Occasional incivility is par for the course, I guess (though I hope we’ll be changing that). Most of the time it is harmless noise that can be shrugged off. But there is one type of territorial noise that sickens me. That is the sound of a child’s voice from a car, yelling at me to get off the road. Sadly, I’ve experienced that quite a few times over the years. I’ve also been harassed by drivers who had children in their cars.

Children do what they see. That includes unsafe cycling as well as obnoxious driver behavior.

Recent articles in the Orlando Sentinel have highlighted the tensions between motorists and cyclists in Clermont, and I’m afraid my cycling team will feel the backlash.

This is a problem because my team consists not of a pack of 60 roadies, but of my husband and daughters, ages 2 and 5. Instead of racing down highways, you’ll find us cruising around Orlando leaving a trail of giggles. more

Angie, thank you so much for saying what needed to be said… as only a Mom could say it! You are a catalyst for change in this community!

Go read Protect the trail of giggles, and leave a nice comment. Let’s see if we can make the Sentinel comments section worth reading for a change

Vivi sneaks a snack after a recent trip to Costco

A friend recently shared a cute Yehuda Moon cartoon with me in which the driver of an SUV pulls up to a bakfiets cargobike and laments not walking her child to school, but blames the weather and all of the school gear.  The tiny bike passenger responds, “Just because ya’ can doesn’t mean ya’ should!” As the matriarch of a bike-commuting family, I love this cartoon.  But in a way, I think it almost affirms a common misconception–that driving with kids and gear is easier and that biking is only a choice made because it’s the “right” thing to do.  We’ve discovered many surprising things along our journey to becoming a one-car family, but one of the most surprising realizations is that it is often easier to travel by bike with the kids than by car.

An End to Marathon Mornings

Take, for example, my morning commute to work.  A typical morning used to include me rushing to get myself and the girls dressed, straining my back leaning in the car to buckle my two-year-old into her five-point harness carseat, waiting for my oldest to buckle herself in, getting back out of the car upon discovering her door wasn’t shut correctly, and then racing to school.  After driving around in the parking lot of my five-year-old’s school for several minutes looking for a spot, I would finally find a parking spot (furthest from the entrance, of course).  I would park, pop the trunk, get out and unfold the stroller, unbuckle my two-year-old, strap her in the stroller, help my eldest get out of the car with all her gear, and schlep across the parking lot trying to hold onto both kids while balancing in work heels.  Once on the sidewalk, we would begin the walk to my daughter’s classroom–more than a tenth of a mile.  My little one would fight the stroller and my oldest walked at a snail’s pace as I tried to drag her along.  Once I had finally dropped the oldest off, I would shuffle back to the car, unstrap the little one and then promptly wrestle her into the carseat–and trust me, two-year-olds are stronger than they look!  Stroller back in the car, we would drive the .5 mile over to her school.  Rinse and repeat with the parking, unbuckling, etc.  Once it was all said and done, I’d driven about 5 miles, walked about .5 miles, and it had taken me 45+ exasperating, stress-filled minutes to complete this small journey.  By the time I pulled into my office parking lot, I felt as if I had already survived an entire day–but my work day was only beginning!  This is no way to start a morning.

Now that I bike, it takes me 30 minutes from my front door to my daughter’s classroom.  I’m able to ride right up to the entrance and my daughter stays on the bike as I walk her up to the classroom–no more pleading with her to walk faster.  Due to the seating set-up of my bike, my husband now takes my littlest one to school; however, there is no doubt it would still be far easier to hop back on the bike and ride her over to her school.  I arrive at work feeling relaxed and ready to take on my day thanks to the endorphins generated by the physical nature of my morning commute. Without even touching on the fact that biking is less stressful than driving, the reality is that shorter distances are usually easier by bike.  Any parent that has had to run errands with kids in tow knows how frustrating it is to buckle, drive, stop, unbuckle, buckle, drive, stop, unbuckle, ad nauseum.  This is especially true in Florida, the land of giant strip malls, where two stores in the same plaza can easily be a .5 mile apart.  With the bike, we just snap on the helmets, belt the kids in the bike, and ride up to the front door.

No More Sherpa Stroller

We’ve found that biking to major events is also much easier than driving.  We recently met up with some friends at a community event; we had ridden and the friends had driven.  Due to the large nature of the event, our friends had been forced to park nearly a mile away.  We live quite close to each other and our friends might have been able to make it home quicker than us since we clearly can’t ride at the speed they can drive.  However, the time added by their long walk back to the car with two kids meant we each made it home in about the same amount of time.  Another benefit of biking is that you are almost always able to park right at the event.  Not only does this mean no long walk to the entrance, it also means you don’t have to haul all the baby stuff along with you.  Hauling all of the items you might need in case of a potential kid meltdown gets tiresome fast, though the alternative is just as bad.  I’ve been out many a time with friends when, rather than go all the way back to the car for the forgotten diapers/wipes/sippy cup, they just left in frustration.  When traveling by bike, it’s nearly always possible to leave the stuff in the bike and go grab it as needed.

The Magic of the Red Shoe

My two-year-old has been known to throw things, particularly shoes, out of the bike.  When we discovered that out of her three regular pairs, we only had one set, we knew the shoes were gone forever.  Imagine our surprise when my husband found one of the shoes on the bike trail nearly a week after it had gone missing!  Even more amazing was the day, another week later, when I was riding my daughter to school and she noticed the last missing single shoe on the trail!  I did a quick stop, grabbed the shoe, and went on with our ride.  Two things about this amaze me.  One, the ability to recover something tossed by a toddler seems only possible by bike.  Secondly, the ability to easily stop and pick something up just does not happen in a car.  If your child were to toss something out the car window, you would have to find somewhere to pull over and park and then risk your life by running into the street to collect it.  The potential for stopping by bike is almost as wonderful as riding.  On a recent ride to a downtown festival, we heard a plane gearing up for take-off.  The airport was right next to the trail, so we stopped and took a moment to watch the plane take off.  I honestly can’t think of a time when we were driving and we felt able to simply stop, get out, and notice something.  In fact, a regular response in the car was, ” I can’t look right now, honey–I’m driving.”

An impromptu stop to watch a plane take off

A Final Thought on Biking with Kids

I’m personally not a big fan of bicycle trailers for several reasons, the most important being that I don’t think they are usually all that comfortable for the kids.  Uncomfortable kids do not make for fun bike rides.  Trailer seats generally don’t leave room for a helmet, thus pushing the child’s head forward for the duration of the ride.  Can you blame them for throwing a fit 15 minutes into the ride?  Additionally, the trailers are so far back that it makes it difficult to converse with your child–this ability to talk about what you are seeing is one of the most wonderful parts of biking with your kids, in my opinion.  Finally, the trailers are usually difficult to attach, meaning you are far less likely to spontaneously go out for a ride together.  If you plan on biking regularly with your kids, I would consider investing in a utility bike.  Because my husband and I each commute to work by bike with the kids, we have both a Madsen kg271 Bucket Bike and an Xtracyle Radish and are very happy with each bike.  These investments, far less expensive than a second car, have allowed us to dramatically reduce our car usage and we easily live off of one car (not to mention we no longer need to keep a gym membership!).  The time and energy we save by running errands by bike has completely changed our quality of life; this kind of life improvement is truly priceless.  I find both bikes to be easier to handle than a trailer and I feel more secure when riding in the road with the children.  Furthermore, you’ll be amazed at the versatility of what you can haul with these bikes.  That being said, I think being out in trailer is certainly better than not being out at all.  Get out and ride–you’ll be amazed at how easy it is!

Jesse and Angie Ross and their two daughters are a one-car family. In January, they traded their SUV for an SUB. The family rides bikes to the store, church and for family fun.

The Costco Haul: 2 kids; 6 lbs of apples; 4 lbs of strawberries; A case of beer; 2 gallons of milk; 3 bottles of juice; 2 dozen eggs; 3 lbs of bananas; 2 lbs of coffee; 1.5 ml bottle of wine; 3 3-lb tubs of cottage cheese; 5-lbs of ground meat; 2 large bottles of Hershey syrup; Box of Boca burgers; Rotisserie chicken. (Photo by Angie Ross)

Jesse’s vehicle is a Madsen Bucket bike. I asked him how he chose the Madsen. “We were looking at the Xtracycle and the Yuba Mundo when we came across it on Google.” The price was good and the bucket holds a lot of stuff, plus has seats and seat belts for kids. He’s done some work on it and plans to do more mechanical tweaking, but he really likes it. He uses it to bring their two daughters home from daycare/preschool every day, and to haul mind-boggling loads from Costco and Home Depot.

Robert Seidler and I had the pleasure of joining Jesse for his commute home on Monday. We met him at Colonial High School, where he teaches. Getting to Colonial High was a challenge. It’s a poster child for the metro area’s lack of connectivity—isolated from anything resembling a useful grid in the southeastern corner of Colonial Dr. (SR50) and Semoran Blvd. (SR436).

Possibilities on display

The kind of teacher you never forget

Mr. Ross is teaching more than high school English. His Madsen sits on display in front of his classroom every day—a silent symbol of freedom and possibilities. His enthusiasm for utility cycling is infectious. It can’t help but make a positive impact on his students.

“I have such a great life!”

Jesse rides to work early in the morning, enjoying an exhilarating workout. He showers at school, parks his bike in his classroom and begins his workday happy and refreshed. Later in the morning, Angie drops one daughter off at her nearby school and the other at the high school’s daycare, which happens to be right outside Jesse’s classroom window.

After school, Jesse does a quick change into shorts and a T-shirt, picks up 2-year-old Vivi, and rides to  5-year-old Sofie’s school. We rode past the endless line of idling cars, went right into the walk-in entrance, picked up Sofie and then rode past the rest of the line (until we got to the parking lot where it was more prudent to queue up for the exit).

The girls are adorable and clearly love this form of transportation! As we rode away from the preschool, Sofie extolled the benefits of human transportation.

Problem-solver

Click for map. (What the satellite doesn't show is that the whole area is under construction to turn that intersection into an interchange and widen Colonial to six lanes.)

I was most curious to see how Jesse solved the connectivity problem. Robert and I had quite an adventure getting there (a topic for its own post). I have a hard time getting out of the Home Depot on that corner with a car! To go north, as Jesse does, the connectivity issue could be solved with a traffic light at Tucker Ave. and SR50 (it’s nearly impossible to cross there without one, even in a car). You can see his solution here.

Jesse has discovered the power of gaps. He uses  an eastbound gap to cross to the median (which, at the moment, is a dirt construction zone). He then waits for a gap in the westbound lanes, turns left and controls the right lane for 450 feet and turns right onto a quiet street. (He uses 436 on his way to work and tried it with the girls, but they didn’t like it — it’s hot, loud and the cars kick up construction dirt.)

A few cars caught up and passed us courteously in the left lane as we rode on Colonial. Another waited behind in the right lane, to make a right turn at the street just beyond where we turned. Jesse noted that drivers seem extra careful and considerate when the girls are in the bucket. Every one we encountered was patient and considerate. When we were waiting for the light at Old Cheney and 436, the driver of a minivan behind us leaned out and chatted with me for a moment about how cute the girls are and gave Jesse a big thumbs-up.

Robert Seidler runs video as Jesse fills water bottles on the Cady Way trail. Video footage will be used in several projects we are doing for FBA.

A community amenity

Jesse handles himself like a pro in traffic. He’s benefited from watching Dual Chase videos. But a wonderful feature of his commute is that most of it is on the Cady Way trail. In May, he and Angie bought a house in Winter Park near the trail. Imagine taking your kids for a ride on the trail on the way home from work!

Not just quality of life, an entirely different kind of life

Jesse never liked driving a car. It made him feel stressed out, impatient and bored — just trying to get there and being obstructed by all the other motorists just trying to get there. He’s discovered that biking to work not only increases his enjoyment of the journey, it actually saves him time!

“No matter what, I never got out of the house in less than an hour,” he says of when he used to drive to work. Then he had to sit in traffic in his car. Now he gets up, makes coffee, loads the bike, fills the travel mug and is out the door in 15 minutes. It takes him 25 minutes to get to work and 15 minutes to shower, shave and change. So, “in less time than it used to take me to get out the door, I’ve had my coffee, a good workout, a shower and I’m at work and feeling great!”

Jesse chats with Sofie about her day at school

He’s getting quality time with his daughters from the moment he gets off work and he has the freedom and satisfaction of not being dependent on a car with all its associated stresses. That is a different kind of life.

“I am an Engine”

That’s the title of a beautiful poem he is writing for his daughters. He read a few verses of for Robert and me and hope he’ll share it with you here when it is finished.

Jesse is not just the engine of his vehicle, he’s an engine of the changing traffic culture.

New Mini-Grants Encourage Students
to Walk and Ride to School

Mini-grants totaling $30,150 have been approved by the Winter Park Health Foundation (WPHF) through its Community Health Policy Work Group to enable seven Winter Park, Maitland and Eatonville area schools to launch and expand programs that encourage students to walk and ride to school.

Local schools were invited to apply for the grants following a How to Help Kids Walk and Ride Safely to School workshop sponsored by WPHF earlier this year. Both the workshop and grants are part of the WPHF Think~Act~Be Healthy Communities initiative designed to inspire community projects that will change the environment and/or culture in ways that encourage healthy behaviors.
The schools receiving Winter Park Health Foundation grants include:

• Aloma Elementary School will receive a grant to support promotion of and prizes awarded in its monthly Walk ‘N Roll Wednesday event which encourages students to walk, roll, skate or scoot to school rather than riding in a car.
• Brookshire Elementary School will receive grant support to help revitalize a Safe Routes to School Program once established by a former parent. Plans call for monthly “Walk and Roll Wednesdays” and introducing The Walking School Bus concept.
• Dommerich Elementary School will receive a grant to help purchase and install “an aesthetically appealing bike shelter to showcase the value that the school, students and community place on bike commuting.”
• Hungerford Elementary School will receive a grant to improve safe walking conditions by upgrading the school cross walk and pavement markings, as well as providing a flashing beacon to slow down traffic.
• Glenridge Middle School will receive grant support to provide new safety equipment as well as materials to launch a Walk ‘n Roll program.
• Maitland Middle School will receive a grant to “fund the installation of a highly visible, donated bike shelter atop a new and appealing bike rack” to  “upgrade the status of the bike rider.”
• Winter Park High School, in hopes of launching a “Bike it Back to School” campaign, will receive a grant to cover the cost of security cameras, a DVR and bicycle racks for the bike corral so students know their bicycles will be secure at school.

For more about Walk-n-Roll Wednesdays, see Teach Your Children Well. For more about the Safe Routes to School Mini-grants, see The Safe Routes to School Initiative—From Idea to Action. To get involved with your school’s program, the grantee contact information is here.

The Winter Park Health Foundation’s mission is to make a positive difference in people’s lives by creating the healthiest community in the United States.

This video has 3 of my favorite things: quiet-street connectivity, wayfinding signs and cyclists riding comfortably in the middle of the lane.

In my years of riding around town, I’ve encountered 2 primary problems for slow-street bicycling in Orlando and Winter Park. One is the damned bricks. The other is you need a GPS to navigate because there is no consistent grid. The upside of the lack of continuous parallel streets is the reduction of cut-thru traffic. If you are a good navigator, you can enjoy a lot of nearly car-free space on some of these streets. And you can make your way from one end of town to the other. There’s also an incentive to gain confidence to venture onto more direct routes.

I have nothing nice to say about the bricks.

I’m not a fan of traffic calming infrastructure. I believe sane speed should be governed by a sense of RESPECT for others (culture change). In the meantime, relentless law enforcement would do the trick (there’s a reason motorists don’t speed through school zones). I’m biased against traffic furniture by some really awful stuff I’ve seen around here.

That said, some of the Berkeley traffic calming approaches look interesting. We’ve been seeing more traffic circles here, they are a nice alternative to stop signs.

I really like the route signs (with mileage to destinations) and the huge bike stencils. Even on a smaller scale, the Sound Loop wayfinding system in Gulf Breeze clearly encourages and facilitates cycling. Those roads had no shoulders, sidewalks, bike lanes or wide lanes, but there were cyclists of all levels with all different types of bikes using the roads. That’s mentioned in the video as well: many of the streets didn’t change much physically, they just now had the signs and stencils to give cyclists a feeling of being welcome and expected in the lane.

No system should detract from promoting the understanding that cycling is possible, safe and legal on all surface streets—regardless of speed, volume and number of lanes. A system that creates a quiet, friendly roadway network for casual cyclists, kids and novices using integrated cycling is a step forward to creating a culture where bicycles are expected as a normal part of traffic. It’s good for the neighborhood residents, the whole community, children, cyclists and pedestrians alike.

Discuss:

• What did you see in the video that you like? Don’t like?
• Would it help you or people you know be more comfortable on the road?
• Are there unintended consequences?
• Does Orlando have suitable roads to implement this type of system?
• Other thoughts…?

Here’s another cool multi-purpose kid-hauler. This one’s from an American company.

From their website:

The Company’s first product is the Zigo LEADER™, a lightweight, foldable bicycle with an integrated child carrier and four distinct operating modes:

• As a three-wheeled carrier bike, with an adult cyclist turning the pedals and one or two children in the forward-located Child Pod™, it is the ideal vehicle for transporting children or recreational cycling; while riding, parents can easily keep an eye on their kids in the forward-located Child Pod™.
• The Child Pod converts in seconds to a jogging stroller suitable for use on multiple surfaces.
• The Child Pod is also configurable as a maneuverable standard-format stroller with caster wheels, allowing the LEADER to be used around the neighborhood, in the mall, or on a boardwalk or walking path.
• Finally, the urban-style bicycle is light and maneuverable, with or without the detachable Child Pod.

The device converts easily between these formats and folds compactly for storage.

Tip of the helmet to reader, Dennis, for sending this one.

This is just one of 3 full bike-parking areas surrounding the Dommerich Elementary building. Photo by Julie Fletcher.

This morning was the kick-off of Walk n’ Roll Wednesdays at Dommerich Elementary in Maitland. It was a sight to see! Despite the gloomy, sticky weather this morning, scores of students and parents walked, biked and scooted to school together.

Based on the Walking School Bus concept, the program encourages students to use their own energy to get to school. The ultimate goal is to create a culture where children who are not eligible for bus service walk or bike to school.

Congratulations to Michelle Sartor, Jody Lazar, Jeanie Redmon and the Dommerich PTA for a terrific program and successful kickoff event!

If you’d like to create a program like this in your neighborhood, the Winter Park Health Foundation is hosting a free program, How to Help Kids Walk and Bike to School Safely Workshop from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. September 23 at Leu Gardens in Orlando.  Dommerich parents Michelle Sartor and Jody Lazar, who launched Walk n’ Roll, will talk about their experiences. RSVPs are required for attendance at the workshop – email RSVPs to wphf@wphf.org

The workshop is part of the Winter Park Health Foundation’s Think•Act•Be Healthy Communities Initiative.