A bike for the wife, a seat for the son

DeeGee75

Hi,

I have the good fortune to live in a town which is pancake flat. We have one car between the two of us and a 16 month-old boy. I normally commute by bike, leaving the car with the wife. I have three bikes, a Specialized Allez and a Specialized Hardrock Sport for a bit of fun, and an old Peugeot Premiere sat up on a turbo.

Now summer's here, it makes good sense for us to go out a bit by bike at the weekend, and the wife fancies going in and out of town by bike..

Now, the wife's looking for a cheapish step-through bike either without gears or with hub gears, which will get her round without too much hassle. We've looked online at the B'Twin Elops City from Decathlon, but our nearest Decathlon's a good 90 minutes away, so she can't get on it to have a look. Ideally something with a basket would be nice.

We'd also be looking for a seat which we could use to carry the boy, ideally able to move it between the wife's new bike and my Hardrock relatively easily.

Would having a rear rack on the step-through cause issues with a child seat? Has anybody got any recommendations for something like the Elops, at a decent-ish price? What about a seat - I'm not so fixed on the budget for that? The only two LBS that I use aren't interested, one's a fan of his Bianchi and the other only sells Spesh and Trek MTBs and racers.

baudman

Are you wedded to the idea of a seat? Depending upon the trailer, once a hitch is added to each bike, it's very simple to swap between the two. Similarly many of the front-mounted seats too. (And, for that matter, some of the rear mounted ones just clip/unclip from the rack).

Bikes? There's many choices - but in addition to what you see in the chain stores, take a look at the dutch-styled ones. Can be single-speed, or sometimes 3-spd. You'll have importers in the UK I'm sure. Very stylish - she may like them.

Otherwise, yeah, I think a step-thru is a good idea regardless of what other decisions are made. If you do go with a rear-mounted seat, it makes it easy to mount/dismount with the step thru.

DeeGee75

I think the wife would consider a seat to be safer, more visible, higher off the road. And the boy's then at a height where we can keep an eye on him.

Dutch is really what the wife's after, but they're a bit trendy at the moment, so come with a huge premium. In fact, it's probably cheaper to go over there, buy one and import it myself...

baudman

He he - well there's a thought. Although, if you were doing that, go the whole hog and get a bakfiets! 8)

I'll let other ppl share their opinion - I'm not a fan of rear mounted for a variety of reasons - but a couple that I'll mention, because you already have

- I find that amount of weight on the rear quite unstable for riding, but also (just as importantly), while pushing the bike. For that reason, I don't consider them very safe.
- With a front-mounted seat you can REALLY keep an eye on him.

miniedp

I bought a co-pilot limo when my son was a similar age. He loves it, regularly falls asleep on it (and is also prone to try and tickle me while we cycle along - didn't see that one coming when I bought it!). Yes it adds weight to the back of the bike, but I've never found it unstable. It's unwieldy and a bit odd at first, but you soon get used to it - try it somewhere quiet and soft at first though.

You can swap it between bikes, but you would need an additional rack (it's a blackburn rack, 30 odd quid from memory but you get one with the seat). I've managed to nip my finger taking it off a couple of times, but that's mainly down to stupidity on my part.