Category Archives: summer

Winter: A time for Planning Summer Family Bike Tours

What sort of winter hibernation do you enjoy? The Car Free Days family tried to escape the cold and dark by hunkering down at home; reading, drinking gallons of hot tea, cuddling up around the fire, and occasionally getting out-of-town to ski in the Cascade range.

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But a few winters ago we started doing something even better with the short, sucky days: dreaming about and planning epic summer bike tours.

Coping with Winter Blahs

With just over 8 hours of daylight during the winter months, Pacific Northwesterners (and Scandinavians, and Russians, and ….) must come up with some way to preserve our sanity day after dark sodden day from November through March. Residents of these northen climes rely on many different methods for coping with winter dreariness. Some use light therapy, others make regular pilgrimages to day spas; soaking in hot pools and sweating away sorrows in saunas. Still others escape altogether with vacations to warm sunny climates. For some reason the historic, go-to strategy of heavy drinking has fallen out of favor. At least in our circles.

A new twist on beating dreary days came from family biking media darling Emily Finch this past December. I spent a good part of my early Christmas vacation living vicariously through her highly entertaining winter indoor-painting-therapy-program:  Continue reading

We’re back: “I miss our trip”

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Our Pacific Coast Bike tour is O V E R . We’ve been back for a while now but it’s taken me this long to process the trip and figure out what I wanted to say about the amazing experience of riding 946 miles in 22 days with 2 tandems and 2 kids under 12.

Can I just say Wow and leave it at that? Continue reading

Fiets of Parenthood Seattle: HOT HOT HOT

Fiets of Parenthood Seattle 2010We’ll admit it. We were worried. When the mercury climbed above 90 on Saturday, we were pretty sure most everyone would call in “hot” and go to the lake instead.

Hey, that’s what we would have done.

But still, what were we going to do with four freakin’ gallons of Grade-A gelato, 120 spoke cards (note to self: don’t print the date; you can re-gift them later), and enough Slow Race Silly Bandz to outfit the entire 2-4th grades of the John Stanford School? Continue reading

Take the July Walk Bike Ride Challenge

To encourage Seattle residents to leave their stinky cars at home on occasion, the city is continuing its Walk Bike Ride campaign with a July Walk Bike Ride Challenge.

Starting July 4th and continuing through July 31st, Seattleites are invited to take the challenge.

  • Simply replace two car trips a week with walking, biking or taking transit
  • keep track your trips
  • record them
  • and you’ll be entered into a drawing to win some fabulous prizes Continue reading

Spoke and Food Tonight

Spoke and Food is tonight, June 29th. Ride your bike to dinner and 14 Seattle restaurants will donate a percentage of their profits to Lettuce Link at Solid Ground.

On the evening of Tuesday, June 29th, we invite you to bicycle to and from one of the 14 Seattle area restaurants who have all agreed to participate in our event. In support of our event goals, the participating restaurants have also agreed to donate a percent of the revenues they receive on the evening of our event to the non-profit organization we have selected to support. This year’s non-profit is the Lettuce Link program at Solid Ground.

Don’t forget to check the participating restaurants before you make dinner plans tonight!

– Anne

Fourth of July Cargo Bike Ride..don’t miss it

They went thataway!The Fourth of July Cargo Bike Ride is on.

When: Sunday, July 4th at Noon (ride leaves at 1:00)

Where: Meet at the Pergola in Pioneer Square (1st and Yesler)

Bring: lots of food and drink

We’re notoriously late and have never actually made this ride. We’ve pedaled down to Pioneer Square and missed the ride on more than one occasion.

We don’t know our plans for Sunday, but we’ll try to make it.

Happy Fourth!

– Anne and Tim

9 to 5, the video

We’re still grinning about the 9 to 5 at our house (either it really was that fun, or we just need to get out more, I’m not sure which).  Tim shot a bunch of video on the ride and I couldn’t just let it fester on our server.

So here you go, our short 9 to 5 video:

Hope you’re having a good summer

– Anne and Tim

9 to 5 Bike Scavenger Hunt, oh yeah

9 to 5 Bicycle Scavenger HuntWhat would get some approaching-middle age parents to stay up all night riding bikes all over town looking for star fruit and covers of the out-of-print Seattle PI and wrapped toothpicks and Polaroid photos? Why the Solstice 9 to 5 all-night Bicycle Scavenger Hunt, of course. Continue reading

An Every Day Adventure to the Bicycle Music Festival

An Every Day Adventure at the Bicycle Music Festival

An Every Day Adventure at the Bicycle Music Festival

We  just returned from a day of family Xtracycling. If you’d asked where we were going when we left the house, we probably would have mentioned something about the Bicycle Music Festival. Sure that’s where we were headed, but in reality we were out for a dose of every day cycling adventure.

In the course of an hour or so on the bikes we picked up the youngest from a play date, helped a friend install a basketball hoop, took some photos, stopped at the library, saw a ton of boats and houseboats, took some more photos, and picked up some excellent free stuff on the road near said houseboats (some BRAND NEW Ikea LED lights plus some high-quality nickel-plated light fixtures with sconces that will go nicely in our bathroom. SCORE!)!

And that was just on the way to the music festival. Continue reading

Car Free Days is Clinging to a Bikey Summer

Faster, the Night is Catching Us

Faster, the Night is Catching Us

It feels like Summer is fading around here.

Quickly.

Maybe it’s the way it changed from tank-top weather to sweater weather in about two hours this afternoon. Or maybe it’s the way I’ve decided that lights are now a prudent addition to my evening commutes.

Whatever the reason, the Car Free Days family is feeling some serious pressure to do something, anything, fun in the last couple weeks of summer.

Luckily for us, the Seattle bike scene has stepped up to provide some pretty family friendly, bike on music action this weekend. Continue reading