Vancouver Christmas Market 2018 Tips

Bring a little European flavour to your holiday season at the Vancouver Christmas Market. If you've still got a long way to go on your Christmas list, shopping at the market is so much more enjoyable than the mall. Who wouldn't love being able to sip hot mulled wine--aka Glühwein or the brandy-spiked version, Feuerzangenbowle--while you peruse the shops??

Here are my top tips for this year's Vancouver Christmas Market:

1. Ich bin ein Berliner! If you're a bit peckish, don't pass by the Berliners at the Schnappsl Kaffee Haus. These beautiful jelly doughnuts are fluffy, not too sweet, but still crammed with a good amount of delicious strawberry or apricot jam so you get a little in every bite. 
2. Oh the weather outside is frightful... If the weather is a bit wet or cold when you go, remember there's the Alpine Lounge: a large heated & covered area at the north end of the market with benches & tables where you can warm up a bit with hot drinks & a wurst or some raclette.
3. FREE fun for the whole family. If you're bringing kids with you, bring them to the new heated Kinder Kraft Igloo for them to make snowflakes, decorations & colour to their heart's content, as well as a scavenger hunt activity which earns a free carousel ride if you get all the stamps! 
4. Selfie your heart out! If you're an Instagram addict, be sure to charge your phone ahead of time--there are tonnes of great spots for photos all throughout the market, inside the huge walk-in Christmas tree & the tunnel of lights. There are lights & decorations everywhere you look--it's honestly hard to find a spot without a cute seasonal backdrop. 
5. Getting there. I recommend taking transit or biking to the market, though pay parking is easily available in nearby lots. The market is close to Burrard & Waterfront Skytrain stations, as well as bus routes 22, 19 & anything that goes down Granville to Hastings. Biking to the market is easy--the seawall connects with it from the west, or the Hornby protected bike lane from the south (with a jog at Hastings over to the lane on Burrard) There is well-lit bike parking outside the busy lobby of the Shaw Tower across the street from the Vancouver Christmas Market.

The Vancouver Christmas Market is open daily from 11:30am to 9:30pm until December 23, then 11:30am to 6pm on December 24. It's located at Jack Poole Plaza, 1055 Canada Place (home of the Olympic Cauldron) in beautiful downtown Vancouver. Admission is $5-10 per person, which gets you a season's pass, so you can go back again for free!


Disclaimer: I received free admission, drink, & food at the family media night to facilitate this review. I was not otherwise compensated for writing this review.

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Bike To Shop Day Vancouver

Today is Vancouver's first Bike to Shop Day! Though I've been biking to shop since I started bike commuting almost twenty years ago, I still get a bit of a thrill when I bring a bunch of stuff home under my own power. (Here's an illustrated list of some of the more impressive things I've transported home by bike here if you're curious)

Spring 2015 a hashtag all about shopping by bike went viral. #Quaxing was all over Twitter & Instagram--do you remember? Here's my post on what it is & how to be awesome at it. Spoiler Alert: you don't need a ton of expensive gear to do it! 

Also last year, before Bike to Shop Day was really a thing in Vancouver, I wrote a list of six reasons why you should try biking to shop. Reasons to add to the list: win prizes! Get free snacks! Save money with discounts at participating businesses! Meet some new friends on the themed rides!

HUB has all kinds of fun planned today between 11am & 3pm, from Celebration Stations, like during Bike to Work Week, several themed rides with experienced bike to shoppers along the way to give you tips & tricks for things like transporting pets by bike, plus free bike repairs, snacks, & more at the stations. Find a map of the celebration stations & more information about the rides here. (PS: I'll be talking family biking at the Celebration Station in Victory Square downtown--come by & say hello!)

Register for Bike to Shop Day: it's free online & makes you eligible to win the grand prize: a trip for two to the Okanagan with Accent Inns and Pacific Coastal airlines! You'll also help HUB gain valuable data that they can share with local businesses & decision-makers. (*cough* Commercial Drive BIA *cough*). As long as you're biking to shop at some point, register by midnight & you'll be entered!

See you on the bike paths!

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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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The Art of Carrying Things By Bike

Locking up at the racks for a Costco shop

I'm no stranger to carrying things by bike. It's become second nature to carry children, groceries, home improvement materials, tools, or small furniture on my bike. But I have a cargo bike with a weight capacity of 440 pounds, right? Thing is, I've only had the Yuba Mundo longtail for a year & a bit. Before that we would use the child trailer to haul stuff sometimes, & before that it was just my rear rack & my panniers on my normal bike.

When a member of the Cargo Cyclists group posted a video to the group & asked how we got started carrying stuff by bike, I tried to think back to what it was for me. But after 16+ years of transportation cycling, I can't remember any one thing that spurred me on. I do know that car sharing with Modo was a big part of me choosing bike rather than car most of the time. Because I'm invoiced monthly with a breakdown per trip, I have become very aware of what driving actually costs. Before we go anywhere, I ask myself: is it worth it to add $15 onto the Costco trip? Should we spend an extra $25 to get to Ikea faster? Do we need to spend $50 to get to __'s house?

(By the way, if you think that Modo is really expensive per trip, sit down & add up all the costs of owning a car, including insurance, depreciation, payments, maintenance, gas, parking, tolls, cleaning, etc, then divide by the kms that you drive & your numbers won't be all that different.)

Most of the time, my answer is no, so we bike. & we haul stuff on the bikes. Not only is it fun & empowering to get there on my own steam, but it's good exercise & pretty much free. I love the challenge of figuring out the best way to pack my panniers or secure bulky things to the bike. This video gets that fun across & shows you how you can do it with any bike. If you've never shopped by bike, or carried kids or pets by bike, take a look & you might be inspired to start.

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Who Needs A Car? Carrying Bulky Items on a Cargo Bike

The past few weeks have been crazy busy with organizing the Mount Pleasant Family Biking Festival, plus building stilts & teaching a class. These two things have offered me some new challenges in carrying awkward things by bike. I'll admit it, this is basically a hobby of mine: figuring out how to carry weird or heavy or bulky things home on my Yuba Mundo under my own steam, rather than booking a Modo carshare vehicle.

First I needed to pick up some lumber & hardware to build the stilts. I've carried long loads before on the Yuba, so I knew how I was going to attach it: strapped & bungied to the basket at the front & the running boards at the back. This is only possible because the Yuba Mundo basket is frame mounted, so it doesn't turn when I move the handlebars.

When I was loading up the Yuba outside Home Depot, I realized that the lumber was angled in a bit at the back, as the rear rack is narrower than the basket, so I didn't have as much room for my legs as I would have liked. It wasn't ideal for stability at stop lights on the way home, as I had to keep my legs inside the space afforded by the lumber, with a narrower stance than I'd prefer. But I didn't tip over--I didn't actually have to stop many times along the quiet side streets that I took to get home.

To build the stilts, I decided to join the Vancouver Tool Library so that I could borrow some sawhorses, clamps, & a compound mitre saw. I had the kids with me too, so it was a bit awkward to load up the bike. Because the saw was probably 50 pounds or so, the bike tipped over on the sidewalk. Though tipped over is probably not quite the right word. With the saw & the running boards on the side, the bike tipped about 45 degrees before we caught it. Bronte & Linnaeus were a little surprised but never touched the ground.

When I returned the tools to the VTL, I thought I'd try using our MEC single child trailer with my old commuter. While the load was more balanced, I still had the problem of the bike tipping over, since the kick stand isn't that strong & the load pulled on the side trailer hitch. The ride also reminded me of why I love my cargo bike: no yoyoing. Riding a few kilometres with the trailer loaded up to 70-80 pounds was annoying. Over every tiny bump or hill the trailer pulled back at my bike. Downward it pushed. I wasn't concerned about my brakes or steering, but it's quite frustrating to really feel the load pulling you back like that. On the Yuba Mundo, even with a hundred pound load, it rides like a regular bike & feels smooth.

On the way to my stilt class, I took the obligatory before photo: seven pairs of stilts, plus a large (though light) bag of props. This load was probably the tallest I've ridden with & there was some movement of the stilts when I went over bumps, but I just rode slowly & it was fine.

On the way home from the stilt class, I only had the props & my own stilts to bring with me, which felt so light!

I've done many Costco runs with our Yuba, so this one wasn't terribly different, except for the quantity of drinks I bought. I carried over 18L of juice boxes & cans of pop, on top of granola bars, magazines, chips & other groceries. Plus two children, as usual.

Probably the funniest thing I carried in the past few weeks was two sheets of corrugated plastic. I decided to make two 'walls' where people could post tips & why they love family biking at the festival. Corrugated plastic seemed like the best way to do this, but how to get it home? I strapped a box onto the side of my Bread Basket to give more space for my handlebars, then attached the 4' by 8' pieces of plastic there & to the rear child seat. We looked a bit like a parade float riding down the street--the plastic covered everything but my head. There was a little wind, so I held one side while riding at walking speed from the hardware store.

Hauling all this stuff on a bike might seem crazy to some people & I'm sure that a lot of people I pass ask themselves, "Why doesn't she just use a car?". But being able to carry loads that are really heavy or long or awkward, sometimes even things that wouldn't fit in a regular vehicle easily, makes me feel strong. I feel a sense of accomplishment on my driveway as I'm unloading a carload of stuff... from my bike.

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Quaxing: What It Is & How To Be Awesome At It

A new term in the biking world popped up on my radar recently: quaxing. Have you heard of it too? It's become a social media phenomenon--just search for the hashtag #quaxing on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.

In short, quaxing is just shopping by bike, walking or transit. The unusual term was coined after a New Zealand politician made a snide comment, assuming that shopping by bike is unlikely or impossible. For more details & photos, check out Hilary Angus' story on Momentum, How #quaxing Became a Rallying Call for Everyday Cyclists.

I love that shopping by bike has become a 'thing' & how has a name. It's something I've been doing for ages, more than a decade before I ever got a cargo bike & it's really not all that hard to do. So in case you're new at quaxing, I thought I'd share some tips with you that I've learned in my 15+ years of shopping by bike:

1. Rack it! You really don't need a whole lot of special gear to shop for a few things by bike. However, a rear rack is a good idea & not expensive. It'll increase your capacity by a lot.
2. Bungees for the win! Keep a bungee cord or two on your rear rack, that you can use to strap down large items like 15-roll toilet paper packages or bags of kitty litter.
3. Bags in back. It is possible to hang one or two shopping bags off your handlebars, but unless you're only going a couple blocks on a very quiet street, it'll really affect your steering, so I wouldn't advise it. Tying the bags to your rear rack is a more stable option.
4. N+1 bags. Always have an extra reusable shopping bag with you, ideally one that has handles long enough for you to slip on your shoulders like a backpack in a pinch. If you end up buying more than you intended to, you can still get your stuff home.
5. Grab a box. A bungee can also be used to secure a cardboard box to your rear rack if needed. The sturdy fruit boxes that have holes through them in several places are perfect for this & will hold bulky items like milk jugs or bags of potatoes. Most stores have extra boxes in a bin or will give them to you if asked.
6. Skip the bags. If you do have panniers or baskets, bring them into the store with you & pack your purchases directly into them at the till. Heavy items on the bottom, lighter on the top & take care to keep items with corners away from your fruit to avoid bruising.
7. Kid control. If you're shopping with young children in tow, plan how you'll keep them from running amok while you load up your bike. If you've got a cargo bike or a child trailer, you're golden! Just load them in first. It's still doable to shop with kids on a regular bike, however. At the grocery store, I always use a shopping cart, even if I only need one or two items, because I can keep the kids in there while I load up the bike so they don't run into the parking lot. Bringing a lightweight carrier can work in stores where you wouldn't have shopping carts, so you can keep a baby or toddler on you until you're ready to strap them into their seat. Sometimes I ask my four-year-old to help me load up or unlock the bike to keep him occupied or just get him to hold onto the bike frame.
8. Get the word out. Wear your helmet into the store or mention that you're shopping by bike. We need to make sure that business owners realize how many of their customers arrive by bicycle so they'll add racks when needed & support cycling infrastructure improvements around their stores.

Hope these tips are useful for you. Have you got any to add--write them in the comments below--I'd love to hear from you!

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