Utilitaire Omnibus Wrap-up Post

Wow, that went fast. Well, Internet, we did not successfully complete the full Utilitaire challenge. I'm going to produce my Baby-issued Get Out of Jail Free card and say, "Hey, it's really hard to control your time when you're part of a two-career household with a child to care for." Even more so when you're moving house, helping to manage your nonprofit's annual Lobby Day, and picking up domestic slack for a spouse who's putting in some pretty serious overtime.

It eventually became clear that we weren't going to complete the Utilitaire challenge to spec. So instead, I decided to let the challenge inspire me to add some truly wacky utilitarian rides to our list just for the heck of it. In addition to lots and lots and lots of daycare/work commutes, we completed the following "utilitarian" rides:

We visited a museum!

His favorite thing to see is the gigantic stuffed "eppedent" in the rotunda

We (meaning I) completed some of our apartment move by bike!

Portland eat your heart out

We took our moving boxes (and other recycling) to the Transfer Station!

IKEA bags: what can't they do?

We attended a "community meeting" (in the form of a group bike ride that I organized) with other bikey parents and kids.

More fun than you can shake a pedal wrench at

So even though we didn't meet the Utilitaire challenge, we had lots of fun trying.

Many thanks to Chasing Mailboxes for setting up the Utilitaire challenge, and congratulations to everyone who succeeded!

Return of the B.O.B.!

That's right, the bike is back! It turns out that the true culprit in the flat tire may have been a crooked wire no thicker than a staple. The staff told me that the cut—which could have been made glass, though I still suspect a knife—didn’t go all the way through the tire. So we trundled down to BicycleSPACE in the stroller, paid for the new tube, and biked back home with the stroller bungeed to the back of the bike.

Have I mentioned that I love this bike? Folding up our ginormous jogging stroller and attaching it to the rack was predictably awkward, but having that big thing strapped to the back of the bike didn’t make any difference at all to how the bike handled.

Even though this wasn't a round trip and won't be an official Utilitaire-qualifying ride, I'm still putting it on my personal list for the sheer awesome factor. And I made it an honorary #TransportationTurducken.