cycle-touring kids & their loaded panniers

[shootingstar]

ehhhh I started touring with my mom at around that age (probably 11-12 ish). I certainly did not carry a pillow and a teddy bear... I carried all of my own clothing, my sleeping bag and pad, and part of the food/cooking kit. My mom did take the tent, so I never had the heaviest load, but I did take my share. Kids are tougher than you think they are.

What distances did you cycle at that age?

[Eden]

What distances did you cycle at that age?

If I remember correctly we kept it around 30 miles per day.

[Crankin]

When we did our supported tour in and around Quebec City 2 years ago, we saw many families touring on the Route Vert with huge, heavy bikes loaded panniers, etc. I was amazed. I would like to try this someday, but I don't know if I need *another* bike. Besides my road bike, I have a hybrid (Jamis Coda) and a mountain bike. My husband has a Bike Friday, but it's the road bike model. We could probably do a local tour or short one on the Jamis' but I think the flat bars would bug me.
We've thought about trading in the BF for 2 touring Bike Fridays. What's another few thousand dollars at this point????

[Triskeliongirl]

You can tour on a road bike friday, its all marketing hype. Yes, you can put tires as wide as 2" on a NWT, but you can go 1.35" on a road model which is plenty wide even for packed dirt.

I toured from chiapis to guatemala on my bike friday pocket rocket pro. The only issue may be whether he has a model that accepts a front rack (all accept rear racks, pocket rockets have both, pros just take rear), and how much weight the bike accepts vs the rider plus luggage weight. You guys are small so unless he has a pocket pro petite you'll be fine.

[Tri Girl]

We're nowhere near anyplace that any bike tourers want to ride, so I've never actually seen people riding loaded. I think it's so cool for kids to do it with their parents. What a wonderful family adventure!

Can you pull a BOB trailer with a BF? Just curious. Not that I am going to buy a BF or a BOB, but I wondered if you could do that instead of front and rear racks for your road BF.

[Triskeliongirl]

Absolutely! I also had a trailer I'd use to go grocery shopping on my BF PRP. But really its no big deal to carry pannier bags on a std road BF unless you are a very heavy rider already close to the weight limit of the bike.

[Crankin]

Interesting, Trisk. He has the Pocket Rocket Pro, so it would take just the rear rack. I would have to get the "petite" size in that bike... He hardly ever rides it, except when he goes to Europe. And his last trip, about a month ago, he didn't take it at the last minute, because it was raining and 40 degrees in France and that continued the whole time he was there. He used to ride it more around here before we got our current road bikes. We really thought about getting them more so we could easily take our bikes on a vacation where we flew somewhere. So, it's not like we would be doing extended tours. Maybe 2-3 days, and it would not be camping. I mean, I like camping, but I don't want to pull that stuff around with me.
Well, it's probably not in the cards, unless I ask for it for a birthday present, for like the next 5 years, with me going back to school. Of course, it seems like we can always justify bike purchases and related shwag. We love our Jamis bikes even though we only use them for little jaunts around town. Today we rode to breakfast and a couple of errands, and it just makes you feel happy to be pedaling along at 13 mph, not totally in lycra.