Tag Archives: bikes

The Bike Fairy says “Bike to School, Kids”

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Tim K | 6 comments

The Bike Fairy gives prizes to kids who ride to school

May is officially Bike month. For most riders, that means Bike to Work month. But as you’d expect from a blog that focuses on family cycling, we like to remind folks that it’s also Bike to School Month!

Despite unseasonably cold and wet weather the majority of the month, 86 kids at our school have already completed their online logs for an impressive 517 bike trips to school. We’ve counted more than 100 bikes at morning dropoff twice already, and that’s with the sucky weather. These kids are kicking ass.

Today the focus around town will be on the grownups riding to work for the F5 Bike to Work Day — Cascade is promoting a ride with the mayor and photo-op at City Hall, F5 is sponsoring feed and swag stations all over town, and there’s a big after party in Ballard – but that’s OK, because we’ve got the Bike Fairy! Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in bikes, Events, kids, kids' bikes, seattle

Tagged bike fairy, bike-to-school, bike-to-work, bikefairy, bikes, kids

Official Volcano Holiday (or Work? How about a beer and a bike ride instead?)

Posted on May 17, 2010 by Tim K | 5 comments

Refill your growlers on the beer cruise

Can you imagine a better way to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens than by blowing off (get it?) work to participate in the Seattle Beer Week Brew Cruise (this means May 18 for you non-volcanic historians).

St Helens at Wikipedia The ride starts at 1:30pm at Big Time Brewery and Ale House on the Ave. in the U-district, and then, like a Yelm-swallowing lahar, it will ooze its way on the slightly-downhill-to-flat Burke-Gilman Trail toward Ballard. Scheduled stops are: Big Time, Fremont Brewing, Hales, and Maritime Pacific. Mmmm…tasty. Continue reading →

5 Comments

Posted in bikes, Events, seattle

Tagged beer, bikes, costumed rats, seattle, seattle beer week

Promoting Walk – Bike – Ride, in the Seattle Style

Posted on May 12, 2010 by Anne | 2 comments

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn unveiled a multi-year Walk, Bike, Ride campaign yesterday at the Beacon Hill light rail station. Initial reaction locally was mostly lukewarm, with many observers pointing to the plan’s lack of funding as a major obstacle to success.

Paul Andrews of Bike Intelligencer summed up the announcement and the campaign eloquently with his post Walk, Bike, Ride, yes. Spend? Um, err….”

Where’s the money, Lebowski?

The opening line from “The Big Lebowski” kept rolling through my mind as Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, King County Council member Larry Phillips and a supporting cast of street activists rolled out a new “Walk Bike Ride” campaign at the Beacon Hill light rail station this afternoon.

Andrews is a seasoned newspaperman and professional writer. And it shows. In contrast to many bloggers (yes, bike bloggers, too. This one included), Andrews can really write. In a, concise post, he covers both the good of the plan (The mayor, who biked to the press conference, wants to encourage a city-wide shift away from driving), as well as the bad (uh, how are we going to fund said shift)?

It’s worth popping over to Bike Intelligencer and getting the full poop. But while you are here, you might as well know that The Car Free Days’ take on the plan is a qualified “Bravo.”

Sure, presenting the plan in tandem with a big-ass bucket of money would have been nice, but we’re reasonably happy with the overall message. If we can instill the city’s collective mind with the idea that “bicycling is a normal option for normal people,” we’re on our way to change. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Posted in alternative transportation, bigger than here, bikes, Human Powered Politics, seattle

Tagged bikes, infrastructure, mcginn, Mike McGinn Seattle politics bikes infrastructure, politics, seattle, Walk Bike Ride campaign

Seattle Bike Blog Meetup: What’s Your Agenda?

Posted on April 4, 2010 by Tim K | 4 comments

The Easter Bunny is due any minute, so I’ll attempt to make this brief.

Anne and I attended a (first?) Seattle Bike Blog Meetup tonight at Brouwer’s Cafe in Fremont. Spearheaded by Paul Andrews of Bike Intelligencer, the idea (we think, Paul can correct us later) was to gather a bunch of local bike bloggers in one place and see if we can find some common ground.

We don’t have a single voice around here like the amazing Bike Portland, but we do have a buttload of passionate cyclists blogging their individual asses off on topics they care about. Of course, trying to make the leap from “individuals” and “personal passions” to “common ground” is huge. Herding cats is a phrase that comes to mind for me. Still, there are places where we all seem to overlap. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in alternative transportation, bigger than here, bikes, extravehicular activities, seattle

Tagged bikes, bloggers, brouwers, meetup, seattle

Fresh and Fruity: Build your own VeloMix Bike Blender

Posted on April 1, 2010 by Tim K | 8 comments

Around here, we’re mad for smoothies. The youngest doesn’t want to get dressed until he’s had his blended concoction of mangoes, raspberries and bananas. And who can blame him? If your parents offered to make you a smoothie nearly every day of your life, you’d take ’em up on it, right?

Besides being wonderful parents and frozen-food gourmets, we’re also a little nuts for bikes. So it wasn’t much of a leap to decide to combine our passions into one Xtracycle-flavored taste explosion.

Of course, the easiest way to join these loves would be to get out the plastic and order a Fender Blender from Rock the Bike. These HPB (human-powered blenders) are much-loved by the kind of Xtracyclers you’ll often see lingering, sweaty, around large piles of fruit at the Bicycle Music Festival, Burning Man, and various bikey celebrations. I’ve tasted the results of such purchased efforts and unfortunately, while the smoothies taste delicious, they are really tainted by the same bitter aftertaste that comes with buying most commercially produced goods.

So, no, in my quest for a pure smoothie, I wanted to skip the commercialism, re-purpose items from our garage and kitchen (items that I’ve already paid the aftertaste tax on), flex my languishing DIY skills, and see if I could take the bike blender power to 11.

In the end I spent more time on the project than I expected, but the resulting efforts were worth it. We turned this:

Into this:

Interested in building your own mobile blender? Read on…

Continue reading →

8 Comments

Posted in bikes, consumerism, extravehicular activities

Tagged "bike blender", bikes, blender, smoothie, xtracycle

The Great Holiday Family Bike Vs. Bus Challenge

Posted on December 22, 2009 by Anne | 10 comments

Victory! Bikes Rule

Inspired by Streetfilms Bike Vs Car Vs Transit, the Car Free Days family took a challenge of their own: Bike Vs. Bus from our house in Ravenna to Westlake Park in downtown Seattle for a little holiday in the big city action.

The event:

A door-to-door speed test pitting Tim’s Xtracycle against Anne and 2 kids on foot to the bus stop, then on the bus to Westlake Park. Our departure times and routes were the same, but the outcome would be different Continue reading →

10 Comments

Posted in bikes, extravehicular activities, seattle, streetsblog

Tagged Bike Vs Bus Challenge, bikes, bus, metro, Race, seattle

Car Free Days Votes for Bikes

Posted on November 2, 2009 by Tim K | 2 comments

We miss election day. Most of you probably voted weeks ago and we’re just getting around to opening our ballots. It’s not the same since Washington went to an all-mail system.

So it’s probably not to going to help most of you that we’re putting in a last minute endorsement in our otherwise a apolitical blog for Mayoral Candidate Mike “bikes” McGinn.

As you expect, our pro-bike support of the pro-bike candidate is pretty obvious. Joe Mallahan also makes it an easy choice for a family who takes their voting seriously. Even if Mallahan didn’t promise to run the city like a phone company, he’d still fall short with us for his personal voting track record.

The fact that he’s missed 13 (thirteen!) elections since 2001 means we won’t be sending any hanging chads in his direction (Susan Hutchison, by the way has fared poorly, missing eight in the same time period).

You may have different hot-buttons and may make other election choices; that’s OK with us at Car Free Days.. Just whatever you do, don’t be like Joe and Susan. Vote. Make your voice heard.

-Tim

2 Comments

Posted in bigger than here, Human Powered Politics, seattle

Tagged bikes, elections, mayor, seattle, voting, xtracycle

Everybody talks about the weather but no one…

Posted on October 15, 2009 by Tim K | 11 comments

It was raining so hard when I got up Wed. morning I didn’t ride my bike to work.

Don’t worry, I still got there on the Xtracycle, but like most days, I found it made more sense to take my time getting underway.

My morning (many mornings, in truth) went something like this: I got up. It was raining. Had my Grapenuts and coffee with the kids. Raining. Helped them get ready. Raining. Said goodbye to the kids. Still raining. Shower? Yep, still raining.

Yet 10 minutes later I was on my way to work dressed in my normal (non-bike) clothes, rain gear safely stowed in the Xtracycle Freeloader. Rain-gear optional is a a pretty usual way for me to roll (and maybe the reason I can still justify owning my hideously ugly purple/pink/black, 18 (!) year-old REI Turismo jacket/pants

I’m not saying all this to sound like a total time-challenged-douche-bag-schedule-slouching-weather-rock-star or something—though if you got soaked yesterday you might think I sound like one of those. Nah, I just want to share my two simple tools (well, three if you count the merino wool and four if you count fenders, but everyone knows that one, right?) for staying dry this winter. Continue reading →

11 Comments

Posted in bikes, Commute, seattle, weather

Tagged bikes, Commute, radar, rain, seattle, tips, weather

An Every Day Adventure to the Bicycle Music Festival

Posted on August 23, 2009 by Tim K | 11 comments

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 →

11 Comments

Posted in bigger than here, bikes, kids, summer, xtracycle

Tagged adventure, bicycle music festival, bikes, kids, seattle, xtracycle

Hey fixie hipster trick bike riders: You’ve been schooled!

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Tim K | 12 comments

In Seattle, as in many other cities, a fraternity of tight-pantsed, butt-crack showing, truckers-wallet toting fixie riders often gathers to work on fixed-gear bike tricks. These range from the newbie skill of the trackstand (also practical in traffic), to riding backward, to wheelies, to wheelies with handlebar spins, and so on.

Some of it is pretty impressive and fun to watch. If nothing else, the beer-fueled wipeouts can be entertaining. But after seeing the following video (via Wend), I should now say the tricks used to be impressive and fun to watch because these two riders just cranked the impressiveness meter to a whole other planet.

About the only place the hipsters can still compete is tight pants and wallets on chains. If you’re into the fashion of ass-crack and/or truckers’ wallets the video may disappoint, but for bulk of the cycling world still trying for their first track stand, prepare to be wowed. (The whole thing is good, but definitely watch from about 2:30 on)

-Tim