I've been joining in with a group of folks from my neighborhood to hold a bi-weekly PARK(ing) day in the SF Inner Sunset. I've been hauling most of the furniture out to our spot via my xtracycle/trailer combo.
Parked and ready to unload.
We take over a parking space and make it our PARK space for the day. It's a blast!
The farmers' market in full bloom across the street from us.
Thomas looking quite chipper while Kevin looks on.
A handful of stuff had been laying around the office that I had been meaning to take home. Kevin motivated me to get it all out of there by threatening to throw it out :) So you know me, I'll take on any chance to haul a bunch of stuff. The big spool is now a table in our backyard, the wheels are going to have their rust scrubbed from them and will hopefully roll again on the extremely well-weathered bike frame, maybe as a road bike for Nicole. :)
Nicole finally wore out the stroller that we found on the street 2 years ago. Lots of off-road walks in Golden Gate Park will do that :)
I found this awesome deal on craigslist, a moderately priced, pneumatic-tired, well built stroller that should be the last one we have to buy (coincidently, it's the first one we've ever paid for).
The catch was that it was 8 miles away and over at least one pretty big hill. The xtracycle handled the whole affair like a champ and I learned a few things about strapping cargo to the snapdeck :)
My xtracycle needed to go to the LBS for some TLC but I didnt want to have to take the bus home and back again so I hauled along my single speed so I could ride back :) Runs good!
While on my way back from our local bike shop I ran across this pile of furniture. My daughter has been in need of a new dresser for some time now and this fine all-wood dresser will do quite nicely! It does need a coat of paint and maybe some new knobs but FREE! Woo!
The best part is that the xtracycle is so stable that I was able to strap the dresser on with only 2 bungee cords. I couldn't believe how stable is was for the ~1 mile ride home.
In what's quickly becoming a regular thing, Today I met up with several of my fellow craigslisters for a Friday morning ride. After a spirited romp through the dirt trail in the park (I caught air with the xtracycle for the first time!) we made our way to the ocean. Half of the Great Highway was closed to cars due to sand dunes encroaching on the road so we had the road to ourselves all the way to the SF Zoo! After that we took a lap around Lake Merced and then back to the office. Something like 20 miles or so. It was a blast!
Skitching for fun and profit!
Nice shadow Dallas!
A nearly perfect ride with perfect weather and good friends. Life is good.
This is a sight that I love. My wife, my best friend, in front of me on her bike.
My parents were visiting us this past weekend. It may be more accurate that they came to visit their grandkids. I feel like I hardly saw them since they were almost insistent that Nicole and I get out of the house together without our kids. Tenzin isn't quite old enough to ride with us (another ~9mos!) so we don't get this chance very often. We rode through Golden Gate Park and then down the panhandle before deciding that we wanted to go to the Lower Haight for coffee.While we we down there, Grandma called to say that the kids were still napping and to encourage us to go out to eat alone. Just the two of us! It's amazing how valuable this kind of time has become to us now that we're parents of two :) We quickly found a Thai restaurant that we had not eaten at before. Totally fell in love with their crispy fried portabello mushroom & eggplant dish. Wow. Nicole took pictures of the food, it was all so beautiful. Coincidentally the restaurant is right on the wiggle so when it was time to go we just hopped on our bikes and wiggled our way back up to the panhandle and back through the park on home. Part of the way that I fell in love with Nicole was through our mutual love of bicycles. Riding with her is easily my all time favorite activity and I miss it so. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for allowing us the space to get out together :)
One of my coworkers was telling me that she'd seen this "huge orange xtracycle" in the neighborhood and while walking back from dinner I spotted what's she's talking about!
These two Yuba "Mundo" were hanging out near 9th ave/Irving and clearly belong to a family. Each has a Peapod-esque kids seat and both have a rear deck and stoker bars for taking other passengers. I wish I knew these folks, clearly they have the same passion for family biking that I do!
While we were waiting for Tenzin's pediatrician a few days ago I was explaining to Nicole what I'd been doing to this bike that she found (more in the next post) and I made these chalk drawings to illustrate what I was talking about. :)
This was a pretty heavy grocery run. Two gallons of milk, large back of whole wheat flour, large bag of brown rice and what you can't see in this photo is the 25 cans of black/pinto/kidney beans that we're putting in our emergency supply kit. The xtracycle swallowed this all with ease and the ride home was smooth as usual :)
Two weeks ago I was doing our weekly shopping at our neighborhood farmers' market when I overheard someone say "Oh, have you signed up for the ride we're organizing?" This over course really piqued my curiousity and it turned out that someone was organizing a ride a few weeks later. Well, that ride was early this morning. At 7am, we met where the farmers' market would be a few hours later. Only 5 of us showed up, including my friend Tyler. Joe, Megan and Bill (another Bill, not me) rounded out our numbers. Joe and Bill led us on a route out to the beach where we stopped for coffee and food and then down to the southern border of the city, past the cow palace and then back up the bay side, through downtown. The planned route included continuing on through the Presidio but Tyler and I were feeling ready to head back home so we split off. Today was the SF Marathon so lots of streets were closed down for that and we enjoyed riding on several stretches of the Embarcadero that would normally be clogged with cars. Tyler and I ended our ride with a great breakfast at the Green Chili Cafe, near the end of the Panhandle before parting ways. All told, Tyler and I clocked a solid 25 mile ride and it was a blast. I hope that there are some subsequent rides organized, it was great to meet some other cyclists from our neighborhood and to see many other parts of the city I'd never seen. After the ride I made it back to our neighborhood just in time to meet up with Nicole and the kids and pack all of the vegetables they'd bought at the farmers' market into the xtracycle and walk home with them. A great ride and a great morning, hooray!
About 10 of my craigslist coworkers and I went out for an after-work ride. Our original goal was to go from the office, up through the SF Presidio and back after getting to the Presidio so quickly we extended our ride out and over the Golden Gate Bridge. It was quite a foggy and windy day which made the ride somewhat thrilling. Some of the group continued on to Sausalito for dinner but I headed back with those of us that had other commitments and families to get back to. Next time I really want to make it further out, the ride was quite a lot of fun. Hopefully this was only the first of many other after-work rides!
Jula and I found this nice piece of plywood on the way to the grocery store and strapped it right on to the xtracycle with no problems. We got lots of funny looks from folks in the parking lot. I rather enjoy those funny looks I must say :) Hopefully in the next few weeks we're going to make some bird houses out of it to attract some birds to our fledgling backyard garden.
For a few months now my coworker and friend Tyler and I have been heading out into Golden Gate Park for a nice little ride out to the ocean and back, usually followed by coffee and then on to work. Usually we try to stay off the main roads and explore all the little singletrack and wider dirt trails that are all over the park. It can be quite thrilling some days, especially the park slopes downward towards the ocean so the first half of our ride can be quite fast. Today we were both a little under the weather, me due to this cold I've been fighting off and him due to backpacking-induced sunburn and leg-soreness. We took it a bit easier today and stopped at the ocean for a nice chat, only getting back on the bikes when our sweat started to get a little too cold to bear.
Our bikes are kind of funny side by side. His is a really nice Rivendell Bleriot that he resucued and rehabilitated off of craigslist. It's really set up more as a commuter bike but does quite fine on our semi-offroad adventures. The blackblackblack bike is my non-cargo bike, a Cannondale Bad Boy with much fatter tires than were ever meant to go on the skinny rims it came with. Runs good!
We both had a great time riding today. Hopefully we'll both make it out for the ride before next Sunday's Inner Sunset Farmers' Market. More on that later.
Today was the semi-monthly plant sale at the nursery run by the Golden Gate Park staff. The nursery is inside the boundry of the park itself and serves as an area for the staff to grow plants that are used in the park. As a fundraising measure they hold a plant sale twice a month and have some really great deals on a nice assortment of plants. Jula and I went with the intention of getting some more plants for our lightwell between our kitchen and office. It's nearly a useless space in that it's not very large and you have to climb through a window to get out to it but it's grat for plants that do well in partial sun. The lightwell is 2 stories deep so anything that needs full sun just won't fare well. The folks at the nursery were really helpful in suggesting plants that would work well in this space. We also bought a few plants to go in the small backyard that we share with the other 2 apartment units in our building.
Of course we took the xtracycle to pick up all these plants! Jula had fun helping me decide what to get and the nursery staff were tickled to talk to her about what they had to offer.
When I started looking at some of the larger plants that they had, one of the staff members started giving me a funny look and asked "Do you have a car?" I replied, "No, I'll just pack them all on to my bike." He just shook his head in disbelief. After I easily managed to strap all 5 plants, including the 2 largest ones on to the xtracycle they all started marveling at such a set up. One of the staff reminisced that our bike reminded her of large cargo bikes she had seen when she lived in China. Nice! During the loading process we got quite a lot of attention from nearly everyone else that showed up to the plant sale. Most people just marveled that so much could be loaded on to a bike and some actually inquired about what my mutant looking bike was all about. I'd say it was a great day for cargo-bike-advocacy :)
I was a bit worried that I'd get out on the road and one of the plants would go flying or rip itself out of it's pot but nothing at all negative happened. The load was easy to carry and the plants did fine. We managed to get home just in time for lunch (Thanks Honey!)
After lunch Jula and I moved some of our new plants out into the lightwell. The lightwell is now well on it's way to being the small jungle that I've been envisioning. Thanks Park Nursery!
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