Originally Posted by
droopayne
thanks man! i have to say some of my fondest memories of the trip was the look on people faces when my daughter told them where we were going or where we had started. bike touring with a kid on a tandem definitely has its challenges but as long as you don't try to kill it with 60-100 mile days it's totally doable and you can really go anywhere. in some ways doing our tour in Oct was nice because it set a pre-determined limit on how far we could go in one day since it would get dark around 6:30/7....but then it meant getting up early which my family is not used to doing
my daughter rarely admits to enjoying that bike ride but we recently took a garden tour by bike with our tandem and they started the ride off asking everyone's name and favorite bike memory. she told them all of our ride to disneyland and you could see a little pride showing through
the only downside is now she complains about any seat that isn't a brooks!
Many of my worst memories of childhood are of spending excessive amounts of time in the car. I find it ironic that I transport my child now by bike and he gets bored on the bike. I've sort of realized, though, that it's just that kids get bored being on the road for a while, whether its in a car or on a bike. It's just something they have to go through to develop traveling endurance and at least with the bike they're getting exercise and fresh air. Nowadays with all the media distractions available for in the car, the patience/endurance-training of travel might be suffering somewhat. Convenient that you were able to rig up some kind of media for yours on the bike. It seems like a bit of a trade off in that she loses the opportunity to train her endurance and learn to find interesting things to look at on the 'boring' road, but on the other hand it probably makes it a lot easier to bike a lot more without mutiny on the bounty, so to speak.
The pride/joy of accomplishment is there in retrospect, I think. With mine, he'll whine about all sorts of things when I'm planning them but at some point you can tell that he thinks it's cool that he's doing something challenging and exceptional. People will ask him how he likes sitting on the bike for so long and he'll say it feels like 30 minutes to him. It seems like he might be lying but I actually think the way the ride gets broken up by variations in the route, taking breaks, talking, playing games, etc. it ends up seeming like its shorter than it actually was. I also think the exercise aspect of it makes it feel shorter than sitting in a car. Even in a shorter car ride, being cooped up has the effect of overloading the nervous system with energy. When that energy is getting used on the bike, it has a calming effect. Stir-craziness makes shorter periods of time feel much longer, I think.
I've done 50+ mile days with mine though I think you're right that 60 is the point of pushing it. Really it depends on the scenery and how he feels at breaks, though. We stopped for ice cream after 30 miles the other day and by the end of the ice cream he was ready for another 10-15. Then, after staring at an uninteresting 4-lane road for 8 miles he got grumpy again but once I convinced him that at the end of that road there would a town, it motivated him to keep pedaling. Allowing a session of knock knock jokes was a big sacrifice on my part but it re-invigorated him to tell them
