Riding bikes to school with my kids

Published 2024-06-12

This is one of my favorite blog posts♥

If daycare is “school” then I have been riding bikes to school with my kids for fifteen years.

At first they rode in a (weatherproof) Burley trailer, with blankets and smoothies and toys. Pretty posh!

Preschool age kid in a Burley trailer on his way to preschool

In Kindergarten they graduated to a tagalong bike. With one wheel, no brakes, and one gear, which attaches to the back of a grownup bike. (How much they actually pedalled was not always reliable.)

Two kids on kids’ bikes, a woman on a touring bike, towing a third kid on a tagalong bike

Each kid got their first “big kid bike” (with gears and brakes) for their sixth birthday. And so by first grade they were riding themselves to school. Every one of the kids was excited to ditch the trailabike and get themselves to and from school entirely under their own power.

All three kids, elementary school age, on our way to school on a nice spring day

We started doing this when we lived in the hillsy woodsy part of Southwest Portland, which meant I was usually towing one-plus kid 500 or 1000 vertical feet. At that time, our commute was about 10 miles each way. Eventually we moved to the eastside, about five miles from school, with much less climbing.

For a while the family schedules were such that I would bike the kids to school and then Jenny or her dad would pick them up in the afternoon in a car. By the time all three kids were in elementary school, I was riding with them before and after school.

By middle school they were horsing themselves both ways, without Dad tagging along. I did insist they ride together — especially in the morning. Two-plus kids on bikes are more visible, and in inner Portland (where we live), drivers are much more courteous to kids on bikes than adults on bikes. We keep their bikes lit up like Merry Fricking Christmas.

On my Strava heatmap, about a quarter of Portland — the areas between our homes and schools — is a sea of deep red. We sniffed out every possible route, including all kinds of fun shortcuts through parking lots or waterfronts or goat trails or unimproved streets. One of our favorite things when riding past a DEAD END sign was to say “not a DEAD END for us!” We eventually settled on a few dozen reliable routes, which we (not intentionally) named according to remarkable features on those routes. For example:

The Hilly Route
The Super Hilly Route
Devil’s Drop
The Secret Passage
Creston School
Downtown
The Mystree
Heron Bridge
Piggy Spiral
Henry

We liked our school commute so much that we kept it up even during the Pandemic lockdown. (OK, this was Jenny’s idea.) Every day before remote school we would ride in a big loop, five to ten miles, from our garage and back.

All three kids on our remote schooling “commute”

Did they ever complain? Ha! Did they ever not complain? But it only took a few really miserable days to discover the right combination of raingear, insulation, and fenders to physically ward off most weather. But yeah, they complain. Not gonna lie: it is often cold, and dark, and wet, even by the standards of Oregon kids. Sometimes I complain.

Orion on the tagalong, looking miserable

But for fifteen years riding bikes to (and from) school with my kids has reliably been one of the favorite parts of my day.

We explore roads we’ve never taken before.

Iris and Ada on a barely-passable unimproved street, on an icy morning

We make side quests through parks or up hills or along creeks.

Bikes on Mt. Tabor: a grownup bike with a tagalong, and a kids’ bike

We take all those sneaky shortcuts.

Iris and Orion riding up a goat path in a wooded median

We stop for donuts, or cocoa, or ice cream.

Ice cream stop with Ada

We see a really surprising variety of wildlife.

Two of my kids in bike helmets, looking over a railing at a great blue heron in a small swamp, with houses in the background

We learn how tough we really are, and that we can fix a lot of problems (like flat tires) by ourselves.

Three kids on bikes on a dark street, brightly illuminated with blinky lights and colorful gear

And there is something magical about the wiggly structure of a half-hour bike commute that lends itself to interesting conversations like:

What are colors, really?
What is the cutest animal?
How did you and Mama meet?
Where do names come from?
(Did you know I used to be an uncle?)
What happens when you die?
What does a “Vice President” do?
Where do people come from?
Where do babies come from?
What is a “gender,” anyway?

Umpteen years ago, when I was a brand-new dad, a friend with older kids said to me:

“one day I realized I had changed my last diaper, and I didn’t even remember it.”

I have had that thought in my head for as long as I’ve been a parent. Right now I think this thing (diapers, icy bike commutes, ER visits) sucks…but someday I will miss it. From the first, I knew I would miss riding bikes to school with my kids. The kids are tweens and teens now and one of them is even driving, so I have been weaning myself off this powerful parenthood drug I’ve been on for fifteen years. It’s not easy.

I don’t remember when I changed my last diaper but I have a lot of memories (and photos) of riding bikes to school with my kids.

Three tween/teenage kids on bikes, with backpacks