May Joy : Pedal Bike!

willowbl00 2025-05-24

I sold my last car in 2008. While I’ve had motorcycles since then, it’s been important to me to be car free. Reed and I are deeply aligned on that, and have structured the entirety of our lives around this.

I got into bicycles in 2016 when Reed, Tilde, and Rubin built me up a city bike. This was before Reed and I had met, mind you. I loved that bike. I didn’t understand why I’d ever want anything more than 7 speeds. Now bikes are by far my preferred mode of transit, including biking the 50 miles into the office some mornings when I’m going in.

A spreadsheet of bicycles with columns for years starting in 2016 and rows for each bicycle I've owned. Each bike also gets a rating and a status.

I love bicycles. And my life is built around that love at this point. So we were reasonably anxious about how Locke would feel about bicycles. He was in an infant car seat in the front of our Load 75 before his due date. We also had both the Yepp Mini for the front of the bike (way more fun) and the Yepp Maxi for the back of the bike (when he got too big for the Mini and for when we have a full cargo load in the Load 75). We have to ride to preschool even when it’s raining or the traffic is bad. There are lots of opportunities for him to decide that bikes aren’t for him. And we have friends who love bikes whose kiddos just never really got into it.

Baby Locke in a purple polka dot helmet sits in a seat affixed to Reed's handlebars. The seat is between the handlebars and Reed's seat. The bike is a titanium Merlin with swept back handlebars, chubby tires, and a Brookes saddle.

He was pretty into his balance bike from the get-go. Balance bikes are the new way that kids learn to ride bikes — it’s a bike without pedals, and so they learn to balance while running with the bike between their legs. He got to be pretty quick on it! We even put a little basket on it, for him to collect bottle caps and rocks into. But as he outgrew it, he adamantly told us he wasn’t ready for pedals yet.

Locke very excitedly riding a balance bike with a purple basket on it. Locke wears a purple helmet and puffy jacket. His stuffed dog Crate comes along in the basket.

So Reed got a FollowMe tandem and had Locke practice pedaling while Reed took him to and from places. Locke was SUPER into this “train bike” and wanted to take it everywhere. And then, one morning, I asked him if he wanted to ride his pedal bike to preschool. The train bike isn’t set up on my bike(s), so he’d have to do it on his own. I would help! He would totally crash! But he knows how to crash, and he has his helmet.

And so we tried it. And he did great! Lots of gumption — every time he crashed, he insisted on getting back on and trying again. Preschool is about a half mile away, and it now takes us about 10 minutes to get there. I even have a little Strava account for him! And every time he stops because he wants a break, or he gets distracted, or he crashes, we look back at where we started and how far we’ve come, and he gets this deeply pleased smile on his face and says “yeah.”

Locke rides his pedal bike for a whole 17 seconds without stopping!

I love getting to share this joy with Locke, and I love watching him become confident and independent as he skills up on his bike. This is so much fun!