I've been off the bike for the past few days, unfortunately, because my dear wife is away doing research in Nicaragua until Monday the 23rd, leaving me in sole control of my two young terrorists. Usually, the whole family can travel by bike, because Anna has a seat on the back of her rig for the little one and I tow the bigger one in the trailer, but with two kids and one adult, the equation gets complicated. Also, their preschool is in Middletown (near Anna's work), and even if I did have a two-kid trailer, I couldn't get them to school then get me to work in a timely fashion if I had to ride all the way there.
All of which is to say, I am going crazy because I have a great new bike but I'm not getting to ride it. I can say that before the wife went away, I got to ride from Middletown to New Haven and back on my Swift folder, and the hype is true: The thing really does hold up nicely on long rides, with many of the favorable long-distance attributes of full-sized road bikes. Unfortunately, it also suffers from some of the same deficits of full-sized bikes, namely, if you make the stupid mistake of riding 50 miles on a 100-degree day, it will not help you to feel less overheated. Also, if you ride it to Kenny's for PHH on a Tuesday night and it has a slow leak in the back tire and you are stupid enough not to carry a spare tube, it will not save you from having to walk home.
In other sponsor news, the Manhattan Portage businessy commuter bag is performing admirably. Before I was de-bike-ified by my wife's departure, I took it on a mid-sized grocery run, filled it to the brim, and switched from shoulder strap to backpack straps for carrying comfort. That was great. And since then, I've been lugging my laptop and lunch and voluminous court filings around the state in it and it has been everything I'd ever hoped for in a bag. Also, the "waterproof fabric treatment," about which I was skeptical, did pretty well in one of the recent torrential downpours (which I rode through to go get beers at Kenny's): Everything in the bag actually stayed dry! Thanks, Manhattan Portage, you champion of companies!
Terrorists indeed, I think that one is about to plant an IED on your bottom bracket.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about my terrorists is, they don't plant IEDs - they are IEDs. Especially the little one, who's still too small to be potty trained.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, actually, how their approaches to extremism differ: The one-year-old is an unreformed militant, fully willing to risk life and limb to get what he wants (this is most evident in his devil-may-care approach to giong down stairs). The four-year-old, in contrast, seems to favor civil disobedience and various forms of political theater to bring about change.
I knew from the picture the little one meant business. Anyone who wears elastic-waist jeans knows sometimes theres just not time for fashion. He obviously knows whats up. What're his thoughts on Cuba?
ReplyDeleteThis is actually a picture of the big one back when he was the only one. But the truth is, both boys rock nthe elastic waist jeans, both boys mean business, and neither has taken a firm position on the Cuban regime.
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