I'm baaaa-ack

It has been one heck of a year (plus) since I last posted about family biking and I'm back with what I hope is the first in a series regarding our big summer excursion: the Highline Canal on bicycles!

Quick stats:

• The Highline Canal is 71 miles end-to-end
• Our group included ages 7-74
• Our group varied in size day to day, topping out at 14 riders on the final day
• Injuries from biking = 0
• Injuries from water balloon fight = 1 (a scraped leg)
• Most popular trailside snack: Turkey Jerky
• Most popular camp meal: walking tacos

In future posts, I hope to explain what we did, what I'd do differently and options for adapting the trip for various preferences. For example, we could've simplified logistics and packing by staying at hotels instead of camping.

For now, I'll simply say that we had at least two types of fun and it was our kind of microadventure!

COVID-19 Birthday Bicycle Party: Keep it Rollin'

If your family has a birthday coming up, prospects for celebration look bleak. No one is congregating. Extra trips to the store are discouraged. Gift-giving could mean giving illness. Even online ordering has its risks and could be delayed—bad news for overwhelmed folks who feel fortunate to have a general idea that it is apparently April now?

One answer: a family biking birthday ride! Message friends and neighbors around your neighborhood and ask them to be at their front porches/balconies/windows during a limited time window (11-noon, for example). Decorate your family's bicycles with colorful items you have around the house, such as tissue paper, streamers, and ribbons. We used wax paper and a sharpie to make a personalized flag.

Then, get a little exercise* and take your bicycle party on the road! If you have a portable speaker, play your kid's favorite movie soundtrack or Spotify's "Happy Birthday" playlist (remove the one explicit track if desired). It isn't just festive, it also helps your friends hear you coming. Instead of giving gifts, they could decorate their window or put some balloons or streamers out if they happen to have some on hand. They could shake bells to help you feel like professional athletes!

If you ran out of cake ingredients, why not stop by a treat shop for take-away as part of your ride? Chocolate Lab has been doing amazing work supporting health workers during the pandemic, and their treats are delectable for all ages. Duffeyroll is another great option. What's your favorite local sweet shop offering carry-out right now?

You could also include your local bicycle repair shop on your route (they qualify as essential businesses). Pick up some extra inner tubes, tires and maybe some fun lights for the birthday biker! Bike Shop Girl Family Cyclery is accepting appointments. Bikes Together has two locations. Velosoul recently moved to Englewood and is open with limited hours. SloHi Bike is currently swamped with repairs, but accepting appointments starting April 21.

If you have a stash of party hats, you can wear them right along with your helmet! The Governor of Colorado and the CDC are recommending everyone wear cloth face coverings while not at home. Cardboard is a reasonable alternative for single use (I got the idea from an online meme and recognized it as a clever no-sew option). I taped over the gaps on mine.

Image of me wearing a blue party hat over my nose and mouth along with my helmet.

I guarantee you'll make some folks smile. Ok, they're laughing. At you. And it is totally worth it.

Happy birthdays, my friends. Better days and group rides are ahead of us!

*Outdoor exercise currently qualifies as essential activity in Colorado. While I strive to provide only accurate information here, pandemic restrictions and recommendations change frequently. Follow both the letter and the spirit of the most up-to-date restrictions for your city and state.

I've Learned Some Things

Last week, I sat down with Steve Staeger of Next with Kyle Clark along with two other bicycle advocates: Rob Toftness (@NoSquish on Twitter) and Nicole McSpirit (@GoingDutchDen on Twitter). It was a great time to reflect on what has changed in Denver's cycling advocacy over the past few years.

For one thing, there is now A Thing called the Denver Bicycle Lobby. This is a group of individuals who take time out of their day on a regular basis to engage in cycling advocacy. I've learned a lot about what bicycle advocacy entails since starting this blog, and I intend to outline some of those lessons in this post and others.

Spoiler alert: None of it is as fun as being on TV. Most of it IS more effective.

One of the most important things advocates do is attend public meetings. Public meetings happen all over the city with surprising frequency. They often occur at times that are inconvenient for families, there isn't always much advance notice, and they are packed with people who are more eager to speak than listen. Picture NextDoor IRL (in real life).

Public meetings are my personal nightmare—except that they are a critical component of effective change. They are intended to be an arena where stakeholders can both learn and teach. With mutual respect, neighbors can point out details that experts might have missed and collaborate on solutions that improve quality of life for everyone.

Without mutual respect, neighbors shout down public servants and each other while stubbornly resisting change they don't yet know they want (more on that in a later post).

As much as I loathe public meetings, I have seen some form of positive result from each and every one I've attended. Once, it was an idea for a red arrow in place of a standard red light at a dangerous intersection where right turns on red are deadly. Ideas like this might seem like insignificant minutia, but these ideas save lives and come from people who care. Just as importantly, these ideas are heard by people who have the expertise to implement them as effectively as possible. We need more people showing up at these meetings ready to listen, trust, and collaborate. If we all show up in good faith (no matter how difficult that may be), improvements happen.

It took me too long to realize that I can and should take my kids to public meetings. Fellow parents—hear me out! I've attended public meetings where no children were present, but temper tantrums erupted from half of the adults in the room that would put a threenager meltdown to shame. Don't worry about your kids disrupting the meeting! Their presence just might remind the adults to set a decent example.

Worried about depriving your kid of their childhood at in interminable public meeting? Pack a picnic! Bring a coloring book! A board game! Heck, bring your kids' friends along and call it a play date! Most importantly, only do what you can do. If it works for you to bring the kids for the first 15 minutes and then leave, your presence is still valuable. If you get the kids to bed and then draw straws with your spouse over who shows up late to the meeting, that's better than not showing up at all.

I strongly recommend attending your first public meeting with no agenda whatsoever. You'll see some familiar faces and lots of new ones. Get a feel for who likes to talk and who likes to listen, who is constructive and who isn't, who riles people up and who calms them down. Then comes the hardest part: be one of the calm, constructive listeners who keeps showing up. Your kids won't be the only ones taking cues from your example.

The Packing Post

If you are planning a trip of any sort, you've probably encountered a mountain of advice about packing, solicited or not. If you're reading this, hopefully you're doing what I did: researching in excited anticipation of your trip! Unlike most bloggers, I do not currently have any sponsors or affiliates. All items here are provided simply because I purchased them myself.

1) Dry shampoo. I had heard about the wonders of dry shampoo but didn't purchase any until my last haircut before the trip. My stylist taught me how to use it and I bought a travel-sized spray can. I loved having it in my bag! I don't style or even blow-dry my hair. Still, when traveling there were days that I had to let my hair go unwashed a little longer than I would've liked, or had dinner reservations at the end of a day of cycling in the hot sun. Dry shampoo was an easy, no-hassle way to spruce up fast.

2) Cycling shorts. This is an item I didn't pack but should have. This trip was structured around cycling, after all, but I imagined leisurely rides with lots of stops. Honestly, that is mostly what we did, but several consecutive days of leisurely rides adds up to a sore rear that really could've used some cushion.

Reeuwijkse plassen, South Holland, Netherlands

3) Crocs. Perhaps I am biased as a Coloradan, but these shoes were objectively great for the trip. They added color to monochrome outfits, were classy enough for restaurants, passed for slippers at Spa Gouda, and functioned like flip flops at the beach and in locker room showers. I ended up using them far more than the ankle boots I packed for cooler weather and hiking.

Can't wait to get back!

4) Collapsible water bottles. It took us the entirety of our trip to figure out how to get free tap water at restaurants and other establishments in the Netherlands. We never figured out a way to access free potable water on trains. So these Platypus soft water bottles served us well. When empty, they cram easily into even overstuffed bags; great for airport security.

Overkill? Probably. But we lost two of them during the trip.

5) Compression socks or leggings. Jet lag wasn't too bad for me after our arrival, and I give partial credit to my compression leggings. If you plan to take long rides, they'll be useful for muscle recovery, too. They are light, take up very little space, and can be paired with a dress for versatility.

6) Travel towel. I doubted whether we would use this, and almost left it at home. About halfway through our trip, we moved it into our small packet of items to take everywhere, no matter the circumstances. It turns out The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy was right, one should always know where one's towel is. We used it as a blanket for a tired kid, a giant handkerchief for a nosebleed, a wipe to treat road rash, a shawl in unexpected cold, a picnic blanket and—yes—a towel. That said, one travel towel was plenty for our family of four; there is no need to pack one per person.

7) That's it. Seriously! It is nearly impossible to pack too little for a trip to any first-world country, especially during a warm season. As a friend assured me before my trip, almost every problem can be solved with a passport and debit/credit card. Here is a list of things I'd take again that you'll find on any packing list, but even these could've been purchased at our destination(s) without much hassle.

• Zip-off pants
• Rain jacket
• Swimsuit
• Sun hat
• Minimum quantity of clothing in quick-drying material. Try to pack only two tops, one bottom in addition to the cycling shorts and zip-off pants, and a dress for us gals. 4-5 pairs of underwear. Your compression socks are probably the only socks you need unless you never wear sandals.

We were able to pack one backpack per person, plus a packable bag for the whole family to use for overflow, laundry or shopping. I bought most of our backpacks at Arc Thrift, but splurged on this awesome convertible backpack pannier for my spouse. We averaged about 15 lbs. per person and in retrospect, I would've packed even lighter!

I over-packed.

Family Biking Denver Hits Holland!

Our family spent a month of this summer in the Netherlands, at a farmhouse in the province of South Holland. We spent much of our stay entirely car-less, using bicycles and buses to get around. After failing to find a workable trail-a-bike option, we went with a rear-mounted seat for our five year old. Our son turned eight on our trip, and utilized a kids' bike with 24 inch wheels.

The first thing I would like to say about family biking in Holland: it is not for novices. I was expecting everything to be flat, what with all the canals and sea-level spaces. I quickly learned that flat landscapes do not require flat infrastructure. Some of the canals are higher than the land surrounding them, and canals are everywhere. Consequently, steep climbs up to narrow bridges occur frequently. If you're thinking about taking a family cycling trip in the Netherlands, try to find bridges near home that you and you family can use for practice. Once you get good at crossing one at a time, try crossing together and finally crossing in opposite directions at the same time. If you give your kids less than a foot of space on this final maneuver and you both stay calm, you're ready to cycle rural Holland!

You'll ride your bicycles over a bridge like this.

When you aren't navigating bridges, you'll probably be on a bicycling path or bicycle lane. It is important to know that motorized scooters are allowed in these places as well as on the road, and the drivers often explore their options while going the speed limit. That said, once I got over my surprise at being passed on a bicycle lane by a miniature motorcycle, I noticed that the drivers were overall quite courteous and usually gave us more space than passing cyclists.

Cycling through a nature preserve (time lapse).

So, on your left you'll have traffic of some sort— either cars on a street or scooters on your side of a hedge— and on your right you'll often have a steep hill down to water. That doesn't leave much room for error in terms of steering, but I was surprised as anyone that our kid actually seemed to do better with these constraints than he did on the wide streets at home. Maybe it was the separation from opposing traffic, maybe it was that he couldn't let his mind wander too much, maybe it was the clear delineations between the asphalt bicycle space and everything else, or maybe it was simply the innate adaptability afforded by childhood. Regardless, we never had a kid careen down a grassy slope into the drink (thank goodness).

A typical trail in Holland, with a canal on the right.

The South Platte cycling trail in south Denver.

Our son seemed in his element during Utrecht's evening rush hour. The flow of cycles felt a lot like the flow of water in the canals; as long as you knew which way you wanted to go, you just followed that stream of cyclists, did what they did, and ended up where you needed to be.

An eight year old embracing Utrecht rush hour. Not a car in sight.

Utrecht's famous bridge, as seen from a cycle.

 Most children ride in seats (as our daughter did) or in the famous dutch bakfiets. Dutch students receive bicycle education in fifth grade (which I imagine simply solidifies what they have observed from their parents' cycles for several years). Certainly some cycle independently before then, but almost all do so at fifth grade or older. Packs of cycling teens were very common, and acted much like teens in the U.S. Once, one said "bonjour" in an unfriendly voice to a friend of ours as we cycled. As it happened, our (American) friend was fluent in French and answered back in a fashion that left everyone laughing and the teen somewhat red-faced with shock.

Our setup: youngest in a seat on an adult bike, oldest on his own bike.

Despite the surprising challenges, cycling was a fantastic way for a family to explore Holland. We rode through huge nature preserves that allowed cycles but not cars. Even for distant destinations, there was always a fairly direct cycling route. Once I got used to the unspoken customs of lowlands cycling and the large quantities of cyclists sharing the space, I realized that good cycling infrastructure doesn't have to take up a lot of space or fight with vehicular traffic. A lot of cyclists can utilize a fairly narrow path as long as they are proficient.

Bikes on a ferry = happy transportation wonks. The apple does not fall far from the tree!

All The Empowerment Feels

Full disclosure: My spouse is on the Mayor's Bicycle Advisory Council in Denver. So you tell me: am I biased when I say that this bicycle extension of the My Denver program is the warmest fuzziest thing to happen all summer? (YES, this is an invitation to try to one-up me with even better programs, cycling-related or otherwise! I can't get enough Denver warm fuzzies.)



The My Denver Card gives kids free access to city recreation and cultural centers. With the addition of My Denver Bikes, young'uns are hitting Denver's bicycle paths with knowledge about basic bicycle maintenance. Thanks in advance, Mayor Hancock, for training the kid who will help me change a flat on the path someday! I have little doubt they'll have the confidence to offer help after putting in the hours to earn their very own bike.

There are so many things that are so right about this program. I've experienced first-hand the independence that comes with possession of a bicycle and the confidence to use it. These kids earned that independence, and our whole city will benefit as they take their skills, knowledge and confidence into our community.

I can't wait to see what the future holds for this program and how it continues to expand and improve.

"Stop As Yield" Law in CO? Let's Make This Happen!

Coloradans, it is time to figure out who your state senators and representatives are and call them to ask them to SUPPORT Senate Bill 17-093! Remember to tell them that you are a voting constituent and/or how the bill affects you personally. This is a great way to get younger folks involved in civics! Remember, anyone who turned 14 prior to November 3, 2016 will be of voting age for elections in 2020. Anyone who turned 16 prior to November 3, 2016 will be of voting age for elections in 2018. More importantly, cycling laws affect everybody who cycles, regardless of their voting status.

Why are "Idaho Stop" laws a good idea? Here is a thorough explanation by Idaho Bike Law attorney Kurt Holzer. Here is a post regarding "Stop As Yield" (also known at the Idaho Stop or Rolling Stop) including video and fleshing out the argument that it is important to regulate a 30 pound bicycle differently than a multi-ton automobile. That said, I urge you to sit at an intersection with all-way stops and see how many cars come to a COMPLETE stop before proceeding through the intersection. There is no way police could ticket every driver who treats a stop sign as a yield sign, frequently putting other motorists, pedestrians, and cyclists at risk.

It is time to acknowledge that bicycles function differently than cars, and that assisting cyclists in an easier commute is better for public health and safety, tourism, and the environment. Residents who cycle regularly are getting healthy, low-impact exercise. Tourists who use services like the Denver B-cycle will enjoy their experience more. Laws that already benefit recreational cyclists in Breckenridge, Dillon, and Summit County can be enjoyed statewide. Lastly, if people are safe and happy on their bicycles, they are more likely to choose cycling over motorized transportation with a high environmental cost.

10 ways riding a bike can save the world from http://www.movoto.com/blog/opinions/10-ways-riding-a-bike-can-save-the-world/