Saturday June 2nd, 2018 is National Trails Day – the original date for our bike tour, but there’s 100% chance of rain, so we’re postponing until June 16th.
As a belated part of that nationwide festivity, Fridley is putting on its 6th annual bike tour! Check out our past events, it’s a family friendly ride as always.
Help spread the word by sharing our event on Facebook. We’ve got a couple of route options, so we’ll decide what we’ll do day of. Here’s a preview:
Option A
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Option B
This is if people feel like riding further:
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Both feature Fridley’s scenic trails via the Rice Creek Trail (option A) or the Mississippi River Trail (option B). Both have serene moments where you’ll be wondering how the heck you’re only 9 miles from the center of downtown Minneapolis. Wildlife spotting is almost guaranteed – fun is mandatory 🙂
Today is my daughter’s 5th birthday and we got her a new bike. TL;DR? We settled on a ByK E-250. Want to know why? Read on…
As always, I did a bunch of research. One article I came across and revisited several times was Why You Should Never Buy a 12″ Bike! (with a few exceptions). Like everyone should be, I was skeptical of such a bold claim. Some might even call it clickbait. But I kept coming back to that article because of some valid points.
Kids that don’t yet ride on two wheels should be learning to balance no matter what their age. It’s the single hardest thing to learn on a bike. Why muddle it up with pedals, gears, brakes, and bells?
Marlo got a Strider for her 4th birthday last year. Despite her constant nagging that it didn’t have pedals, she finally warmed up to it. At first she cursed the “wobbly bike” but would still give it the occasional college try because she saw her brother riding on two wheels.
5 months later and she had balancing down-pat. No training wheels, no parent running awkwardly behind hunched over. Just turn ’em loose with no pedals.
If your young/small child is just learning, go straight for the Strider. My daughter is small. At 5 years old she’s still only 30 pounds. But she could always lift and move the Strider with ease. Now with balance mastered, it’s time for pedals.
Pedal Bikes
The other main point that article makes is that most 12″ bikes are heavy. I’m talking more than half the weight of your child heavy. Could you imagine trying to ride (let alone learn to ride) on a bike that weighs 100 pounds?
14″ wheels. It’s just a little bigger than her Strider and she can grow with it.
The seat height can be slammed to 15″ – great for shorter kids and amazing considering the 14″ wheels size.
Here’s a comparison shot of the seat height compared to the current seat height of her Strider:
Is it light? Yes – all the bikes recommended from that article are light. Also the crank arms are nicely shaped to stay out of the way when the pedals are removed. I recommend this to any parent with an older child that hasn’t yet learned to balance. Just leave the pedals off until they’re ready.
And about the push handle and training wheels that are included…
Do not, I repeat, do not install or use them. You’re doing yourself and your child a disservice. Take the damn pedals and training wheels off and let them learn to balance on their own! These items are included to placate parents who remember their first terrifying day with the training wheels off. Their parent hunched over with a backache. Forget about it. Those two things are still sitting in the box brand new.
Review Complaints
OK, so why is this thing only 3 stars? It comes down to 2 things:
1. Delivered with a flat tire.
I get it. This is a bummer. Do yourself a favor and order some 14″ tubes right when you buy this bike. This is an odd size so there’s even a chance that your local bike shop won’t carry it unless you special order it.
2. Bad / No Instructions
Also a legitimate complaint. The bike comes with a manual that seemingly covers every type of bike that ByK makes. So you have to figure out, is this a single-speed or a mountain bike because there’s no specific section for the E-250. Yes it’s lame. I was able to quickly work through it because I’ve put together a couple of bikes myself. This bike is rather unique and it could use a model specific manual.
Hopefully ByK figures this out, but it shouldn’t stop you from putting this bike at the top of the list. Take my daughter’s word for it.
I told Jules that once he learned to ride a bike, I’d buy him whatever bike he wanted. A quick conversation with his cousin led him to start looking for bikes made of gold or diamond 🙄 Then at the beginning of April, Jules dedicated himself to learning to balance with no pedals on. He spent about 2 hours on one day, and a couple of hours the next and had balancing down. On the 3rd day, he asked me to put the pedals on and he took off!
I kept good on my promise, except that it wound up also being his 8th birthday present. We looked at several bike shops and online to see what sort of offerings were out there. Since Jules is 8 years old, I suspect many of the bikes we were looking at were second bikes. As such, many of the 20″ kids bikes have a ridiculous amount of features like suspension that kids don’t need and they make the bike heavier – much heavier!
Since he had been riding for less than a month (we didn’t do any training wheels), I consider this his first bike. We didn’t need any of these extra features – and likely neither does your child. Also, the switch from a coaster brake to hand brakes wouldn’t be an issue as he’d only been on a coaster brake for a few weeks. Some bikes offer both to ease the transition – which might be a consideration if you child has been riding on a coaster brake for a significant amount of time.
My one plea to parents out there is to spend a little extra money on a bike if your child really enjoys riding. It will make their experience (and yours by association) much better. You don’t need to get a $650 internally-geared, belt-drive bike, but instead of spending the normal $80-100 at a big-box store, consider spending around $200 at a bike shop. You’ll get a better product and have a better experience.
It was one of the few 20″ kids bikes that offers multiple gears without front suspension.
BTW, I’m annoyed at the fact that kids bikes are measured by wheel size (16″, 20″, 24″) but once you’re on a full size bike it switches to frame size (17″, 19″ – 54cm, 56cm). I don’t think this is going to change anytime soon, just do your homework and be clear with the bike salesperson if you’re specifying frame size or wheel size when shopping 🙂
The gears on the XTC Jr. were a little difficult to change at first. Jules just needed to figure out the best way to grip the handlebar shifter, and buck-up a little bit. The Giant also has a lightweight aluminum frame and a relaxed top tube angle which keeps the stand over height low.
My only complaint is because the top tube is so low, there’s not enough room in the triangle for a normal water bottle cage (nor do they provide mounts to even attempt). Instead the solution was to buy a Topeak handle-bar bottle mount. I raised the stem slightly and attached it there to keep the relatively small handle-bars clutter free.
Jules loves it – it’s his ticket to freedom. He rode to summer school, and we brought it on our trip to Flite Fest. He’s already asking if we can hook up a trailer 😀
In 2011 my family and I took a vacation to Three Lakes, Wisconsin (near Rhinelander). While I was there I was able to take my new mountain bike out for a spin at the Anvil Trails.
I love the simplicity of my Redline 29er. Single speed – just pedal. No suspension, which helps keep the cost and maintenance down. I’d had it on other trails in Minnesota before, but this one had me thinking twice about no suspension. Much of the trail consisted of forest bottom beneath pine trees. There was a good layer of pine needles, but beneath that was thousands of roots crawling on the surface. Riding over them at speed felt a little like this:
After that, I told myself I’d buy a front suspension fork.
I looked and looked, created spreadsheets, compared weights and prices (and price per weight). The hardest part was finding a fork that didn’t require me to switch to disc brakes. After expanding my search, I found what I was looking for on eBay 😬
It’s hard to admit, but sometimes Chinese knock-offs wind up serving markets that Americans never thought of. I bought a Spinner mountain bike fork off of eBay. Everything about it screams Rock Shox knockoff including the fact that is weighs only 1480g. Other OEM fork brands like Suntour often weigh twice that. I tried a Suntour fork briefly, but it was soooo heavy that it entirely changed the way the bike handled and behaved.
Spinner offered something that that the light-weight Rock Shox forks don’t: brake mounting posts for v-brakes. When I got back into cycling, linear pull “v-brakes” were the norm. They are so much better than the caliper brakes of yester-year that I don’t feel the need to upgrade to disc brakes. I’m sure the many bike-riding Chinese find v-brakes to be equally adequate, cheaper to maintain, and the suspension welcome on poor roads.
It came with a remote lockout – a switch mounted on my handle bars that I can flip to lock the suspension to be rigid, or to be like normal suspension. I keep it locked for the road, and turn the suspension on as needed. 🚵
Normally I write about these rides before they happen, but this year we went old school. We printed over 1,000 of the flyer above and distributed them through Fridley’s elementary schools. I was excited to see it on the front of the take-home packet when my son brought it home.
Jules was very excited to go this year as he recently learned to ride and it’s quickly become his favorite thing to do. He is getting a bike for his birthday, which we graciously let him have early for this ride.
Since our flyer was going out at elementary schools, we wanted the distance to be easy and fun. We started at Riverview Heights Park and rode an easy 1.8 miles to Springbrook Nature Center. There, we invited Grandpa’s Ice Cream for a post-ride reward on a hot day. Here’s the route from Strava:
The best part about the ride was that we got to ride with Mayor Lund. Not only did he go on the ride with us, he rode his bike from his home (near the new City Hall) to Riverview Heights Park, Springbrook Nature Center, and back home. He put in more bike-miles that day than I did!
The ride took us through my favorite Fridley neighborhood, Riverview Heights. It’s right along the Mississippi river and several of the houses were built before the city was incorporated in 1949. According to the Mayor, they were likely homes for railroad workers or commuters that took the train into the city.
Then we went into Coon Rapids shortly to get up to 85th Ave NW where Springbrook is located. Big shout-out to my fellow Fridley Environmental Quality and Energy commissioner, Mark Hansen. His work at the City of Coon Rapids was instrumental in getting a bike path built on the south side of 85th Ave NW. It’s a county road, so I fully understand the political maze that needed to be navigated. It’s a valuable connection from the neighborhood’s west of Springbrook to the park and shops east of there.
