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I'd like to get a Trail-a-Bike to attach to my bike for my 5-year old. I've seen many around town but know very little about them. Any suggestions on what to look for? Favored brands? Pros? Cons? Cost? What age-range are these usually meant for? Any reason not to purchase a used one? Thanks, Marian Marian
I'm not a huge bike rider but I did start riding right before I got pregnant and I really loved it. I would love to start biking again if there is any way to do it safely with my baby. I read some previous reviews that indicated that you can put an infant seat in a Burley Trailer and you cannot put a child on an attachment without a helmet unless s/he is in an infant seat.
Questions:
1. What is the earliest you can ride with a child and how?
2. What type of seat, attachment or trailer would be best to
start with?
It's not my goal to be unsafe or put my baby in harms way so if it is a bad idea to start soon just let me know and I have no problem delaying riding with my baby until s/he is ready J
When the child is older, however, dump the trailer and get a front seat. They're way more fun for everyone involved Bryce
I have heard of people putting a baby in a bucket type carseat, rear facing, in a bike trailer. I suppose that's a good solution if you MUST use your bike for transportation, but I don't think it's worth the risk just for recreational riding.
I made my husband wait until our kids were over 12 months and walking well before taking them in the trailer.
However, I will note that the trailer is a safer choice than the bike-mounted child seat, so you are on the right track. Safety Conscious
I am thinking if I should buy a trail a bike to go bike riding with my 4 year old daughter. It's the kind of bike which attaches to an adult bike. It's pretty expensive, anywere from 200 to 350 dollars and I want to make sure if it's worth the money. I don't see a lot of people riding it with their kids and I don't know anybody who has one. It looks like fun. What are the pros and cons for this bike ? Can it attach to any bike ? I have a mountain bike. Is it dangerous in traffic ? Is it popular with the children ? anon
As far as being dangerous in traffic is concerned, the trail-a-bike changes the weight and balance of your bike as well as it's length. I ride more cautiously because of that. In addition, we ask our daughter to make an extra effort to sit still and not peddle on tight turns or curves because it makes maneuvering easier for us. But that may not be the case for you. In general when I'm riding with my children, I try to ride the bike boulevards if possible because I find those streets calmer with better crossings for busy streets.
We bought our trail-a-bike at Missing Link and didn't ask to test drive it. But you can take any bike there (and at most bike shops) on a test ride so I don't see why you couldn't test ride a trail-a-bike. They work without a kid on the back just as well as with a child in the saddle (maybe even better because you don't have worry about balance). So you could start out getting a feel for it. Then you could pick up your kid and see how she likes it. Susan
He liked it, and we still use it some around town (he now is at a walkable school, so he doesn't bike commute anymore). It was good to have him connected to the adult bike and unable to cross streets when he shouldn't, etc.
I found it much harder to manage and less safe than the bike trailer, however. When he turned his head to look at something beside him, I had to compensate immediately to keep my balance. I'm an experienced bike commuter, but I never felt 100% stable on it - I couldn't turn my head safely to look at him behind me, for example, without wobblinng. It was like biking in gusty wind, but as if the wind mostly comes directly from the side but you can never tell which side it will come from next. I suspect this doesn't vary much by brand.
With the trailer I never felt unstable. Also, if for some reason I was to fall when pulling the trailer, the trailer stays upright so it is safer that way too. The trailer was of course better for hauling cargo too - we each always had a backpack, plus I had to carry the extra lock for the trail-a-bike, which adds up.
We had to frequently switch whose bike it was on, and that was a little annoying but didn't take too long. I think it fits most bikes, unless you have unusually fat tubes. - Looking forward to the transition to a two wheel bike
I am thinking about getting one of those ride along attachments for my bike - looks like half a bike with a long pole attachment - so that my almost 4 year old daughter can pedal along but still be attached to me. Can anyone who has used one of those share their experience? Was it sturdy and safe? Do you recommend a specific brand? About how long was it useful for your child? My daughter does fine on her bicycle with training wheels, but if she is riding then I can't ride too because I have to walk next to her to make sure that she stops at the corner, doesn't ride out in the street, etc. The website has some old reviews, but they are more about the kind of trailer that a child sits in, not the kind where they are actually riding a bicycle too. Wants to bike!
Does anyone know of a seat attachment for trailer bikes like the burley piccolo that provides a seat back & shoulder harness to keep a kid on the trailabike? My 3 1/2 yr old son really enjoyed his first ride on the piccolo. I thought it was great too until he told his mom about how he was riding no hands like curious george!
We are trying to decide whether to purchase a Burley D'Lite, Solo or a Wike bike trailer and are trying to figure out if manuevering any of these 3 will be reasonably manageable on BART elevators.
Alas, the D'Lite sometimes feels more like D'Spair when walking my bike or using it as a stroller in narrow or crowded areas. Like BART & the BART stations. It handles well, but it's just too darned wide. Nonetheless, I'm learning how to manage.
But you'll also want to make sure that the elevators at your BART stations are working, because getting that thing up the escalator would be tough (would it even fit?). The reason I mentioned the stroller attachment is that when dealing with BART & any other tight/crowded area, it's easier if you can detach the Burley from your bike & use it as a stroller & have your spouse, partner or friend come along & carry the bikes.
So the Burley Solo might be the way to go -- it's smaller & hence easier to manage. This depends on whether you think you'll need the extra seat for a future sibling, a friend of your child's, or carrying stuff.
As for the Wike Bike trailer, I've never heard it before. Everyone I talked to recommended the Burley so highly. And I see them all over the place & rarely see anything else. I'm not sure whether that's because the Burleys are vastly superior (as their owners & bicycle retailers insist upon), or that the Wikes aren't as well-marketed. Elisabeth
I'm looking to get a bike attachment for my five-year-old to pedal along behind me. Anyone know anything about brand, quality, weight limitations? Any recommendations? Sue
We are trying to decide whether to purchase a Burley D'Lite, Solo or a Wike bike trailer and are trying to figure out if manuevering any of these 3 will be reasonably manageable on BART elevators. River
Alas, the D'Lite sometimes feels more like D'Spair when walking my bike or using it as a stroller in narrow or crowded areas. Like BART & the BART stations. It handles well, but it's just too darned wide. Nonetheless, I'm learning how to manage.
But you'll also want to make sure that the elevators at your BART stations are working, because getting that thing up the escalator would be tough (would it even fit?). The reason I mentioned the stroller attachment is that when dealing with BART & any other tight/crowded area, it's easier if you can detach the Burley from your bike & use it as a stroller & have your spouse, partner or friend some along & carry the bikes.
So the Burley Solo might be the way to go -- it's smaller & hence easier to manage. This depends on whether you think you'll need the extra seat for a future sibling, a friend of your child's, or carrying stuff.
As for the Wike Bike trailer, I've never heard it before. Everyone I talked to recommended the Burley so highly. And I see them all over the place & rarely see anything else. I'm not sure whether that's because the Burleys are vastly superior (as their owners & bicycle retailers insist upon), or that the Wikes aren't as well-marketed. Elisabeth
Can somebody advise is there a big difference between Burley and InStep Turbo Trailer? It looks like new Burley cost $300-400, and InStep trailer can be bought at costco.com for about $200 including delivery. Does that mean that Instep so much worse than Burley? Thank you. Natasha
e are considering ordering a Trail-Gator tow bar and wondering if anyone else has experience with one. It's a substitute for a kids trailer bike that allows you to attach their bike to yours using a tow bar (it lifts the front wheel off the ground). You can ride tandem with your kid to a park or flat bike path, then disconnect the bar which slides into a bracket on the adults bike. It has primarily been sold in Europe for 4 years and meets their (stricter) safety standards. I spoke with the designer in Florida who said they have no reports at all of failure or breakage. Here is the website in case you are curious... I am going to try to talk REI into carrying it if it seems like a good alternative to a trailer bike. www.trail-gator.com Kristin
However, my daughter and I have logged some 1,000 miles or so with a Burley trailer bike in the last year and a half, so I have some experience with add-on bikes for kids.
My first concern with the Trail-Gator is that the child's bike is tipped up compared to the normal riding orientation. For the child, this changes the whole seating geometry a bit -- the seat is tilted back, the pedals are relatively farther forward compared to the seat, and the handlebars are higher up. I know that I'm fussy about micro-adjustments to the seat and handle bars on my bike, and would be bothered by the amount of tilt shown in the pictures; probably the same goes for kids.
Their Web site indicates that it should only be used with freewheeling bikes, or those without coaster (pedal) brakes. Such bikes will still have hand brakes for that rear wheel. The situation is much simpler in an arrangement where the child cannot apply brakes; the Trail-Gator set up adds that complexity to the equation.
(I've thought about what it might be like to add brakes to my daughter's trailer bike. The first issue is one of communication or mixed signals: if the kid is braking while the adult is trying to pedal, there's going to be a problem. Another thing that occurred to me is that on a heavily braked, steep descent, if the child's rear wheel were to break free into a skid while the adult was still applying brakes heavily, it's possible for the trailer to swing around forward, kind of ''folding'' the whole double bike setup -- or at least swing out away from the center track of the adult's bike. No brakes on a trailer for us.)
Also, those little bikes for kids are often geared *very* low. Even at moderate speeds for the adult, the kid will likely not be able to spin her cranks quickly enough to push or feel any resistance. Even our six-speed Burley is geared a bit low for our taste; I'm currently investigating replacing Emily's cranks with a set that accomodates removable gears so that we can put on a much larger front sprocket.
We're sold on the Burley trailer. We got an amazing deal on a used one, but, given that we ride it most days of the year for our daily commute, it would be worth it to us to pay full price for this trailer. I've talked with parents who ride with trailers from other manufactures, most of which attach to the adult bike's seat post (as does the Trail-Gator). The Burley attaches to its own special rear rack on the adult's bike, which seems to make for a sturdier attachment. Also, adult riders of seat-post-mounting trailers have told me that those trailers really feel very long and kind of bouncy, due to the length of the whole assembly. The Burley pivots right above the adult bike's rear wheel (making for a shorter lever length), while the Trail-Gator gives me the impression of being longer still than the typical seat-post-mounting trailers.
While it seems like I'm slamming the Trail-Gator, I suspect that it's great for the occasional short local ride on the Greenway or the Bay Trail, or for taking on vacations from time to time. However, if you're thinking of doing 5, 10, or 20+ miles at a shot, or if you were to ride it several times per week or daily, I think that the concerns that I express above would start to make the riders unhappy. Good luck! -Greg
VeloSport (MLK and Virginia) and Solano Cyclery (on Solano in Albany, just east of Safeway) both carried it when we got ours 5 years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if prices vary by a few dollars from store to store. Also: there is more than one model of Rhode Gear bike seat. We've had the two top models-- I think they're called the Taxi and the Limo. The Limo's front safety bar is longer lasting and probably more convenient than the Taxi's, but they were both very sturdy seats. And Rhode Gear is good at sending replacement parts when necessary, for safety's sake.
Our Taxi model also tipped back for resting. The main difference I noticed between the Taxi and Limo is the restraint system. I thought the Limo's was easier to use and its restraining bar was sturdier. However, when our son became strong enough to pull off the Taxi's restraining bar, RhodeGear said the restraining straps were enough and not to worry about it.
we just purchased a rhodegear limo...i called all the bikestores in berkeley and oakland and virtually all carry the brand. the taxi is less expensive ($99-100); the limo reclines for when your child falls asleep and is $118-120. if you want to put the rack on more than one bike (the seat easily detaches), a separate rack costs $43-45. i have found the owners at square wheel to be very knowledgeable about baby/kid biking stuff, but i recommend just going to your cloest bikeshop since prices are comparable and depending on your bike frame, you may need some extra assistance when installing the rack.
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