El Cid

I'm picking up a tagalong trailer today, but I honestly have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, pulling my six-year-old would be a tun way to get to the park, and I'm hoping I can get her interested in cycling by taking her on rides. But maybe I'm just encouraging her to let me do everything for her? I've caught flak in the past for doting too much.

deburn

I'm not sure I understand your question, but I'll share my experience: I had a TAB (trail a bike) for my kid when she was around the same age. She loved, loved, loved being on it. Most of the time she would just be zoning out, looking at everything we were riding past.

This was totally fine with me. It was a great way for us to do things together, and to expose her to the things I liked. She still loves riding her bike today. btw, I would ask her to pedal on hills, which she did and it did help.

tl;dr: the most important thing, imo, is to spend time with your kids and have fun doing it. You can't control whether she's going to enjoy biking, but this is the best way to influence her! Secondly, I'm all for helping kids learn to be responsible, but her not pedaling at the age of 6 is totally fine, in my book

El Cid

You're right actually, I'm thinking too much about weather my youngest daughter will like all the things that I like. Either way, it'll be a way for us to spend time together.

El Cid

Ok, day one with the trailer, and my youngest daughter absolutely LOVED it! My raw strength is roughly an order of magnitude greater than that of a six-year-old girl, so I took her faster than she's ever gone and she was excited the whole way.

I loved it a little less though. The trailer hitch has a fair bit of play where the insert fits into the hitch on my bike. The joint is solid, but that hitch insert isn't very well made, and the whole trail-a-bike rocks back and forth. I can handle the bike, but I have to be very conscious of my balance.

cplager

What brand did you get? My trek and one step hitches are quite solid. My Adams tandem hitch has play in it (unfortunately).

spdntrxi

I have been using a Weehoo... the can basically fall asleep and you can go for a longer ride.

El Cid

Adams is the one I bought...piece o' crap. It should be an easy enough problem to solve though. The hitch assembly is a pretty basic design; I can just get on a mill and make one to replace the portion that goes on my seatpost.

LiamSkymom

I'm sorry I'm late in replying to this thread. I love ours. We used a regular covered trailer for quite a while but it got quite boring and the boys outgrew it. I saw the trailers and decided to rent one first to see if we like it. It was good. Then we purchased one. For a while, DH pulled older son on that one, and I pulled younger one in the older trailer. Now, I pull younger son on that and DH has Trail Gator hooked up to his bike so that older son can ride until he gets too tired (the swervy kind of riding) and then hook him up so we can either keep going or turn but not worry as much about it. In another year, older son will probably outpace us and younger will be on the Trail Gator. Short local rides everyone rides their regular bikes.

We like them a lot, however, I used my older heavier bike to pull rather than my lighter newer one to pull. It just feels more sturdy that way. It is nice that they are growing up and can do more because the few times before they both got a bit more proficient that I pulled the tagalong and the older covered trailer behind me were not particularly fun even if some of the comments we got were.

DiabloScott

We had ours from about age 4 to 8 - went everywhere with it and did a few charity rides. Then sold it for about half the purchase price.

Phantoj

I have a Burley Piccolo... it's great, but not as good as a tandem.

delcrossv

I " alley recycled" one but we've never used it. Once they're 6 or so they're all on their own bikes.