Trail-a-bike

I've been thinking how I can get E on a bike around our neighborhood. As I mentioned before, we live in a very hilly area, and taking E on a bike ride is not trivial--it either involves a car ride to a remote (flat) site, or a lot of pushing/awkward bending over on my part.

I saw a trail-a-bike/tag-along bike in an advertisement. My first thought was, "that's perfect! E could practice pedaling, and learn to bike with me until she's strong enough to do it on her own!" and my second thought was "does that seat have enough support? Does she need a seat belt? How will I work that into the seat? What if she gets tired and forgets to hang on?" I don't want to realize she needs help until I'm dragging her on the ground behind me (b/c her feet will have to be strapped to the pedals).

Well, I called a couple of bike shops and asked if we could test-ride one. I insisted we needed to go outside, with turns (not just sitting on it), and a few bumps. I brought our helmets and some velcro cable ties to keep E's feet in the pedals (they didn't work that well...I have a few ideas for the next run).

Here's our first try-sorry for the shakiness, our sales guy was a little jerky in the camera movements:



What you can't hear is me asking Elena "Are you okay? Do you feel safe? Are you secure?" and Elena is humming, and then answers me "THIS IS AWESOME!"

SOLD.