around the 8-year-old mark. This all depends mostly on how tall your kid is and how long their legs are (their inseam is the critical measurement). Kids who are 8 and on the taller side might need to size up sooner. One of our friends’ […]
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How we stay visible at night (Which bicycle lights do we use?)
Riding with your family is a great way to be outside, get exercise, have fun, all while traveling together. Sometimes you end up riding home after the sun goes down – we found ourselves doing this after riding back from a recent event in Berkeley. Being visible is an important component of safety. Though the burden shouldn’t be on you to ensure that others use the road safely, it helps to make sure others are aware of your presence. We use a couple of different types of bicycle lights and reflectors to stay visible. https://youtu.be/TQ9zlj9eXik Here’s how we stay visible at night (while riding as a family) Headlight Headlights are essential and are required according to state law. Basically, the headlight needs to be: A lamp emitting a white light that, while the bicycle is in motion, illuminates the highway, […]
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Kids Bay Area bike rides: The Albany Bulb was so much fun!
Kid Bay Area Bike rides: The Albany Bulb The Albany Bulb is an area on the San Francisco Bay that bulbs out as a small peninsula in Albany, California. Like a lot of places along the shore, it was built from landfill – construction debris was dumped into the Bay in the 1960s-80s to create more land. There are walkable and bikeable gravel trails there and a lot of interesting informal outdoor art made using found materials. There’s also a lot of bird and aquatic life. including a habitat for burrowing owls. If you’re wondering where you can take kids for a bike ride, the Albany Bulb may be a good option. Albany Bulb Riding Overview (for kids) The trails at the Albany Bulb are mostly hard-packed dirt with some rocks and gravel. There are not really paved paths, though […]
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People want to ride bikes more. Why don’t they?
Here in Oakland, 57% of people want to ride a bike more than they do now, according to a NACTO survey conducted in 2019. And biking makes a lot of sense for short to moderate distances. A 2-3-mile bike ride that takes 20 minutes by bike may take the same amount of time or longer by car – because of traffic and parking. I timed this recently. Here’s a 2.1 mile bike ride that took 10.5 minutes. Google maps estimates a 12 minute car drive, that doesn’t include parking time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDJ27-AfMm4 Many trips are distances that one can easily bike The Federal Highway Administration keeps data on automobile trip distances. 45% of trips are under 3 miles, and 35% are under 2 miles. More than 1 in 3 car trips could be replaced by a bike ride! This would be […]
Continue readingMore TagWhat you’ll probably use your AirTag on your bike for the most
The sun was probably setting as I was helping park (and un-park) bikes in San Francisco, but I couldn’t tell because of the tall buildings surrounding me. A friendly-looking man approached with a slight look of concern on his face. He needed to retrieve his bike because he knew our event was ending, but he also needed to stay for a couple of extra hours. In search of a solution, he had done some research – there were BikeLink lockers nearby, so he rode off to park his bike in one of their storage lockers. Unfortunately, he came back a few minutes later. He didn’t have a BikeLink card, and couldn’t purchase one (and load funds onto it) until the next morening. Some BikeLink lockers accept Clipper cards (our local transit cards), so I quickly checked my phone to see […]
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Protected bike lanes separate people on bikes from moving cars – and parked cars.
I rode my bike down the protected bicycle lane on Telegraph Avenue in downtown Oakland the other day. It was not as pleasant as I’d hoped, but still way better than what it was like riding a bicycle on Telegraph Avenue before the lanes were installed. Back then, it felt like riding next to cars on a highway, with some obstacles in between. Traffic speeds are slower now, but there are still a lot of obstacles. Most of the obstacles were at driveways and intersections, and were mostly drivers who were trying to drive their cars somewhere. When the bike lanes ended downtown though, the painted bike lane became an auxiliary parking lot for cars. This was frustrating, as the parked cars render those bike lanes useless. I guess one could argue that they were already useless to start, since […]
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