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Riding with a monkey on your back

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  • April 10, 2015 at 4:28 pm #23709
    Matt eaton

    OK, not a monkey but a small child (8 months).

    I’m in the process of trying to figure out how to get out for some family bike rides whilst away for long weekends of BMX racing. I’d be riding my BMX cruiser and my wife would be on her ‘cross bike. We have a child trailer and although it seats two (we have a 3 year old too) I think that the bumps and jolts might be a bit much for the younger child. A rear mounted child seat seems like a poor option too as fit on a BMX cruiser is likely to be problematic and the nature of the bike means frequent out-of-the-saddle riding and I imagine him being thrown side to side as we go up hills etc. I don’t really want to try to shoehorn another bike into/onto the car.

    This has led me to considering using our backpack child carrier. This would insulate him from road bumps (via my body) and the side-to-side issues would also be reduced. It obviously wouldn’t work on a road bike but the upright position on a BMX seems to lend itself to this method. The only information that I can find online about this comes from the US where there seems to be a disproportionate paranoia about the accident risks associated with cycling (and very little about the health risks posed by jolting/jaring on young children).

    So, does anybody have any experience of carrying a child in this way on a bike?

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  • April 11, 2015 at 8:04 pm #840983
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    gmac101

    Center Parcs have a minimum
    Center Parcs have a minimum age limit of 6 months with their trailers and I’m sure they don’t take any chances, you also have to think about the child in question our oldest had a big head and a skinny neck and struggled to hold her head up for any length of time until she was few months old, the youngest could hold her head up from almost the moment she was born.

    April 11, 2015 at 7:30 pm #840981
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    KiwiMike

    Matt, go for it.
    The reality
    Matt, go for it.

    The reality is that there’s SFA difference between what you want to do and giving your child a good, wholesome shoulder ride. I’ve seen parents smack their kids into low signs in town centers, tree branches, etc etc. If you trip and fall with a child on your shoulders they are coming down from probably twice the height as what yours would be at in a backpack, seated on a BMX. I’m totally up for the public argument should any person think to berate me / my wife for choosing to let our kids cycle unhelmeted, or climb to the top of the frame / tree, or a million other things we did as kids that have now been ruled out of order by the H&S Nazis.

    Fuck ’em.

    Anyone replying here that I’m a bad parent yadda yadda can correctly guess my response. So don’t say you weren’t warned. And no, I don’t want to hear your own anecdotal story of woe. Life’s too short to curtail the excitement and freedom childhood used to have and has been mostly been strangled of by the creeping opprobrium of the ‘what might happen’ worrywarts.

    Assess the risk, take appropriate precautions. Anyone telling me a kid’s at more risk of death in a parent’s backpack on a carefully-ridden bike than in a small car at 70+MPH on UK roads better come armed with peer-reviewed stats.

    Roll on.

    April 11, 2015 at 7:07 pm #840979
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    Mungecrundle

    Coming from the school of
    Coming from the school of negligent parenting, I took both my children out in backpacks for gentle rides from around 8 months. Of course you do have to be fairly confident that ‘plan A’ (not falling off) is going to work for you and accept that any accident, injury or incident will be used against you forever after.

    April 11, 2015 at 5:03 pm #840977
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    Matt eaton

    Cheers for the advice all.
    On
    Cheers for the advice all.

    On the centre-of-gravity thing, I don’t actually think this would be a big problem for me, but maybe that’s because I’m a relatively big guy. Thinking about my wife in the same situation I can imagine it being a potential problem though so it’s a valid point.

    When it comes to safety in the event of a crash, I find it a bit difficult to get too worried about this as a possibility when I regularly strap him into a car seat and drive at 70mph. Even with all the normal precautions the prospect of a baby being involved in a 70mph car wreck is probably more concerning than a slow speed bike crash strapped to dad’s back. We’d only likely be riding motor-free cycle routes at a very modest pace.

    The trailer is great, so maybe I’ll try him in there but I am still concerned about the potential for brain and spine rattling (myelin sheath not fully formed etc.) and this concern still outweighs any worries about crash trauma. It might be that I just forget the idea until he’s a bit bigger and explore more locally on foot.

    April 10, 2015 at 8:43 pm #840975
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    Namasteve

    dazwan wrote:When the kids

    dazwan wrote:
    When the kids were little I accepted that if I wanted to use my bike I would have to use a trailer. I never found the jolting too bad, after all they have pneumatic tyres which take the sting out of the bumps and I just took it really easy and tried to choose routes that were as smooth as possible. Not always possible to avoid bumpy bits of road, but at least I’d try and go slow over those parts. Plus, the kids loved having all their crap with them in the trailer, so I’d often be pulling around two kids plus lots of lego and soft toys and other assorted kid tat.

    I second this wholeheartedly. Part of my commute involved towing my son to and from daycare. In a Chariot trailer with pneumatic tyres and some suspension, he is comfortable. With his blanket and a snack, he’s entirely happy.
    I know that some trailer brands have slings and headrests for younger children, if you are concerned about injury.I don’t think we ever found that to be much of an issue.

    April 10, 2015 at 8:15 pm #840973
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    Nat Jas Moe

    When our daughter was about 3
    When our daughter was about 3 we used an Adams trailer bike and she never came off due to bumps. The only time she did was when we first set off and because she wasn’t holding on to her handle bars she ended up on the deck. Nothing major just a bit of a shock for her and me. After that just some coordination was required, ‘are you ready and holding on?’ And she loved every minute of it. If you go for this option a rear mudgaurd is essential.

    April 10, 2015 at 6:27 pm #840971
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    PonteD

    Considering how your centre
    Considering how your centre of gravity will be really high this could really affect your handling. I’d hate to come off a bike with a small child strapped to my back. If I were to roll I dread to imagine the damage this could do to the child. Just consider how much it hurts yourself when you take a fall, now imagine that PLUS the additional trauma of having an adult that is several times your weight land on you with force.

    I personally even shied away from using those seats that attach to the bike for kids for the same reasons. If I were to have a fall (I’ve had many over the years), I’d fall off the bike and only suffer some minor grazing, but a child in one of those seats is now strapped into a bike that is sliding/rolling down the road. Even just falling off at a junction could result in the child either dropping and hitting the kerb or even worse, being laid in the middle of the road in front of traffic.

    When the kids were little I accepted that if I wanted to use my bike I would have to use a trailer. I never found the jolting too bad, after all they have pneumatic tyres which take the sting out of the bumps and I just took it really easy and tried to choose routes that were as smooth as possible. Not always possible to avoid bumpy bits of road, but at least I’d try and go slow over those parts. Plus, the kids loved having all their crap with them in the trailer, so I’d often be pulling around two kids plus lots of lego and soft toys and other assorted kid tat.

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