Kid's Eye View

Yesterday was my bakfietsiest day yet! At 8:45 a.m., I loaded Zeb into the bak and headed downtown to grab some bagels on my way to Luke and Jasper's t-ball game a few miles away. Since it was my first time bakfeitsing to t-ball, I thought it best that I just bring the baby since I wasn't quite sure about how long it would take me (and I didn't want Lukas and Jaz to be late). Almost the entire route is on the bike path, and it's almost entirely just slightly uphill. You don't really notice that it's uphill until you realize that you never really have an excuse to coast (and when you turn around to go home, you just fly back). It's somewhat aggravating. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to see that it didn't take me too much longer on the bakfiets than it takes me on my regular bike (at least with only one kid in the box!).

I dropped Zeben at t-ball with Lena and the boys, and then pretty much right away had to turn around and bike a few miles back to town, where I was supposed to be doing car seat inspections for the Parents' Center starting at 10:00 (I got there at 10 past . . . bakfiets time?). Bakfietsing without any kids in the box was not quite as much fun (I just love getting to talk to them while I'm biking and getting to see how much they enjoy it), but it was still pretty fun. It was my first chance to try out the 8th gear. The bakfiets can go really fast once it gets going. It felt great.

After I got home from doing car seat checks, I loaded Lukas and Zeben into the box and we headed over to the library.

I gave Luke my camera and told him to take pictures of whatever he wanted to on the ride. Here are the results:






It's such a different view in the front of the bike than it was riding behind me in the trailer (where he could see the back wheel of my bike and my legs). It's no wonder the kids can't get enough of this. The hill that wiped me out on Friday was already so much easier just one day later (granted, I had one less kid in the box). Luke cheered me on the whole way up, a la "The Little Engine That Could." On the second hill, he said, "wow mom, we're going up a hill and you're, like, hardly even going slow!" I did still have to switch into 1st gear for part of it, but not the whole thing. Progress.

The only downside to having captured the kid's eye view from the bakfiets is that now the kids want to use my camera all the time. Which I'm not entirely psyched about. Though it is pretty fascinating to get to see things the way that they see them. I just might have to get them their own cameras, lest they destroy mine (as they have been known to do).