How far can you ride with a baby?

[lph]

Pfft on them. Sure taking kids out is more work, logarithmically so at times, but it's so worth it.

Oh, absolutely.

You will probably need to be flexible about what you do and how far you go, and all kids are different, of course, but there is no end to the outdoor activities you can do with kids. Some things we found were just not worth the hassle taking kids to, like rock climbing. Parents we knew did take their kids, and enjoyed it, but we were fairly focussed on climbing for exercise and training, and found it hard to enjoy an outing when we always had to be ready to go feed someone, or throw pine cones into a stream instead ;-) Hiking with kids was great fun, though.

[NbyNW]

Congratulations Kiwi Stoker!

I don't know the answer to your question because I'm just trying to figure it out myself. DS is 9 months old and weighs 15 pounds. Right now he is starting to get really mobile -- quite a bit of pre-crawling, so one consideration is that I do want to make sure he gets a significant amount of his own "playtime" so that he can move around and develop his motor skills. Spending hours confined in a baby carrier or a stroller or carseat or bike trailer might not be conducive to that.

Right now he will nap for 40+ minutes in the afternoon, in a stroller or strapped to me in a carrier, when I take the dog for his walk. If I didn't have to walk the dog I would probably be exploring some kind of bike trailer option right now. Also, he still needs to eat quite frequently. The logistics go something like this: feed (20-40 minutes), change diaper, feed myself and use restroom, change diaper again, get dressed for going outside if I'm not already, clean up mess that baby made while I was taking care of myself (latest trick is to overturn a pitcher of water that we keep on the coffee table - which means yet another new diaper and a new outfit), make sure diaper bag is stocked, bundle up baby and strap him to me, or carry stroller down steps and strap baby in. So by the time we are ready to start our walk we may have at most 1.5 hours before he needs to eat again. So when we are out I either need to find some place warm and dog-friendly where I can nurse the baby or I have to get home. Yesterday we had him out with us in central London for about 5 hours. He did okay, but didn't nap like he usually does, so that had repercussions for our evening routine.

So basically at this stage I could see doing short, < 2-hour rides with the baby. Of course this means I would need to go bike shopping, since I left all my bikes in the US.

One question I have about bike trailers is whether or not they allow a baby to sit rear-facing. For car seats it is recommended (required in some places) that kids sit rear-facing until at least 2 years of age, because of the neck stability issues that others have mentioned. Given that you could get up to a decent clip even trailing a fair amount of weight, I'm wondering if rear-facing might also be a good idea for bike trailers. I'm pretty sure I've only seen forward-facing on the street, but I haven't done a whole lot of research.

[lph]

We used a Burley Solo trailer and a small reclining car seat that we strapped securely to the base frame of the trailer. It could equally well have faced backwards, but since the seat reclines so much that he was practically lying down I doubt it would have made much difference. The car seat took so much space that a regular size seat wouldn't fit, though, so when he outgrew the small one we put him straight into the built-in trailer seat. Which was pretty hammocky and gave poor support, to tell you the truth, especially with a bike helmet stuck on top... I think I would just count on keeping to a safe speed.

One thing that we never bought but I really wish we had was the add-on single wheel thingy for older kids, where they can pedal for themselves or just sit and enjoy the ride. I think it would have been a blast to have!

[NbyNW]

One thing that we never bought but I really wish we had was the add-on single wheel thingy for older kids, where they can pedal for themselves or just sit and enjoy the ride. I think it would have been a blast to have!

Our neighbors back in Seattle had a custom-built triple tandem built for this purpose. Not sure how old the girl was when they got it -- maybe 6 to 8 -- and she is now a young teenager. She has grown quite a bit, but they have been able to adjust the bike to keep up with her!