Biking with Children

Last week, Erik sent along this picture of a bike trailer he bought for Anakke.  He's excited to take her on bike rides in the cool fall weather.

His email made me think about a story Carmella told me a few months ago.  To understand the story though, you need to be familiar with the various types of child carriers that bikes can have.

When I was little, there was just one type of child carrier, pictured below.  Dad had one on his bike, but I don't remember riding in it much.  It still got use though, because he'd wedge his briefcase in there and pedal off to work.

There are newer ones which mount on the front of the bike.  Last week on my bike into work, a guy riding a bike with an empty one joined my street from another, and I couldn't help thinking that his seat was like the minivan of the bike industry.  I couldn't let him pass me with that contraption hanging off the front!

Now, to the story.  A few months ago, Carmella was driving through Vancouver, and came to the intersection of 16th and MacDonald.  This is a pretty busy intersection, with two lanes in each direction joining.  16th has a boulevard, so it takes quite awhile to cross 16th if you're on MacDonald.

Carmella was waiting at the intersection, and saw that there was a mom on a nice cycling trip with her young son also waiting at the intersection.  Carmella was in the car, and this mom had her son in one of the rear-mounted child seats.  When it was time to cross the street, the mom began to bike, and carmella waited for them to pass.

I've read that the rear child seats sit quite high up, skewing the centre of balance of the bike making it difficult to ride.  This would be even more difficult when starting from a stopped position.  If you're a regular or casual rider, you know that you're at your wobbliest when you start riding from being stationary.  The city of Portland also knows this, and allows cyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs, recognizing that most bike incidents in intersections happen when the rider is just starting up, wobbling all around the intersection before able to ride quickly and confidently.

The woman that Carmella was watching cross the street also knows that bikes are at their most wobbly when starting from a stopped position.

As she started to ride, her bike leaned way over to one side.  It leaned way over,  dumping the young child into the street!  She didn't realize it, and kept riding away.  The child, just a bit past walking age, stood up in the middle of the street and began crying.  Carmella and the rest of the vehicles didn't move.

The child kept crying, but realizing that his tears would do nothing to improve his situation, decided to chase after his mom instead.  She'd crossed the intersection and turned the corner, still riding.  Her son is chasing after her into the intersection, which is larger than normal due to the boulevard. He's running and crying, and has his arms stretched out toward his mom.

His mom hadn't realized she'd dumped her child into the busy street yet, and wondered why all the cars were honking at her.  When she drove by, Carmella gestured towards the empty baby seat.  The neglectful mother looked back, noticed there was no child on the bike anymore, and got really worried!

By that point we can only assume that the mother collected her child, told him she loved him and wouldn't ditch him like that again, and carried on with her motherhood.  Carmella drove by, with only the regret of not having a camera to catch the whole thing.

So, if you're buying kid bike seats, be careful in the type you choose!  Safety first!  And don't neglect your children!

More pictures!

Here are some more pictures. These have a family theme. I chose random ones without too much thought towards blinking, etc.

Marlene gave us 6 identical CDs, and one cd with all 803 will live at Mom and Dad's, so everyone can see all of them! I'll also work on emailing relevant pictures to everyone too.

Carol readies the tables!

I blink as Er helps with my tie

Carol!

Carol looks on as Er shaves my errant neck hairs.

Dad yawns

We wait for guests to arrive

Carol and Minke are disappointed that their trivia answers aren't right, and they will pay by waiting a bit longer to eat!

I hold court!

Some teaser wedding photos!

Marlene did a fantastic job on our wedding photos!  I'm pretty sure they're better than anyone else's, ever!

Not really much else to say, other than a huge thank you to Marlene for her time, effort, and expertise!  Here are a sampling. 

Weekends in Vancouver

There are a lot of things that people can do on the weekends in Vancouver, and one of my favourite is going to the beach.  This past weekend, Carmella and I went on both Saturday and Sunday.

An interesting thing about going to the beach in Vancouver is that it doesn't always involve sand and water; it can simply mean sitting in a park that's close to the beach.  Here are a couple pictures.

On Saturday, we went to Kits beach.  Douglas Coupland, in his book City of Glass, explains that all the beautiful people in beer commercials must come from somewhere, and that somewhere is Kitsilano.  Volleyball!  Tans!  Smuggled booze!

I didn't really see that part of it until this week, but you can see it if you look.  I'm sure people work out all year so they can parade through Kits Beach.  Some people walked by on the path a great number of times, and many of these people also had great numbers of muscles and at least a few tattoos. 

The grass section in my picture still counts as Going To The Beach.  You can see the beach proper in the distance, and downtown.

On Sunday, we sent to Trafalgar Beach, which is less than one km west of Kits Beach.  It's a natural beach, so there's driftwood, seaweed, and rocks.  I like it better than Kits Beach, as there are fewer people there.  Also, the sand is really nice because it's natural.  They trucked the sand into Kits Beach, so it's kind of dirty and feels like an ashtray.  Aussies may think the sand at Trafalgar is simply dirt, but we like it!

Sunday was great.  Our friends Wes, Cindy, and Corrina were there, and we spent about four or five hours just sitting on the blanket, tossing rocks around, and doing exactly what you want to do on Sunday afternoon, which is pretty much nothing. 

It's quite nice the way a whole afternoon can be spent sitting in the sand.  For the first few minutes I find it hard to settle down, and I feel like I need a soccer ball or a frisbee.  After about half an hour though, I'm ready to simply enjoy the surroundings.

Going to the beach is a great thing that we're able to do in Vancouver, and it's really close to our apartment too.  I have to remember to enjoy the beach while the weather is nice!

Our new couch!

As a wedding present, we got money towards a couch from many sources. We got some from Mom and Dad, Carol and Craig, and also Carmella's grandparents. It was a team effort!

After a long, hard search, we found just the couch we needed. This one turns into a bed, has a chaise lounger, and was a sectional that needed to be put together, which meant it would be able to enter our apartment. Our basement suite has awkward doors and hallways, so getting something inside, and being able to move it out when the time comes, was a huge consideration.

Ikea was charging $200 to deliver the couch. I thought there had to be a better way, like renting some equipment from UHaul. I tried to get the same 4'x 7' trailer that I got to transport gear to our wedding, but it was rented already. I went with a cube van instead, and still saved about 75% compared to the price of having Ikea deliver it.

It's a good thing we rented the van though, because the boxes almost fill up the whole cargo area! It wouldn't have been possible with the small trailer. Good thing we upgraded.

Carmella and I lifted the four boxes into the house. This was quite the process, and included dragging them along the grass, struggling down stairs, and negotiating doors and hallways.  The smallest ones were the heaviest, which foiled me when I thought taking the big ones out first would save the easy ones for last.

Michael was staying over, and he helped us build the couch.  It was quite the process, and took him about four hours.  I was there for the last two.  It was great to have him do a lot of the work before I got there!  I didn't think to get any action shots of the build process unfortunately, because we were so focused on the task.

Michael had an appointment here in Vancouver today (Friday) and would need somewhere to sleep at our house on Thursday.  On Tuesday night we realized we had only one day to buy the couch, and that would be Wednesday.  It was the week of the couch!  We could have had Michael sleep on one of our new camping sleeping pads, but we felt getting the couch would be a better idea!

Here, Michael enjoys the fruits of his labour on the chaise lounger, while Carmella demonstrates the pop-up bed.  What you can't see is that the chaise lounger also pops up to reveal a hidden storage space for blankets and pillows!  This couch delivers!

Below is our living room!  The venerable Hunter sisters, Tina and Cyndi came over to christen it, and to have a great dinner that Carmella made in the Crock Pot, (another wedding gift).

Look how cosy and social it is!  We had a great game of Ticket to Ride, which Carmella won.  I wonder if I shouldn't have introduced her to gaming, because ever since I did I can count my victories on my fingers and toes.

Also note our new TV.  It was a fun project to buy that, also with money we were given on our wedding.  We wanted something that wouldn't be a trophy in the living room nor dominate the space.  I felt that something 26" would be ideal, and found a set at Best Buy or Future Shop or somewhere else that would work well.  Carmella told me it was too much money, and slashed my budget by 33%!

I realized I had to change my game plan, so I then looked into what Craigslist posters had to offer.  I realized my co-worker Wes was right when he said that LCD flat panels rarely show up there.  But, to my luck, the perfect set appeared!  It was a 26" Toshiba Regza, with good sound and HDMI ports, for a great price.  The other TVs on the used market for the same price were much older and didn't have the good features that this one does.

I bought it from a friendly 20-something guy who lived downtown.  I showed up at his appartment, and he buzzed me up.  His parents were watching a massive wall-mounted set in the living room.  We talked for about three minutes, and he showed me that everything worked.  I decided to buy it.  I tried to bargain, but he wasn't into it.

(I just realized I spent three paragraphs talking about buying a TV.  The good thing is we'll only use it for DVDs, and have no plans on getting any kind of cable package, so we won't be addicted to it.)

We now have a great little living room, perfect for friends and family to share.  It's cozy and great for our little space.  Also, look at the painting Michael gave us for our wedding.  You can't see, but there are thousands of little snowflake dots on it, that he did one at a time with a pin-striping brush.  It would have taken him hours.  Or days.

Thanks for the couch everyone!  And if anyone wants to stay over, we now have a place for you.  The couch creates a double bed, so we have lots of space!

More photos than words!

Here are a few photos from the last few weeks.  When Carolyn came back from Australia for my wedding (which I'll have to post about at some point...) she gave me her old camera!  It's a Cannon PowerShot Digital Elph.  She bought it just after our China experience, and I bought the one she used until then.  They've both been great so far, and I'm happy Carol thinks of me when she needs to unload her electronics!


My new camera in action:

Here's the flag we had on our car for our honeymoon.  I still got a speeding ticket near Nakusp though.

Our little suite we rented outside of Whistler.  We were there for our friends Christine and Jeremy's wedding.

There was a small pond behind the house.  No wildlife noises that I can remember though.

We're ready for the wedding!  Carmella wears a new dress, and I wear a shirt and tie I got with a gift card from Erik.  Carmella gave them one of her paintings!  At our wedding, Jeremy said it was his favourite, so he gets to keep it! The Claw makes a cameo.

Carmella enjoys our seats at the wedding.  There were three rows of chairs, and the rest of the guests were on the balcony.

Christine reacts to the baby in the front row, beginning to cheer!  It was actually very cute!

5 bridesmaids!  The one on the far left is expecting, which caused some minor stresses leading up to the day, because she wouldn't fit the dress anymore!  They had a good solution.

I liked the colourful bouquets.  Excellent planning by someone, having water glasses all ready at the head table to hold the flowers before dinner.

I liked the lanterns and puffy decorations that hung in the tent.

We had Carmella's mom over for supper this week, so thought it was a good time to bring out the fancy tablecloth, candle holders, and vases!  Carmella also grew that sunflower outside, from a seed.  Everything in this picture came from our wedding in some way.

Christine and Jeremy's wedding was great, and my first Jewish wedding.  Jeremy stomped on a glass, that symbolizes the fragility of love if you don't care for it.  I am curious why people tend to focus on those things at weddings.

It was fun to see that tradition happen in real life.  Here's the real live action!

Another fun tradition they had was the Chair Thing.  They both sat in chairs, and then the groomsmen lifted both chairs up and danced around, while the bride and groom sat high above everyone, bobbing and swaying in their special seats.  No pictures of it unfortunately, as it was the highlight of the wedding for us!

It was fun to go to another wedding, and look for little details that didn't look like much, but likely took a tonne of time.  Like tying 80 wedding programs into a roll with ribbon!  That would have taken forever!

I'll try to take more pictures with my new-to-me camera and post them.  I've been slacking a bit lately!