Towing another bike?

Erik, I, too, read the replies and Kevin's sounded like a good idea as well. I got to thinking and
then I realized that you can buy at auto stores a bracket for mounting bikes in the back of a
pickup. You remove the front wheel and it has sort of a quick release for the forks of your bike.
You could easily attach this to the back of your rear rack using a couple of metal plates etc. and
just use electricians tape or duct tape or something or attach the front wheel of your daughter's
bike to a packpack or whatever. Another possible option!

Erik Freitag said:

In drifter said:

Found an old rusty bike in a dumpster and tried to tow it home using duct tape to afix (tow it)
to my bike. A great failure.

To my surprise, I was able to balance the bike from the cross-bar on ( my right) handlebar just
inside of the grip as I recall. I travelled a distance of about 5 miles fairly flat. I balanced
the bike at an angle so it was off and away from the operation of my bike. I had to make sure
the pedal on the inside was at a correct position so in the event of an occasional swaying
motion it would not intefere with my operation. I believe the pedal was kept high. Of course, it
is/was all about balance, but just a normal grip was all that was necessary. It was kind of fun
and not really a problem. Hope I have described it well enough.

That's clear, thanks. I'll give it a try.

Erik Freitag said:

Quoted message said:

Take an old front hub, tape it or somehow attach it to a rack on the back of your bike Duct
tape, zip tie, etc.). Remove the front wheel from your daughter's bike and attach that somehow
to her bike-- use a bungy and strap it to the side of the bike. Then mount her bike's front
forks onto the old hub you fastened to your bike and use a quick release to hold it on. Does
that make sense?

That sounds like leading the child around by the hand so to speak. Let them learn how to skin their
knees and elbows on a tricycle. Riding on a sidewalk with neighbors and their pets also teaches a
child about right-of-way and contention. When it's time for a bicycle, no training wheels and away
they go. This has worked for me and my three brothers as well as their children.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I came up with this solution so I could ride the bike I have my son's child seat attached to with
my race bike towed behind. That way I can go to races that are close by with my son and leave him
in the care of a team mate who races some other category while I ride.

You might like that but think of the child development and lack of problem solving as a trailer to
an adult. The child needs to work up to traffic and its hazards some time and sitting in a car next
to a parent is one way we learn, both about vehicle interaction and a natural introduction to
driving a car later.

The so called "Chinese driver syndrome" as it is known around the university here, is that academics
from China and other far eastern countries, who have never or hardly ever ridden in a car must learn
to drive from first principles and subsequently drive as if looking up answers to traffic situation
in a large rule book. We may find this odd but not all people have the pleasure of growing up
essentially behind the wheel. The same is true for bicycling. Many Americans are terrified of riding
in traffic and are the antithesis of bike messengers in traffic.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Jobst, does that fit your vision of how children should be raised?

No.

Jobst Brandt [email hidden] Palo Alto CA

Quoted message said:

Erik Freitag said:

Quoted message said:

Take an old front hub, tape it or somehow attach it to a rack on the back of your bike Duct
tape, zip tie, etc.). Remove the front wheel from your daughter's bike and attach that somehow
to her bike-- use a bungy and strap it to the side of the bike. Then mount her bike's front
forks onto the old hub you fastened to your bike and use a quick release to hold it on. Does
that make sense?

That sounds like leading the child around by the hand so to speak.

Read it again, Jobst. What's being discussed is a way to transport an empty bike by towing it behind
another bike. Once the bike has been towed to the location of the child it will be detached and the
child can ride it in the normal fashion.

Quoted message said:

Let them learn how to skin their knees and elbows on a tricycle. Riding on a sidewalk with
neighbors and their pets also teaches a child about right-of-way and contention. When it's time
for a bicycle, no training wheels and away they go. This has worked for me and my three brothers
as well as their children.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I came up with this solution so I could ride the bike I have my son's child seat attached to with
my race bike towed behind. That way I can go to races that are close by with my son and leave him
in the care of a team mate who races some other category while I ride.

You might like that but think of the child development and lack of problem solving as a trailer to
an adult. The child needs to work up to traffic and its hazards some time and sitting in a car
next to a parent is one way we learn, both about vehicle interaction and a natural introduction to
driving a car later.

Note that no trailer was mentioned, but a child seat on the back of Erik's bike. Child seats are
generally used for children about 1 - 3 years old which is well before they have to start thinking
about traffic analysis. Anyway, are you saying that sitting in a car lets children learn more about
traffic than by sitting on the back of a parent's bike? I don't see why that would be the case, but
in any event it really isn't too significant for two-year-olds.

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Erik Freitag said:

In Ryan Cousineau said:

In article <[email hidden]>, Erik Freitag
<[email hidden]> wrote:

15 miles for a pre-teen? I don't think traffic levels would be my first concern. How fast can she
ride, anyways?

Not very fast this trip would probably take her 70 minutes. I was trying to explain why it won't
really work to have her ride her bike to school, then to practice.

Instead of being dropped off at soccer practice, get dropped off at home and ride bike together to
practice and back.

--------------050800060802020102050008 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-15
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <title></title>
</head> <body> <br> <br> Erik Freitag wrote:<br> <blockquote type="cite"
cite="[email hidden]"> <pre wrap="">In <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href=""][email hidden]"><rcousine-20BD3A.23311513042003@morg-
oth.sfu.ca></a> Ryan Cousineau wrote: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">In article <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href=""][email hidden]"><2003041322-
[email hidden]></a>, Erik Freitag <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href=""][email hidden]"><[email hidden]></a> wrote:

15 miles for a pre-teen? I don't think traffic levels would be my first concern. How fast can she
ride, anyways?

</pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""><!----> Not very fast this trip would probably take her 70
minutes. I was trying to explain why it won't really work to have her ride her bike to school,
then to practice. </pre> </blockquote> Instead of being dropped off at soccer practice, get
dropped off at home and ride bike together to practice and back.  <br> </body> </html>

--------------050800060802020102050008--

[email hidden] wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>... ...

Quoted message said:

Around here there are huge traffic jams of SUV's at schools. Even at neighborhood school bus-stop,
parents deliver children and wait reading newspapers until they are SAFELY on the bus.

Although this is straying way off topic from .tech, Jobst has hit one of my buttons on this one. As
a traffic safety engineer for a medium sized city, one of our concerns is pedestrian safety in
school zones. Although school district policy provides buses for school children living more than
1.5 miles from school, with the assumption that it is reasonable to expect children to walk up to
1.5 miles each way to school, very few children actually walk to school. Most are driven to school
by their parents. This creates a situation where you have literally hundreds of motorists driving
cars and hundreds of children trying to walk from these cars into the school. School parking lots
are inundated with parents driving cars, often on a harried schedule. This results in many
opportunities for collisions, especially when it is difficult to see a 4 foot tall child standing
directly in front of an SUV.

There are organized campaigns to walk children to school, and a local program in our area for middle
school kids that teaches Effective Cycling. These are positive steps that people can take in a
community. Unfortunately, many parents don't accept the connection that through their own actions
they are causing the greatest risk to children by driving their kids to school. The trend towards
larger schools (and closing small neighborhood schools) doesn't help either.

So please, if you're a parent of a school age child, consider options other than driving your child
to school. For their safety and the safety of their classmates. We've found that a tandem with a kid
back is a great way to get around with a child, and also coordinating with other parents in the
neighborhood to designate a parent to walk young kids to school each day. Your kids will be
healthier and more self reliant if you do.

Bill Putnam

[email hidden] wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

That sounds like leading the child around by the hand so to speak. Let them learn how to skin
their knees and elbows on a tricycle. Riding on a sidewalk with neighbors and their pets also
teaches a child about right-of-way and contention. When it's time for a bicycle, no training
wheels and away they go. This has worked for me and my three brothers as well as their children.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I came up with this solution so I could ride the bike I have my son's child seat attached to
with my race bike towed behind. That way I can go to races that are close by with my son and
leave him in the care of a team mate who races some other category while I ride.

You might like that but think of the child development and lack of problem solving as a trailer to
an adult. The child needs to work up to traffic and its hazards some time and sitting in a car
next to a parent is one way we learn, both about vehicle interaction and a natural introduction to
driving a car later.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Jobst, does that fit your vision of how children should be raised?

No.

Jobst Brandt [email hidden] Palo Alto CA

Jobst: It is silly to get into a discussion of child development and child rearing with you,
especially since I failed to provide some relevant details that may change your final word in the
message above. The child who rides in the child seat mounted on my bike is not yet three years of
age. He does indeed ride his trike and has enthusiastically participated in two tot races so far
this season. But a ride for him on the trike is not one that will get us anywhere. If you had any
experience with kids that age on trikes, or on his two wheeler with training wheels (boy am I
inviting judgement from the experts with that statement), you would know that going from point A to
point B is not on their agenda and it's probably not even possible. It is certainly not possible to
ride from my house to any of the races in town, the nearest of which is about nine miles away.
Therefore it is my judgement as a father that the way transport ourselves by bicycle when we are
together is appropriate.

--Keven.

In article said:

In Fritz M said:

Erik Freitag said:

I'd be interested in hearing suggestions to help her to get her more comfortable with
traffic....

I've recently started taking my seven-year-old son on short (< 5 mile) rides to nearby parks, the
grocery store, etc. in order to get him acclimated to riding in traffic. I'm teaching him the
rules of the road, traffic safety, and cycling safety things like making eye contact and so
forth. Basically I'm indoctrinating him with Forester's Effective Cycling material :-), pointing
out things to watch for as we encounter them.

I plan on building up his exposure to traffic, staying in our low-traffic residential area, then
gradually moving up from there when I feel he's ready for it. I envision this process taking a
few years.

Saturday I was in Colorado Springs and I talked with a dad and his two sons who were riding some
*nice* road bikes. The kids -- ages 10 and 11 IIRC -- were on custom 47 cm frames. They were
riding in an area with narrow roads and moderate traffic and the kids seemed to handle their
bikes and the traffic just fine.

RFM

This is kind of my approach as well. There are several problems.

(1) As Mr. Brandt pointed out above, kids are lazy slugs, and will do anything to get out of any
activity that smells like work. They also don't have the drive to stay with it until it is not
so much effort.

I know of two very pretty "easy" rides around here - Cañada Road on Sunday and the Nimitz Way path
to Inspiration Point in Tilden Park. Both of these are "too hilly" for my kids. I think anyone who
reads this newsgroup would have a hard time recalling a hill on either of these rides. After riding
3 miles into Nimitz Way and back, my youngest claims she will never ride a bike again - I'm sure
this isn't true, but now I'm in for a lot of convincing ...

Kids, like adults, vary a lot. My son (10yo) recently rode the Chilly Hilly -- a ride which leads
many of the thousands of adult riders to walk some of the longer steeper grades. While his speed is
generally slow, he was quite proud that he managed each and every hill without walking.

The general hilliness of this area can be daunting to the uninitiated, but when Mom & Dad take
every opportunity to ride a bike (or walk), rather than ride in the car for ordinary living (e.g.
going to the store, library, school meetings, whatever) it greatly eases the shock of being away
from The Car.

Quoted message said:

(2) Opposite other suggestions in this thread that kids might think some kinds of bikes are cool,
all kids that I know think that bikes are for geeks and really don't want to be seen riding
one, especially with old dad. Bog forbid there should be a flat.

Again, YMMV, but clearly psychology is far more important than physical fitness. If you can possibly
get other kids to come along -- possibly with their parents -- this can make all the difference.

I don't know if Jobst has kids, but I don't think of them as lazy. Sure, they don't want to _work_,
but if an activity is perceived as _fun_, they will amaze you with their energy. Kids will do hard
things over and over if it's "cool" (e.g. some of their games).

Quoted message said:

I'm trying to point out the freedom being able to ride a bike effectively will give them - they
could easily get to a friend's house, the ice cream store, or the mall by riding their bikes. Much
easier than wheedling a ride from the 'rents.

Yeah!

-frank
--

Erik Freitag said:

(1) As Mr. Brandt pointed out above, kids are lazy slugs, and will do anything to get out of any
activity that smells like work.

That's true. In the case of my son I try to be careful not to push him too much. I've been egging
some friends on (in a good-natured way) to exercise so we can peak bag some fourteeners together
this summer. A seven-year-old is too young to climb a 14,000+ foot mountain, but I think part of his
motivation in riding with me is to "prove" that he's fit enough to climb a high peak. (He's been up
to 10,800 feet with me and we'll try for 12,000 feet this summer).

Quoted message said:

...all kids that I know think that bikes are for geeks and really don't want to be seen riding
one, especially with old dad.

I would imagine that as peers get more important in the teen years that could really be an issue. I
hope to raise my children as independent thinkers but with values that are important to me; we'll
see how that plays out in five or six years :-)

RFM
--
Return address is spam-bait and belongs to a known spammer or his unresponsive ISP. To reply, send
email to news AT masoner DOT net.

"mark" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

"Erik Freitag" wrote

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

> I pick up my daughter at soccer practice, a round-trip by car of around 5 miles. Round-trip
> by bike is around 4 miles. One of the other parents picks her up at school and drops her off
> at the practice field, by car. Is there any technique or hardware component that would let me
> tow her bike to the practice field with my bike, so we could ride back together?

Get a tandem.

I whole-heartedly agreee. My children love riding on our tandem - when they were smaller all three
of us used it with the addition of a child seat.

Easier to ride alone than trail-a-bike (the only issue I have ever had is the rear toe clips hitting
the ground round corners), faster, lighter and probably safer. Easier to chat to co-rider as you are
closer (whether this is an advantage or not depends on who you are riding with).

"Steve" <[email hidden]> wrote in message "]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

That's the stupidest thing I've heard all day, and I work with a bunch of engineers, so I hear a
lot of stupid things.

Spare us the gratuitous engineer bashing.

In drifter said:

Erik, I, too, read the replies and Kevin's sounded like a good idea as well. I got to thinking and
then I realized that you can buy at auto stores a bracket for mounting bikes in the back of a
pickup. You remove the front wheel and it has sort of a quick release for the forks of your bike.
You could easily attach this to the back of your rear rack using a couple of metal plates etc. and
just use electricians tape or duct tape or something or attach the front wheel of your daughter's
bike to a packpack or whatever. Another possible option!

This sounds good too, I'll either try this or Keven's suggestion this weekend. I want to see if it
affects steering adversely.

In Peter said:

What's being discussed is a way to transport an empty bike by towing it behind another bike. Once
the bike has been towed to the location of the child it will be detached and the child can ride it
in the normal fashion.

Thanks for restating. I think this thread is bifurcating, I tried to be clear by saying she would
ride it home, but I didn't think of "empty bike".

Quoted message said:

Note that no trailer was mentioned, but a child seat on the back of Erik's bike.

Part of the thread fray - no child seat on mine, kids are too big. I think the child seat
belongs to Keven.

"Fritz M" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]... -snip-

Quoted message said:

I hope to raise my children as independent thinkers but with values that are important to me

-snip-

Did you read that before you posted it?

--
Andrew Muzi yellowjersey.orgyellowjersey.orgOpen ↗ Open every day since 1 April 1971

"Andrew Webster" <[email hidden]> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Get a tandem.

I whole-heartedly agreee. My children love riding on our tandem - when they were smaller all three
of us used it with the addition of a child seat.

Easier to ride alone than trail-a-bike (the only issue I have ever had is the rear toe clips
hitting the ground round corners),

I just use plastic garbage bin ties to tie the pedals to the cranks when there is no kid on the
back. I always have them loosely looped under the seat.

Quoted message said:

faster, lighter and probably safer. Easier to chat to co-rider as you are closer (whether this is
an advantage or not depends on who you are riding with).

My youngest can't reach the pedals so he rests his feet on the re-inforcing bar
216.118.66.244Pal Tand.jpgOpen ↗ . I didn't have the pedals restrained for this
short photo-ride. Mark Lee

Keven Ruf said:

It is silly to get into a discussion of child development and child rearing with you, especially
since I failed to provide some relevant details that may change your final word in the message
above. The child who rides in the child seat mounted on my bike is not yet three years of age.

That's a bit young to go to soccer practice. I see a bait and switch routine here. We were trying
to find a way to get to and from soccer practice after school... or for that matter, how to get
to school.

Jobst Brandt [email hidden] Palo Alto CA

Mark Lee said:

"Andrew Webster" <[email hidden]> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Get a tandem.

Easier to ride alone than trail-a-bike (the only issue I have ever had is the rear toe clips
hitting the ground round corners),

I just use plastic garbage bin ties to tie the pedals to the cranks when there is no kid on the
back. I always have them loosely looped under the seat.

Another method is to use small bungie cords connecting the captain's and stoker's pedals - this also
keeps all pedals upright at all times for easier entry. And there's no need to remove and reinstall
anything when switching between solo and dual riding.

[email hidden] wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

That's a bit young to go to soccer practice. I see a bait and switch routine here. We were trying
to find a way to get to and from soccer practice after school... or for that matter, how to get
to school.

Jobst Brandt [email hidden] Palo Alto CA

The problem arose when you took a technical thread about how to tow another bike and turned it into
a platform to tell people how to raise their kids. It was compounded by your failure to note who is
writing what in response to your preaching. If you feel baited, sorry, but you were the one who
switched (topics). --Keven.

In article said:

The problem arose when you took a technical thread about how to tow another bike and turned it into
a platform to tell people how to raise their kids.

Unsolicited opinions are a fact of life on Usenet. So is defensiveness on perceived criticism of
child-rearing choices, but hey, if someone feels it's in the best interest of their kid to ferry
Johnny or Suzie 30 miles daily to soccer practice, across some of the highest concentrations of
soccer-mom suburbia, then more power to 'em.
--
---
Eric Holeman Chicago Illinois USA

A Muzi said:

Quoted message said:

I hope to raise my children as independent thinkers but with values that are important to me

Quoted message said:

Did you read that before you posted it?

What I wrote was very carefully considered.

RFM
--
Return address is spam-bait and belongs to a known spammer or his unresponsive ISP. To reply, send
email to news AT masoner DOT net.

"Erik Freitag" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

In Peter said:

What's being discussed is a way to transport an empty bike by towing it behind another bike.
Once the bike has been towed to the location of the child it will be detached and the child can
ride it in the normal fashion.

Thanks for restating. I think this thread is bifurcating, I tried to

be

Quoted message said:

clear by saying she would ride it home, but I didn't think of "empty bike".

Quoted message said:

Note that no trailer was mentioned, but a child seat on the back of Erik's bike.

Part of the thread fray - no child seat on mine, kids are too big. I think the child seat belongs
to Keven.

Is there any possibility that the person who leaves her off at the soccer field could also leave off
her bicycle? Also, this might do the trick: nordicskater.comtandemOpen ↗. Just out of
curiosity, why do you live so far from your daughter's school. I would have to live in a different
town to be that far from my son's school. -- Jay Beattie.