Making San Francisco Smaller

Over the weekend the new kid seat for the bike came in. I knew that it wasn't going to work with a bike I had, so I did a little research on Craigslist and found a bike that would work in redding for 50 bucks (my brother was to come down this weekend from Redding, so I knew this would work, too). Darin delivered the bike on Friday and he and I put the seat together while Emmett took his morning nap on Saturday, then Darin, Emmett and I took it out for our first ride. It held up pretty good, Emmett spent much of the ride yelling (I believe a happy yell and am sure it wasn't a scared-to-death yell). Darin took the picture to the left of our first trip mid-ride.

The whole reason I wanted to have a bike seat was so Emmett and I can go to places that are distant in the city and not have to rely on bus transfers which often lead to long trips. This is especially important as Emmett typically has about 3.5 hours of waking time between naps these days. For example, Emmett and I were going to the song/story time in the Mission a few months ago (pre-teaching), but it often took 45 minutes each way and a bit of rushing to catch the correct buses. Today was our first trip there without relying on public transit and the bike worked wonderfully. We made it from our house to the Mission branch of the library (about 3 miles) in 15 minutes or so and got to enjoy some outside time together in each direction.

The only problems I have so far is that it is a pretty tight fit between his seat and mine which makes standing at a stop a little difficult. Another problem is that the new bike has top mounted shifters which sees as toys and he keeps sneaking the bike into a different gear when I am not looking. I have taken to riding around with my thumb in a position to keep him from changing gears, but hopefully he will lose interest in doing this sometime soon.