Getting a flat tire on your bike sucks – usually The weather was pretty nice on Saturday, and my partner, kid and I were headed back to Oakland after a soccer game. We had left Alameda and were heading back home along the Embaracdero. It was a pretty calm ride, as we were all tired, and we weren’t trying particularly hard to ride fast. Thousands of sparkly obstacles We approached Nido’s Backyard as we rode along the Embarcadero. We noticed a lot of glass in the bike lane. This isn’t unusual, as this area is notorious for having pieces of broken glass everywhere in the bike lane and on the road. We tried to avoid the thousands of shards as well as we could. It’s difficult to do, because it’s not easy to exit the bike lane on short notice […]
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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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Nice Bikes: An Argo Cargo Bike kit in Oakland that converts your bike into a practical front loader
An Argo Cargo Bike at the park Bike adventures are big fun. Bike adventures with kids are even better. I’d seen the original Argo Cargo bike Kickstarter for their “Lift” product and thought it was a neat idea to be able to turn any “regular” bike into a front-loading cargo bike. They had a successful campaign and raised $105,429 for their front-loading cargo bike conversion kit. Many front-loading cargo bikes cost $3000+, so a kit that adds on to an existing bike for $1149 is compelling. The Argo Cargo bike attaches mainly at the front fork and the bottom bracket, and requires a minor modification to the brake cables to connect your brake lever to the brake on the front wheel. I saw a parent ride in on their Argo Cargo Bike with their kids in the front, and asked […]
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Riding our light up bike pole lights (aka Bike Beam) in Oakland and Berkeley
Family bike riding around Oakland and Berkeley Our child is old enough to pedal themselves around to school, the library, and to sports practice. Sometimes it’s hard, but usually we have a good time getting to where we need to go. We get some exercise, take in our surroundings, wave to neighbors, give names to cats and dogs, and appreciate random sidewalk finds. And we can get around in an environmentally-friendly way. We ride around with a set of bike pole lights that I have been developing for a while. The bike flag lights make us pretty easy to spot. If you see us, wave and say hello! I made our bike pole lights (aka the “Bike Beam” light) to keep my child visible When we first started riding around on neighborhood streets, I realized that my child was hard […]
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Bike Soccer Dad (No Minivan or SUV Required)
I’m enjoying being a bike soccer dad. I guess I’ve become a soccer dad now. Our kid has practice on the weekends, but we bike to the field instead of taking a the stereotypical soccer mom or soccer dad minivan or SUV. We do it because we rarely drive, but there are plenty of benefits to doing so. It’s good exercise, and it’s a great way to get outside and enjoy nature. It also helps reduce car traffic congestion and pollution. It’s about a 3 mile ride that takes us 20-25 minutes. We selected our route based on Oakland’s Slow Streets (which are being taken away soon, sadly!) and other low-car-traffic roads. Berkeley has done a decent job adding physical barriers on designated routes to promote safety by slowing the flow of automobiles. There are a couple of hairier intersections […]
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A photo from December’s Kids Bike Parade
A Photo from the December Kids Bike Parade Adults and children ages 4-7 rode together for our December Kids Bike Parade. We got together for an evening ride around the neighborhood on Oakland’s Slow Streets. We made a stop in the middle on Lawton Avenue to see some of the fancy holiday light decorations. There was unfortunately no pizza this time because Sliver was closed, but the kids still had fun riding together. Group riding helps get children excited about riding their bikes Our bike parades are a way for kids to have COVID-safe fun while building community through bicycling. At each of our bike parades, adults ride along with the children to make sure they’re safe. We provide childrens bike lights to make sure they’re visible to us, each others, pedestrians, and the occasional driver. Group bike rides in general […]
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Goodbye to Oakland’s Slow Streets
Slow Streets are ending in Early 2022 We sadly received notice that Oakland’s Slow Street program was being discontinued in last January/Early February 2022. The threat of being hit by a car is the biggest safety risk for anyone riding a bike with a child. Slow Streets helped by reducing (but not eliminating) automobile traffic, and by promoting a sense of belonging for people who want to use shared public space to walk, bike, jog, and play. We’ll miss these slow streets. We’ve seen 10-20 children learn to ride their bikes on slow streets, and we use them for our monthly Bike Parades. They were integral to giving our child confidence to ride their bike on the road, and to giving us the confidence to safely ride bikes with our child. Oakland Slow Streets Video We ride on these multiple […]
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Neighborhood Bike Parades That Help Kids Learn to Ride Together
The kids bike parade is a way to let kids play, ride bikes together and learn to ride safely. Children and adults make new friends and build community by bike. How did the bike parade start? Earlier on in the pandemic, we learned that COVID spread mostly through poorly-ventilated air. We tried to think of ways to still foster social interactions between children with a lower risk profile. Our family and a lot of others have gone with their kids biking to spend time outdoors. We started by turning a birthday party into a evening bike ride. Kids had fun biking together and being able to see each other not on a computer screen! Parents got a chance to ride with their kids and others. Neighbors were treated to a lively mini parade. A few parents loved the […]
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Flat tires suck
Flat tires suck. I took my child to get a flu shot the other day (not a great experience!). On the way out, we had to hop a curb because there were no curb cutouts nearby. My child went off the curb and then said “Daddy, there’s a problem.” I looked back, and indeed, the rear wheel was completely flat. That’s some insult-to-injury type stuff right there. It was kind of funny though. Luckily, I usually carry a tool kit with a patch kit and a pump with me, so I was able to fix it pretty quickly. On flats in general I don’t know if it’s just Oakland and Berkeley streets, but two friends have gotten flat tires recently on their cargo e-bikes. I saw one of them on the sidewalk on the way to school pickup. He was […]
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On Oakland potentially removing our first-ever protected bike lane on Telegraph Ave
I was really disappointed to read that OakDOT is planning to remove Oakland’s first-ever protected bike lane presumably after pressure from a lot of pressure from the KONO (Koreatown Northgate) business improvement district. Initially, I heard a lot of mixed reviews from cyclists about the protected lanes in the KONO district, mostly because of parking confusion. Drivers would park their car in the middle of the bike lane, despite markings, because they expected parallel parking to be at the curb rather than offset from the curb. This would then cause a big problem for a bike rider when the lane would be fully blocked by a parked car. After everyone got used to this, I felt that it worked a lot better. I feel that it’s a lot safer because there are physical barriers (parked cars, bollards) between someone on […]
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