Listicles: 10 Things I've Carried On My Bike

Though we do drive occasionally--Modo cars or rentals for longer trips--we tend to use our bikes when we're going somewhere between 2 & 12-ish kilometres away. This means we go out with the kids on the bikes, we run errands on the bikes, we shop for groceries on our bikes, we do growler runs & recycling dropoffs on our bikes. Pretty run of the mill stuff, generally, & not that big or heavy. However, occasionally I like to challenge myself to haul some interesting objects on two wheels, since we do have a cargo bike with huge capacity.

Here's a list of some of the more interesting things we've carried on our Yuba Mundo cargo bike:



100 paving bricks in three trips, carrying around 350 pounds at a time, including Linnaeus. 

Two 4'x8' sheets of corrugated plastic (plus Linnaeus), materials for the Mount Pleasant Family Biking Festival
Another bike--the Yuba Mundo can easily tow an adult bike behind it. Handy for taking it to the shop!

Our entire family: Bronte, Linnaeus, Oliver & me

A compound mitre saw, two plastic sawhorses & four bar clamps from the Vancouver Tool Library (plus the children) 

Seven pairs of stilts & a bag of costumes

The wood & hardware to build said stilts

An Ikea kids egg chair, bought via Craigslist

A Tripp Trapp highchair, also found on Craigslist

Four Ikea bags worth of clothes & kids' stuff for a clothing swap

I love having a bike that can handle loads like this. When we went shopping for a new blender, we didn't even bring the GoGetter bags or any straps. The big box just fit into the Bread Basket on the front of the bike, no problem.

Of course, you don't need a cargo bike to carry interesting stuff. Before we ever got our Yuba Mundo or even our child trailer--they can be great for cargo too--we carried things like a 14 pound frozen turkey, a new DVD player, a wooden chair, 40-pound bags of kitty litter, & many small Costco shopping trips.

How about you? What's the most interesting or largest thing you've carried on your bike?

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10 Reasons Not To Get A Cargo Bike

Okay, I know I've been really excited about cycling & cargo biking in general, but I've decided that I had it all wrong. Cargo biking is just terrible & here's why you really shouldn't do it:

1. You might not need to go to the gym anymore, so you'd no longer be supporting that local small business/community centre/nationwide chain.
2. If you used your cargo bike for many of the trips you would have taken by car, then you'll have the headache of deciding what to do with all the money you're saving.
3. Biking to get groceries or supplies at the hardware store instead of driving means you'd be putting less money into the struggling petroleum industry that benefits us all so much.
4. The extra exercise from cargo biking might cause you to drop a size, requiring you to get newer, better fitting clothing.
5. If everyone used cargo bikes often, rather than driving, the reduced air pollution would decrease the number of people admitted to hospital, meaning those poor doctors would have less work.
6. Because you can usually park your bike much closer to the door of your destination, you would no longer be getting the exercise benefits of that walk halfway across the parking lot.
7. Using a cargo bike rather than a car might mean you'd do the maintenance yourself, which means you'd get your hands dirty. Also, you'd be saving a lot of money, compared to the cost of a car mechanic--see #2.
8. Since cargo bikes are so affordable compared to owning & operating a car, you'd probably be very tempted to buy more than one.
9. You don't need more fresh air or exercise.
10. If everyone got a cargo bike, they'll just be commonplace & my family won't get so much attention when we go out.

Can you add any other reasons why getting a cargo bike would be a terrible idea? Share them in the comments below!

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Things my Toddler has Thrown in the Toilet This Month

1. Playmobil barrel (flushed)
2. Knit finger puppet
3. Sandra Boynton board book
4. Sandra Boynton tub book
5. Papa's toothbrush
6. Toilet paper roll (empty)
7. Toilet paper roll (full)
8. Hairbrush
9. Automoblox wheel
10. Her shoe (nearly flushed)
11. Her hands (I've lost count how many times)

Let the record show that we do in fact have a baby gate between the living room & bathroom. I've considered a toilet lock, but I'm afraid it, like the gate, would also be four-year-old-proof. Speaking of Bronte's brother, I don't remember Linnaeus doing this when he was really little. Please tell me this is just a phase. A short phase? Also: how do you disinfect a board book?!?

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Eight Favourite Christmas Songs

Are you playing Christmas music in your house? To be honest, we haven't played too much yet. There are a few that will definitely be on heavy rotation in this house though. They're not all strictly Christmas songs, but they get me in the holiday spirit.

Here are my top favourite holiday songs, including links if I could find them so you can listen to them too:

Douglas Mountain, by Raffi

Boney M's Jingle Bells

Meli Kalikimaka, as sung by Bing Crosby

Joni Mitchell River

kd lang's version of Halleluja

Bing Crosby & David Bowie singing Little Drummer Boy

John Lennon's Happy Xmas War is Over 

Christmas at the Zoo, by the Flaming Lips 

What are your faves? Do you like the traditional carols or the more modern pop stuff?

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2014 Christmas Bucket List

Photo Credit: pedrosimoes7 via Compfight cc

A few times a year, I like to make lists of things I don't want to miss out on. There's so much to do during the holidays, that I find it helpful to have a bucket list to remind me of the activities I don't want to forget. We'll be having a big Christmas dinner & spending as much time  with family as we can, of course. Here's what I'd love to do this holiday season:

1. Going krazy karpeting at a local park (if we get enough snow)
2. Making gingerbread houses (probably out of a kit)
3. Baking & decorating cookies
4. Decorating a real tree
5. Building a snowman (again, if we get any snow)
6. Riding the Christmas Train at Bright Nights in Stanley Park
7. Biking to the Trinity Street Light Festival
8. Making some gifts--we'll see how much time I have for this with two active kidlets this year!
9. Sending out holiday cards
10. Santa photos (maybe early enough to send them out in the cards!)
11. Drinking Glühwein at the Vancouver Christmas Market
12. Making more seasonal decorations for our house
13. Making an evergreen wreath
14. Visiting the VanDusen Gardens Festival of Lights
15. Buying Hope in Shadows calendars from a street vendor

I doubt we'll check off every single thing on this list, but it's nice to have a reminder so I don't get to December 24th before I remember that I wanted to take the kids to VanDusen, or something...

What activities will you be doing this holiday season? What are your top three can't-miss-out activities that you want to do with your family?

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Why Halloween Sucks (But I love it anyway)

For this week's Listicles, I couldn't decide if I wanted to talk about the best or the worst of Halloween. So I did both. Five things I hate about the holiday & five things I love about it. Truth be told though, the 'love' side wins for me--I really love Halloween.

Things I hate about Halloween:

Seriously?!? Who designs these costumes?

1. Sexy girls' costumes. Why, oh why, do four-year-olds need shiny, short-skirted, totally unrealistic dress versions of firefighter or police costumes? If you're 19 & you want to dress like that to go to a nightclub, well, fine. Your choice. But why in the world should we sexualize small children this way? (At least Value Village responded by removing these crappy costumes)
2. Narrow gender roles. Everywhere I've looked at costumes, there's a girls' rack & a boys' rack. The girls get weirdly sexed up skimpy dress versions of the boys costumes, plus several variations on princess. The boys get superhero & first responder. What happened to ghosts, zombies, pumpkins, black cats, witches & all that scary stuff?
3. Crappy quality halloween treats. When I was a kid, we still got the occasional candy apple, popcorn ball or other homemade treat from neighbours. Now everyone is so afraid of anything not hermetically sealed, so anything like that would just get thrown away before any child touched it. It's all high fructose corn syrup & numbered food dyes nowadays.
4. Unfair trade candy. Sadly, much of what North Americans spend millions of dollars buying to hand out (or eat surreptitiously in the weeks  before Halloween) is made using unethical labour practices in developing countries.
5. Plastic waste. Plastic bags from individually wrapped candy. Plastic packaging from cheap, essentially disposable Halloween costumes. 

L's 1st Halloween. I made him a hooded skeleton sleeper.

Things I love about Halloween:

1. Dress up. I love planning out, & designing costumes, then pretending to be a character. I love seeing my kids in cute costumes.
2. Sugarsugarsugar! I have a sweet tooth, & even though a lot of the candy we get is crap, & I know it's terrible for our teeth & health, I still kinda love it. Though this year I think we might try some art projects with the particularly colourful stuff. 
3. A good scare. I don't believe in ghosts or all that supernatural stuff, but there's something about the feeling of the unknown, the adrenaline rush from hearing exploding fireworks & someone in a scary mask jumping out at you, the connection with the past & the dead that I think is healthy. 
4. A creative opportunity. Most years I have dressed up in outfits that I made or at least customized myself. I like decorating for Halloween when I have the time to do it & I always carve a pumpkin or three. As the kids get older, that gets to be even more fun to involve them in the jack-o-lantern creation too.
5. Ritual & tradition. Not everyone gives out candy & not everyone goes trick-or-treating, but most people participate in this tradition, I think. It's one of those things we all have in common in Canada. In a society where there are so many different cultures & traditions, where we speak many different languages in our homes, eat many different comfort foods, but we all went trick-or-treating as kids, right?

How about you? What do you love or hate most about Halloween?

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