Carseats for the Carfree

Do you really need a carseat for your kid if you don't have a car? Even carfree families need to drive or ride in a car sometimes, in a rental car on vacation, a cab to the airport, or carpooling with friends. Our kids are in cars enough (mostly during out-of-town trips) that it makes sense to have seats for both of them. But which seat is the right one? This is a difficult question to answer. Most of the available carseat information addresses seat safety under the assumption that the seat will be installed permanently in one car, ideally by the police or at the fire station by someone trained in safe installation. Unfortunately, that information doesn't help parents who need to carry the seat around to carshares or taxis (lighter is better), install both quickly and correctly (fancy or confusing straps? Not going to happen) and will need a seat to fit in many kinds of cars. Throw in the prospect of shelling out tons of cash for a seat that gets used just a few times a year, and it gets very frustrating.

Kids, who are legally required to be restrained until 4'9" and 80 pounds in MA, will need multiple seats before they can ride with seatbelts alone. Our approach has been to borrow an appropriate infant seat and then, once H grew out of that one, purchase a relatively light, cheap, and relatively easy-to-install convertible seat that works both rear and forward facing. We purchased an Evenflo Titan which has served it's purpose reasonably well. However, this seat has some drawbacks, the most obvious being that its shoulder strap height rear-facing does not accommodate a child until anywhere close to the AAP recommended two years of age, and suffers a similar shoulder strap height problem forward facing.

In consultation with some smart parent friends, we have tracked down some great suggestions for carseats for the carfree.

If you are expecting an infant, the Combi Coccoro (reviewed here) might serve you well. It is very light, installs without a base (convenient for folks doing more frequent installs and removals), and even though it truly is an infant seat, it also fits kids up to 40 pounds with a fairly high height limit. Even better, even though it is a light and simple seat, it has a relatively high rear-facing weight limit of 33 pounds, and word is that the shoulder straps are positioned high enough that you actually can get close to that weight (unlike our seat, which even though it has a weight limit of 30 pounds rear facing, didn't have nearly enough shoulder strap height to make that a reality) . That won't get all kids to age two rear facing, but it will get many of them there. This seat is pricey at about $160, but it takes the place of both an infant seat and a convertible toddler seat, so if you were planning to buy both anyway, this might be the way to go.

The height/weight limits on the Coccoro should serve you until your child is big enough for the RideSafer Travel Vest (beware the obnoxious music on this link), which positions regular seatbelts to secure a child from 30-60 pounds. When there is no shoulder strap on the seatbelt, this vest needs to be additionally secured with a tether, and not all cars and cabs have tethers, but virtually all will have either a tether or a shoulder belt available. This is a new version of this vest, and the low-end of the size limit has been reduced to 30 pounds, 34 inches & three years old (used to be 35 pounds). This is a very good thing, because the range has now dropped to where many kids can ride with this vest straight out of a low-end convertible carseat like our Evenflo. In fact, that's just what H will be doing as soon as we place our order. We have word from a New York friend with the older version of this vest that installation works well, their 4 y.o. is happy to wear the vest, and that most cabs there actually have a top tether. Note also that there is a larger size for a child up to 80 pounds, though I'm guessing a 7 or 8 year old might resist wearing the vest. I'm guessing we'll switch to a backless booster when H grows out of the vest.

Another good find for an older child might be the SafeGuard Go Hybrid (reviewed here). The Go Hybrid is a forward facing seat that folds up when not in use, making it a good choice for families where a seat spends much more time in storage than in a car. It isn't nearly as compact as the travel vest, but it does have a much lower starting weight of 22 pounds. It also has a nice high 60 pound weight limit in the five point harness, which is something that carseat enthusiasts love as a safety feature, and can go up to 100 pounds as a backless booster. Thus, as soon as your child can sit forward facing, this seat should see them all the way through their carseat years. One word of warning though on this seat: it must be used with a top tether, which not all cars have, and even when they do have them, the tether attachment can be hard to find (every car is different). If you frequently ride in older cars, or don't know in advance what kind of car you'll be riding in, this might be a significant drawback.

Another option out there that might be nice for the carfree, particularly if you do a lot of air travel, or have a long walk to your carshare, might be the Sit 'n' Stroll, which is both a stroller and a fairly standard convertible carseat. However, those wheels make the Sit & Stroll heavy, so unless you really will be using it frequently as a stroller, it might not quite be worth the hefty price tag ($250) or the extra weight getting in/out of the car. Another feature of the Sit 'n' Stroll, unlike either the Go Hybrid or the Travel Vest, is that is is FAA approved for air travel.

Please let us know if you have experience with any of these seats, or what your solution has been to the carseat problem. We have friends with these seats, but haven't used them ourselves so we can't vouch for them specifically. However, we will be getting the travel vest soon, and will absolutely report back once we've given it a try.

I'd like to thank many friends who provided information & experience for this post, and have clearly done their carseat homework: CCB, Party B, Estelle (who tipped us off to the Coccoro), Shelli (a carfree NY mom and big fan of the Sit n' Stroll and Travel Vest), and Jen (who pointed us to the Go Hybrid). Thank you!

Check out Shareable.net

Today, we have an article featured on Shareable.net, "How to be a carfree family." Those of you who are carfree, car-light, or just interested in the lifestyle should check it out and leave a comment. Jeremy Adam Smith also has a great post up, "5 Ways My Son Benefits from a Carfree Life". In fact, you should just go a read all of Shareable.net right now. You can read about carsharing, garden-sharing, sharing with neighbors, unexpected positive consequences of collaboration/sharing, and even sharing pay. There's lots of great stuff up to read about, and more going up all the time.

Join us at Honkfest!

It's October, and that means it's time for Honkfest, Somerville's fabulous music festival. We'll be enjoying the bands on Saturday and riding our fabulous Xtracycle in the parade on Sunday. We'll be with at least one other family with a kid/cargo bike setup, and if you have your kids on a bike or a cargo bike, we'd love to ride with you too! We usually try to march with the Green Streets Initiative.

Come to the festival, watch or march in the parade, and if you see a family on a great bike (whether it's us or someone else), say hello!

Advice for taking the car free plunge -- Part II: Back-up Plans

This is part of a series in response to a question we got way back when from a family considering remaining car free in our neighborhood after their car met an untimely (or timely?) demise. In Part I we addressed some questions regarding gear. Here we bite off something perhaps even more important: The Back-Up Plan

In general, it is best to have at least two possible ways to get anywhere you need to go on a regular basis. If you've had a car, even if it's just one car that you barely ever use, you've always had a fail-safe back-up plan for any required trip. Even if you took almost every trip by bike or transit, if the weather turned sour or you felt kind of sick that day, you had another option. Biking is a fabulous primary method of transport for the car-free who are in good health, but, especially with kids involved and New England winters, it's just not going to work every single day. Yes, yes, I know plenty of you are wonderful hard core bikers and will ride in anything, no matter how nasty, slippery or icy, and I used to be one of you. But I'm not going to take my kid(s) out in everything, especially not on ice, and my personal risk tolerance has also gone down since having kids.

Fortunately for Lauren. who asked this question originally and lives in our area, there are a wealth of back-up plans, mostly based on public transit. I used my back-up plan (taking the Red Line to Kendall) to get to work for about a year while I was pregnant and recovering from birth, though I am now happily biking again. The train takes longer than biking, but it's pretty reliable and with my discount T-pass through work, it is quite affordable. I also have several bus routes available that take me to several places I might need to stop on the way to or from work, and knowing available routes comes in very handy when the T is delayed. Angela can walk, bike, bus, or take the T to work, but bike is her first choice. Daycare drop-off is mostly by foot and sometimes by bike. Groceries are almost always by bike, and our snowstorm back-up is to shop at the store we don't like that's closer, or to borrow our friends car (hey, we're not purists). There is also a bus, but paying more (and grumbling) at the close-by store is usually our preferred back-up option.

Another great back-up option is a car-share (Zipcar in our area) and this might be particularly good for someone making the transition away from car ownership. Lauren has a 3.5 y.o. who is probably able to be in a booster seat in the car, which is relatively easy to get in and out. With car sharing, if you are used to using your car for occasional trips, you'll still have that option easily available. Car sharing can really help you to take the plunge; at first, you can give yourself permission to just get a car whenever you don't see another easy way to make a trip. It won't feel like too much of a lifestyle shift, and you won't feel deprived and resentful. But one of the beautiful things about a car-share like this is that it attaches the economic cost of the car to the activity itself because you pay by the hour. So even if at first you use it a lot, you'll soon find yourself motivated to find ways around using the car (is it really worth $35 to get to Target when you could pay just a tiny bit more for the same thing from the hardware store on the corner?).

When we first got rid of our car we were fairly heavy Zipcar users (2-3 times a month). But that was ages ago, and while we still maintain a membership so we can have the option, we are considering cutting it because we just don't use it (as in, I can't remember the last time), and we have friends who generously offer their cars for occasional use (which definitely was a help while I was pregnant).

When we were first car free, I remember frequently feeling like I was backed into a corner. Suddenly there was something I couldn't do without a car! But once you've settled into your life, and have ready access to two or three methods of doing your most frequent tasks, you can save the effort of figuring and planning for the big stuff, like cooking up a fabulous car-free camping trip, or adventures by train out of town. And that kind of planning is actually fun.

Carfree Roundup

• Shareable: What is a Shareable City? Chris Carlsson talks about the shared space of cities and how cities create a shared culture and are created by that shared culture. He also identifies an important need I've been thinking about a lot lately of "how we [can] begin to connect across the class, age, and race barriers that divide us." I certainly feel like I share an enormous amount with the people in my neighborhood, but I notice I share more with those that look like me that with those of other races and cultures.
  
  
• Totally Smitten Mama, Quest for the Simple Life Lex expounds on her family's reasons for giving up the "simple" rural life, that didn't turn out to be so simple since it meant they had to drive all the time. Instead, her family will soon be moving into town where they can walk, bike and bus for almost all of their transport instead of driving. She writes eloquently about the real perks of arranging life so you drive less (hint: it's not all about being a smug environmentalist).
  
  
• Old enough to go to school alone? When can a kid start walking or biking to school alone?


• Vendor selected for Boston area bike-sharing program - Local News Updates - The Boston Globe Bike sharing seems to be coming to the Boston area. I'm not sure how much I personally will use a bike sharing program, but I'm very excited to see one implemented and to see what kind of impact it will have on the area!


• BikePortland.org » Blog Archive » Carrying your infant by bike: How young is too young? Are you wondering just how early you can get your baby on a bike? That's not an easy issue to settle, but this post by BikePortland explores the options if you want to put a young baby on a bike. How can you keep them safe? Do even infants have to wear a helmet? I also found this post on A Long Walk to Green that goes even further, talking about carrying an infant on a recumbant trike.


• List of car-free places - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Wikipedia maintains this list of carfree places in the world, which I recently stumbled upon. A great resource for anyone who is interested in creating carfree spaces, or just traveling and interested in spending time in them!


• Lovely Bicycle!: DZnuts for the Ladies? Call me completely ignorant, but I didn't even realize that there creams existed to protect very personal and tender areas during biking. So thanks to Dottie for enlightening me!

On the road again

It's official. I'm back on the bike. Wow, is it good to be back!

I stopped biking somewhat prior to and during pregnancy, and while recovering from birth. Plenty of women, including one very impressive lady over at totcycle, do bike while pregnant, and more power to them. But for me, the year of acupuncture it took to even get me to ovulate combined with the vast sums of money we were laying out for frozen sperm (as lesbians, we didn't have easy access to the free stuff), as well as my acupuncturists stern warnings (she's great, but a little bossy), were enough to ground me for the year. Thankfully, we live in an area with great transit, so I had a workable alternative.

After the birth, I was chomping at the bit to get back on the bike, but I had a lot of recovery to do and it took a solid three months to get to where I could handle a ride of longer than five minutes without extreme discomfort the next day. I've now been commuting for about two weeks with no ill effects, and couldn't be happier. I've always loved the sense of freedom I have while riding, and now it feels even sweeter.

The best thing though, and what finally got me off my duff to post an update, was riding along today, in a big line of bikers, and seeing a little hand waving madly out of a school bus window, and hearing "Hello H's Mom!!" I waved heartily to a girl from our local playground as I passed her bus at the light. It's nice to be back on the road.

Advice for the carfree plunge, Part 1: Gear

We got a comment last week from Lauren asking for advice in taking the step from car-light family to car-free family. She writes:

"My family (two grown-ups one 3.5 year old) have been day dreaming about being car free for a while- since we already owned a car, it was easy to just do our best being car light. Since our car has now taken it's last trip (by way of a high speed car wreck) we have the perfect opportunity to take the challenge on. I love the IDEA of car free, but things like, snow, illness, and visiting the grandparents makes me worry. I have been reading your blog and have found it very helpful and comforting. Right now we have a simple set up- two old bikes, a child bike seat and a burley trailer (with no rain cover)... but we have daycare that is walkable and work near the bike path. Any advice for some essentials to make life easier? ... (Our t-stop is Alewife too, maybe someday we will see you out there!)"

I have several thoughts for Lauren, and we'll get to them, but the most important thing I have to say is that you can do it! You live in our neighborhood, so I know for a fact that the resources are here. Yes, it can feel scary, and you will certainly have to figure out new ways to do some things, but I bet you'll feel a payoff pretty quickly in terms of your place in our community, your health and that feeling of freedom that comes from knowing you'll never get a parking ticket again. Now, for the first portion of some more detailed thoughts:

GEAR: It sounds like you have a completely reasonable bike set-up in order to use biking for a lot of your transport needs. Your trailer can be used easily for either kid or cargo, and if you need to haul cargo and kid at once, you can put the kid in the bike seat and haul stuff in the trailer. You might consider getting a hitch on both bikes if you haven't done so already. You also might consider some rain gear (like a raincover for the trailer, and rain pants and jacket for adults.) The number of days that you can ride comfortably in this area goes up dramatically once you are moderately protected from water. However, that said, we still only have one set of adult rain gear in our house, and we're fine. I got a LOT happier with my bike commute once I got rain gear, and now that Angela has been borrowing mine while I was on pregnancy bike hiatus, we may need to buck up and get a second set. Mostly though, if your bikes work and you have a way to haul both kid and some cargo, you are fine, and any remaining gear decisions come easier if you go ahead and ride with what you have, and then notice what drives you crazy the most. Then you can find gear that troubleshoots that problem specifically, rather than trying to anticipate all possible needs ahead of time (which will just make you spend a lot of money).

At some point quite soon, your 3.5 y.o. will outgrow the bike seat (most American seats have a 40 pound limit). The trailer work for a while after that, but soon that won't work either. If you're a carfree or mostly carfree family, consider the next kid-hauling purchase with cargo as well as kid in mind. The most common next step from the trailer is a trail-a-bike, but like the trailer, that has an extremely limited lifespan and even worse, provides no cargo capacity. If you need the trail-a-bike for the kid and also need to carry groceries what do you do? Well, some folks make giant trains by hooking a trailer to the trail-a-bike, and that does work, but it's a lot of weight and, in my opinion, a lot of accident risk due to sheer length. Another option is to go with both front and rear panniers on the adult bicycle, which does get you something, but if you need to haul groceries for a whole family, that probably won't cut it. We love our xtracycle (see also xtracycle.com) for its ability to carry both kid and stuff in a relatively compact package. There are other great cargo options out there (including the ute and the madsen), but from a price perspective, you might have great luck converting one of your existing adult bikes to an xtra, or possibly even both, once the trailer is outgrown. Even though a conversion would cost more than an trailer-bike, it would get you many many more years of use, and would be useful long after the kid bikes on his/her own. But you don't have to do it now. You can wait, see how your car-free lives unfold, and then assess down the line what next purchase will give your family the most use.

Next time, in part II, we address the importance of back-up plans.