Comment

Comment by Todd Allen on April 23, 2010 at 4:04am

Here's my suggested route for the May 15th Rogers park ride. I did this using Google maps. I plan to test ride Saturday afternoon (~3 pm) May 8th. Please comment and let me know if you want to join me for the test ride.

From Warren Park to Indian Boundary park, 0.5 miles
N Oakley
W Lunt
enter Indian Boundary park
stop and ask who wants to play/ride here and who wants to ride a neighborhood loop

neighborhood loop, 1.5 miles (could easily expand another mile or so):
S Campbell (or Rockwell)
W North Shore
N Francisco
E Lunt (or Estes)

From Indian Boundary park to Warren park, 0.5 miles
S Campbell (or Rockwell)
E Albion

Comment by Todd Allen on April 21, 2010 at 4:14am

Please add your suggestions/vote for location, time and route for a ride on the 3rd Saturday of June (the 19th)

http://www.thechainlink.org/group/kidicalmass/forum/topics/vote-for...

Comment by buddaa38 on April 19, 2010 at 3:01pm

Say you ride on the white line or a little inside the white line of a bike lane & a car door opens all the way. You will have an 1" or less gap between you & the door. So I agree with Kathy that isn't enough room. If you take a safety 101 class you would understand a lot more. You may contact Albany Park Bikes for safety classes.

Comment by Kathy Schubert 'n Suzy Schnauzer on April 19, 2010 at 1:48pm

Regarding suggestions for riding listed below, I don't think arm's length away from a car is enough distance. Car doors are bigger than that.

Comment by Kohaku on April 19, 2010 at 1:03pm

I feel the ride went very well. No displays of disappointment to me from any of the parents.

Comment by Kohaku on April 19, 2010 at 12:57pm

Depending on the neighborhood, you can plan a two park ride. The smaller kids can do the first leg of the route then stay for activities. The rest of the group continues the ride to a second destination. Reverse order for the way back or just meet up at the start. This will include everyone at the beginning, and nobody will feel like they had to turn back.

Comment by Todd Allen on April 19, 2010 at 12:17pm

I'm not keen on banning kick scooters or tricycles or anything else. But I would like to set guidelines that encourage a minimal level of ability, say 5 mph (or call it a jogging pace if that makes it more clear). The issue is that when we go really slow to accomodate toddlers the older kids get impatient and we have more trouble reigning them in.

My expectation is that if we have turn around points where we are prepared to split the ride in an organized way we can still allow everyone who shows to participate but keep a little better pace from the start. As soon as the youngest start to tire we can make the split.

Comment by Hannah Bass on April 19, 2010 at 12:07pm

Hey all!

I also want to echo how nice the ride was. A lot of parents told me they were very happy with the ride, including the dad who had to come back on his own. I attempted to stick with them, and they said that I should go ahead and they would try to get in touch with the other group that was going back, but apparently they were not able to. I definitely believe that the "non-child-attached" adults should exchange cell phone numbers or figure out a way to have communication in case of those types of situations. I think that the flier should state that those who have bike maintenance issues (training wheels, air in the tires, etc...) should make it to the start time (9am), and then maybe those leading the ride should bring basic tools with them. Todd and I discussed the necessity of bringing water (kids dehydrate faster than adults - more surface area). Also, we discussed the issue that a lot of folks who are not regular bikers, and don't have a strong grasp of safe biking with kids were on the ride. Here's some ideas for safety suggestions to put on a flier:

- Show your child your arm. Tell them to be an adult's arm length from parked cars at all times. (to avoid dooring)

- On roads with two-way traffic, always stay to the left of your child to act as a buffer against oncoming traffic.

- We obey all traffic laws, but if a green light turns red while the group is going through, we will all continue going through the light to stay together as a group.

- We will mass up at stop lights and stop signs.

- All kids stay behind a designated Adult leader when on the street in order to keep the group together.

- Only adults over the age of 18 can be crossing guards.

- Children ages 4 and below should probably ride with mom and dad unless they are known to be a strong biker. This is an all ages ride, and can be exhausting for our younger riders. The ride is in the street, but closely monitored as a group ride. Please bring helmets (bought within two years time for proper safety), and if your child is on a tricycle, consider bringing a trailer or a child's bike seat for this ride.

- Adults are responsible for their child's safety on this ride. While the ride is fun and an opportunity to meet other parents from the community, please be attentive and be sure that your children are biking safely.

Todd and others, feel free to comment or amend any of these. It's a little off the cusp, but it includes a bunch of the things we were talking about after the ride. Hope it's helpful!
Hannah

Comment by Andrew Bedno on April 19, 2010 at 8:28am

Chiming in to agree, well enough done, all. My personal experience was deeply meaningful. I got to be Uncle A again! Plus some parents recognized me from clowning. Hope I was responsible enough, I'm playing through some challenging back pain.

We (me+David+Jera+Annie) brought SIX young'uns. They came by van (due to two tiniest in a trailer) but returning we got the two oldest to ride MILES back home, very likely setting both of their young distance records.

The scooter girl was ours, partly I think we didn't have enough bikes, but also I wouldn't rule out scooters. I own a "Razor" and it's good tech, on par with board and inline. She did the whole day with energy to spare.

Todd, etc, your follow up here reviewing and revising, learning and applying, is exactly what's going to continue to make this great. Looking forward to the next one!

Comment by BalloonBiker on April 19, 2010 at 3:58am

I had a great time on the ride. Thanks so much to Todd for putting it together. I agree that it would be helpful to give the parents some kind of flyer with reminders on etiquette and times and routes that we are going to be following. It certainly was sometimes hard to keep the group together...particularly when we got to the path.

Some of the older kids had a tendency to rush ahead, which didn't seem to be unsafe, but did seem to be out of line with the goals for the ride.

I'm certainly looking forward to the Rogers Park ride.

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