Get Started Biking With Your Grandchildren

Cycling is a skill you never forget. Now you can share it with your grandchildren.

By: Marcy Black | Source: Grandparents.com

Few grandparents are prepared to tackle the Canadian Rockies on a bicycle with their grandchildren riding alongside—although Vivien Lougheed did just that with her 11-year-old granddaughter, Robin. However, in these days of environmental awareness, dusting off that bike in the back of the garage to go cycling with the grandchildren holds a lot of appeal.

Larry Rubinstein, formerly of New York City, says his grandson Noah was 2 years old when they started going out together along Manhattan's West Side. Towing Noah in a trailer behind his bike, "We took the Westway bike path from Riverside Park all the way down to the Staten Island Ferry along the shore of the Hudson," he says, "We'd go by the Intrepid aircraft carrier with planes on it, a heliport, and a school for trapeze artists. [We'd] stop and watch things going on. It was a whole big deal for him."

Rubinstein says that Noah outgrew the trailer at age 5. "It was tough for him to stay with me on his own bike, so I got a tagalong tandem (trailer bike) that you hook on the back of the bike." Now living in Scarborough, Me., Rubinstein says, "We ride for a couple of hours, with plenty of stops for pizza, snacks, talking to the horses at a farm, watching the boats come into the harbor."

With the birth of his third grandchild, Rubinstein says, "I'm trying to figure out how I can hook the trailer to the tagalong tandem and take all of them out."

Rubinstein's grandson, the now 8-year-old Noah Tanzman of Waltham, Mass., says his best time cycling with Poppa was watching a sea plane land and take off on a lake. That, and when "the horses made a really stinky poop and pee."

Get started

Trudy E. Bell, author of Bicycling With Children (Mountaineers Press, 1999), ticks off many reasons to cycle with your grandchildren. It’s good exercise. It saves on gas when you do your errands together on bikes. But most important, "There is no greater intimacy or way to share time with your grandchildren," she says. "The child has your undivided attention. All you do is talk to one another, undistracted by anything else."

Peter Dean, president of Upside Over, a shop for outdoor gear for kids in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., suggests, "Always have a goal in mind and (let) the kids know what it is." For Bell, the essence of cycling isn’t the destination, but the stops along the way. She says, "You can stop at a moment’s notice; see the blackberries growing; hear the frogs." Cycling grandma Janie Arndt of Fort Collins, Colo., says, "We rarely pass up a playground." She advises limiting time in a trailer for antsy preschoolers, and bribes her youngest grandson with jelly beans.

Ages 5 to 8 are perfect for trailer bikes, which attach to the seat of an adult bike. Children can pedal or not, as they wish. From 9 to 12, grandchildren can take the back seat of a regular tandem, or pedal independently on their own bikes.

Helmets first

 1 | 2