Father's Day Haulings

I spent my father's day running errands with the kids. We went to the pool and then the grocery store. The XtraTrucker handled the load with ease. The only sketchy moment was when my youngest decided it was fun to throw her weight from side to side to make the bike wobble.

When I got home I used the bike to return a neighbor's tiller with plenty of room left over.

Happy Father's Day to me!

Bike To Work Day 2013

I usually try and make it to the Bethesda pit stop but this year I made it to Silver Spring while taking my daughter to school.

We were running late and the guy with the camera caught me off guard so I did a good amount of blathering.


Meanwhile, three years earlier...

It's crazy to see how much my girl has grown. I think I must be doing ok in the father department if can watch her growth and development (as well as the graying of my facial hair) in the pro-bike culture movies she's... HOLY SHIT! Am I wearing the same god damned clothes!?  Jesus.

As usual it was a great event not matter the pit stop. Props to the sponsors and everyone involved.

834 Miles Per God Damn Hour

When I was a kid I spent a lot of my time staring at this image of Joseph Kittinger skydiving from the edge of space. There was something truly mind blowing about this image. I never saw any footage of the jump or heard anything about it anywhere else. I just had this photo... to stare at.

Fast forward thirty something years to yesterday when Felix Baumgartner did it live in HD for me and my 4 year old girl to watch.


We both watched with jaws dropped as Baumgartner reached 834 miles per god damn hour. My daughter was totally engaged, asking lots of questions and making some pretty keen observations (for a 4 year old). After he landed we exchanged high fives and fist bumps and danced around the kitchen yelling about how great science was.

To make it even cooler Joseph Kittinger was leading the ground crew. Buh BAM!

Having said all of that, my daughter and I wont be drinking a red bull any time soon.

Parenting 101: Video

As a father this video tugs on more than a few heart strings. This kid is a bad ass, this dad is a bad ass.
 

Her First Bike Ride

This is a short compilation of footage from my daughter's first bike ride. She's on the iBert and I'm shooting with a GoPro Hero on widescreen and I used windows movie maker to put it together.

Music by The Flaming Lips

Several figs were destroyed in the making of this film.

Kidical Thinking

This past Saturday I took the family down to the ABC's of Family Biking at the Capital Hill Montessori School. With my oldest daughter on the LHT, we meandered through Silver Spring and Takoma Park eventually connecting to the 14 St. bike lane. I hadn't taken this route into the city before and was pleasantly surprised. It's a great hilly ride through beautiful mostly tree-lined neighborhoods. We took a detour past Obama's house on my daughters advice but upon arrival she was less than enthusiastic.

The event had a good turnout with lots of cargo and family bikes accompanied by cargo and family people. It's always cool to swap ideas and share tips with like minded bikenerds. 

I was able to test ride a Christiana with a full payload which was fun. 

My daughter was partial to the Bullitt.

...and of course there were Xctracycles everywhere.

By far the biggest plus of the day was learning that after 20 miles my DIY child seat was fully naperational.

Kudos to Megan and the gang for throwing together a very cool event.

Video from the event.

Xtracycle: DIY Child Seat

My first project was to make a new snapdeck and attach a child seat to it for my eldest. As I spec'd out wood for this project I found the scratch and dent section on Xtracycle's website and scored a scratched and dented snapdeck for half price. Perfect for drilling holes into! 

After dremeling the legs and springs off a Topeak child seat, I attached it to the snapdeck using 5, 1/4" bolts with large washers for stability. Now, when I'm taking the little one to school I put her snapdeck with the seat on and when I'm going to work or running errands I put the regular one on, easy peasie. As a precautionary measure when I have her seat on the xtracycle I strap the bars together in the front and back to make sure they tight and secure against the snapdeck. 

When she's older I will move the seat back for my youngest, put a pad on the snapdeck and add a hadelbar for my oldest.

Xtracycle: The Longer Haul Trucker

As previously stated, I have been slacking. Here is my attempt to catch up.

For a long time now, I've been wanting a sport utility bike of some kind. I think this has to do with the amount of kids I have. When the first one was born the idea crept in that it might be nice to have one some day. By the time number two arrived I was in a state of full on man/gear lust. At first I thought I might just spring for a bike trailer and the I could tow the kids to school and go to work in one trip. The problem with this is that I park my bike in my cube and it would suck to have to negotiate a trailer through the office every day. I definitely wanted an SUB.

Being a Surly fan I considered a Big Dummy, but I am a cheap scrounging bastard so the consideration was fleeting. The logical step was to put an Xtracycle on the LHT(yeah you know me), but that too had a stiff price tag (cheap scrounging bastard*).

I decided to use the vast social media empire I built over the years to my advantage. On February 21st I tweeted "anyone in DC want to sell me their Xtracycle?". At the time I thought this was one of the douchier things I've done, which it was, but it worked!
Soon I had a shinny used Xtracycle Free Radical with bags waiting to be installed. I had to purchase another chain and tandem length shifter and brake cables for the extended rear. I also had to do things like measure the elevator at my office to make sure this SUB would make the trip I wouldn't be hiking a 7 foot bike up the office stairwell.

The install went smoothly with no troubles. I had heard of LHT owners complaining that the Xtracycle didn't fit well because of the LHT's longer chainstay but I didn't run into this problem.

The Xtracycle and the Long Haul Trucker seem work pretty well together; the LHT is strong and is already geared for hauling heavy loads. The Xtracycle design is impressively simple, it's easy to install and has a cult following that documents tons of mods and DIY projects.

Now it's time to get my DIY on.

Monday! Thou yeasty milk-livered haggard!

Good Father, Bad Elite Cyclist

Easton rims, full dura ace, look carbon fork... ibert child seat? With the LHT still in disorder I was faced with the burning question from my little girl, "Daddy, can we go for a bike ride in my seat?" I've always thought of my road bike as a sacred thing that I would only attach light fast things to, however one look from my daughter and I my philosophy went out the window. This is a bike and my little girl wants to go for a ride on a bike. I'll draw the line at tassels... if she wants them she'll have to find some in celeste.

Holidaze 2010: The Washington Post Cookie Massacre

Every year the Washington Post puts out the much coveted list of holiday cookies which has a wide reaching effect on the local population: baking aisles throughout the metro area are sacked, local hospitals see an increased number of ink poisoning cases as the weak minded of us attempt to eat their newspapers, and brawls break out at holiday potlucks when all the guests bring the same plate of cookies. The true victims in all of this are of course the children. 

This past weekend I decided to make the "Chocolate Chunk Cookies With Nutella".

Everything was going fine until my two year old got a hold of one of them. With that much bittersweet chocolate combined with Nutella she didn't have a chance. After the cookie took hold it was hard to even recognize her. The once sweet little angel had been transformed into a terrifyingly cute little monster driven mad with the desire to destroy all cookies in her path using only her face.

I just want my family back...  fucking Nutella...

Something To Avoid

Having just given my 2 year old her first bike, I've taken her on several walk/rides to get her used to riding. Over all she seems to be stoked, not nearly as stoked as her slightly older friends in the hood who take to the bike much faster than her. I guess a few months and an extra inch or two of legs makes all the difference. I'm not pushing it on her in hopes that she discovers the fun at her own pace.

I received a deftly illustrated cautionary tale via my wicked awesome friend Jen over at Nom Nom Nom.

I have read this story several times just to make sure it sinks in. I must avoid anything resembling the following scenario at all costs. 

Read the full story.

This kind of paternal buffoonery has my name written all over it.

Building A Better Father: Aggressively Granola

I've always been into nature. I've always been outdoorsy. Until now I've been passive in my granolaness. Sure I've done my share of cool outdoor adventure stuff but It's always been just for fun. Now that I am a father it takes on a more serious meaning. I want and need to instill a love for nature in my daughter and am taking calculated measures to do so.

I am becoming obsessed with increasing my knowledge of the outdoors, from gardening to backpacking. I know a lot of the birds that are indigenous to our area; I know most of their calls. Now I want to know theit migration patterns so I can tell my girl where they're going and when. I've created an indoor worm composting bin for our kitchen scraps. Lately I've been studying what plants and mushrooms are safe for eating, where they grow and when so she'll know that not all food has to come from the store. I recently joined MAW (The Mycological Association of Washington) to hasten my mushroom education. Last week I went on my first guided mushroom foray and loved it. I found a handful of morels which I threw in an egg scramble, very tasty.

Doing this research and gaining these new experiences have become my main goal. Hopefully some of what I am learning will turn into future lessons for my daughter with the off chance that one of them might take root and turn into genuine interest, passion, and ultimately gratitude toward nature.

My dad was and is the same way, we would hike a lot, go on the occasional camping trip and generally have fun in outdoors. While hiking, he would make my brother, sister and me stop yaking and stand still in silence for 5 minutes just to see what else was in the woods with us.  This would bring us back into the moment. Sometimes it was a deer sometimes a pileated woodpecker, sometimes just air flowing through leaves; stopping and appreciating almost always resulted in something cool that we would have never seen or heard if we had kept on our way.

Maybe he felt the same call to duty as I do.

The more passions I have and the more experienced I become, the better off my little girl will be.