Tag a-longs???

[kie_fujo]

my 8yr old is terrified to learn to ride her bike and we have been using our tag a long a lot. it did take some getting used to but you do adjust. i think they are great!!

[ridenread]

Thank you all for the input. Looks like something we will persue

[runnbike]

Sorry I'm a little late getting in on this thread, but my son is now four and we tested him on a friends tag, he LOVED it. Problem is I don't. I've been pulling him in a Chariot Carrier for years and it's fantastic. The tag makes my bike VERY unstable. I'm 5'2" on a 51 cm Specialized Ruby Comp WSD. I purchased a new Burley Picallo which uses a rack mount and I am hoping will lower my center of gravity back to a managable area. I'd like input on a few things...
1. Should I be concerned pulling a bike with a carbon frame road bike?
2. I'm having to get creative mounting the rack since the bike was not designed for them. Anyone else have experience with this?

[featuretile]

I just bought my little grandson (2 years old) a running bike or balance bike. I saw a video of kids on this. It is a bike with no cranks that teaches balance. The child walks the bike and eventually picks up his feet and glides when he runs with the bike. The seat and handlebars go up to accommodate bigger children. I would have gotten one for my son if they had been around back then. Apparently, the pedaling gets in the way of learning balance. The literature says that once they master balance with this bike, they don't even need training wheels and go straight to a regular bike. Here's a link to Amazon with a picture. It might help kids who are afraid of bikes. We'll see how long it takes a 2 year old to learn to glide. He looks like he is really enjoying just walking on this 'big boy' bike (which is all he is doing so far).

http://www.amazon.com/Strider-Sports...2743380&sr=1-3

[pinkbikes]

Sorry I'm a little late getting in on this thread, but my son is now four and we tested him on a friends tag, he LOVED it. Problem is I don't. I've been pulling him in a Chariot Carrier for years and it's fantastic. The tag makes my bike VERY unstable. I'm 5'2" on a 51 cm Specialized Ruby Comp WSD. I purchased a new Burley Picallo which uses a rack mount and I am hoping will lower my center of gravity back to a managable area. I'd like input on a few things...
1. Should I be concerned pulling a bike with a carbon frame road bike?
2. I'm having to get creative mounting the rack since the bike was not designed for them. Anyone else have experience with this?

I towed my daughter on a tagalong for a few years. But I must say I didn't ever do it with my road bike and I don't think I ever would. I used my hybrid, which was a lot more forgiving of the movement out back (being a less flexible frame and heavier) and had nice fatter tyres and more substantial brakes.

Depending on the hitch system, where you locate it on the seatpost and the frame configuration, the loads can be close to point loads at the frame nodes, so they are not inherently bad. This is especially so on a bike which has been designed with some redundancy to allow for carrying loads (ie touring/hybrid bikes that you would expect to fit with racks and panniers and load on up).

But I would probably be quite concerned about loading up a road bike which is probably a more optimised design, and not set up for all of the additional loads being transmitted through parts of the bike where they are not intended. I would worry even more-so if you are being creative with mounting it in such a way that the loads may transmit twisting loads through the frame.

As for not enjoying the towing experience of the tagalong - you may be finding it unpleasant in the same way it is unpleasant towing a big trailer with too light a car - the trailer steers the car. There is a reason why towing laws (here anyway) state that the mass of the towing vehicle must be a certain percentage of the towed vehicle! I suspect the same should probably apply with taglongs to prevent the tagalong having too much influence over the ride on the tow-bike! They can be a bit deadly when the kids get all boisterous!

I have also helped a friend adapt her daughter to the same tagalong I used (a few other riders have used it in between) and the biggest thing is to train the kid that riding is a little bit serious. I sort of rode shotgun for the first little while to try to get the munchkin to sit evenly on the tagalong, keep both hands on the handlebars and look ahead. It makes a huge difference to the comfort of the tow-rider and stops them having that awful "tank-slapper" feeling when the kid suddenly whips around on their seat to point at something behind them that caught their attention.

Of course she was doing really well when I ruined the whole effect by singing the "there was an old woman who swallowed a fly" song to her as we rode along. When I got to the verse about swallowing a spider "who wriggled and giggled and jiggled inside her" the munchkin wriggled violently and nearly tossed her mother off the tow-bike!

That being said, mother and daughter (5yo) completed 4days of the Cycle Queensland without killing one another, so we did ok. CQ is a 9day tour of 500-700km depending on route.