One of the best ways to entertain my son Jimmy over the past week or so has been to put him in the Chariot Cougar 1 Carrier that I use as a bike trailer and tow him around the backroads near our house in Newtown, PA.
Jimmy in the Chariot Cougar 1: We’ve ridden the backroads around
Newtown together for the past few sunny days, building up our
endurance. [ Photo: Dave Aiello on Flickr ]
Kathleen and I bought the Cougar 1 last year, around the time Jimmy turned one year old. He wasn’t really ready to ride in it last summer. I got it out right after Memorial Day and started riding with him for 10 or 15 minutes at a time through the neighborhoods of Newtown Borough. He’s really starting to like doing this because he can see people mowing their yards, and walking in the area around the Starbucks on State Street in a way that is different from when we push him in the stroller or pull him in his wagon.
If you are wondering, we bought the Chariot Cougar 1 because we thought after thoroughly researching the different models that this was the best, most protective child carrier we could get for use with our bikes. It’s very solidly built and quite obvious to the other vehicles on the road.
Today we went on our longest ride yet, up and down Linton Hill Road through the intersection with Washington’s Crossing Road in Newtown Township.
The comment I posted to Twitter after we got back kind of summed up the trip for me:
Riding up Linton Hill Rd in Newtown on a mtn bike with Jimmy in a Chariot Cougar
21. Felt like Alpe d’Huez, except the tifosi yelled “Daddy!”
If you pull one of these trailers with a two-year-old who weighs about thirty pounds riding in it, a speed bump is going to feel like a Category 4 climb in a bike race. Who needs any other aerobic activity? This is challenging.
I think Lance Armstrong did this with his son Luke in the offseason before he retired. Now I know why.
I hope that Jimmy and I can build up to an hour of riding, so I can take him on some of my training routes. I hope that he finds the scenery interesting enough. In the meantime, it’s fun to get out with him, and here him yell and point at the lawn mowers, and the trucks, and the blue cars.
Update and Mea Culpa on June 4: Reader Elton immediately pointed out that I called the Chariot Cougar 1 a Cougar 2, so I corrected the article. Sorry about that folks. The difference between the Chariot 1 and 2 is number of seats for children. For some reason, I thought that the number differentiated between design revisions of the carrier. The versions of the Cougar built in 2003 or before have a different design than mine (built in 2007) does. Don’t write late at night I guess.