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check it out, we got a new transportation vehicle!

it consists of ari’s new bicycle, robin hood, attached to aina’s baby thyme by this black beam called a trail-gator.

i’ve been looking for this trail-gator at the beginning of the year, but couldn’t find a place that sells it in Singapore. so after comparing some prices, i decided to ask my sister-in-law, who lives in Melbourne, to get it for us. it has been in our possession since May, but there is nothing to attach to. finch’s seat post was too small to accommodate trail-gator, so we had to wait until we purchased Robin Hood to get it installed.

anyways, after a long winding process, yesterday, we finally got to try out the trail-gator.

aina loooooves it. she now has refused to sit on the bike child seat on my bike. she likes “riding like an adult” on her baby-thyme.

ari said that, aside from huge turning radius when the trailer is engaged, the bike rides the same way with or without having aina’s bike attached. and probably a little heavier on hills. but not much.

it makes it so much easier to take the little bike around, without taking the taxi. and aina can carry snowy on the stuffed animal seat on the back of her bike, too (snowy wears seatbelt)!

yesterday, we went to nearest park connector to test it out and let aina learn to bike on a flat terrain (our home is pretty hilly). and the trail-gator was proven to be a head-turner. a few of people almost run straight into my bike since they were too busy looking at ari’s bike.

anyways, it was pretty easy to engage/disengage the baby thyme from robin hood… and in about 3 minutes, aina was already in her bike, wobbling around with ari running beside her…

on the way to the park connector, i got into a little accident… my right heel got caught on the chainguard (yes, it can happen) and i ended up scraping my toenail against the asphalt… and lost a bit of a nail. ouch.

be careful when riding with sandals! thank god for the red nailpolish, it makes the toe look much less grotesque. the middle toe lost half a nail. above the white part is actually blood, not nail, because the nail got ripped out of the toe. surprisingly, it didn’t hurt as much as i thought it would.

anyways, spending an afternoon around Park Connectors are fun. in between the riding lessons, we watch clouds…

and we run around in the playground…

today, we tried a longer route: 7.5km ride to the Robertson Quay. we didn’t take any pictures, but aina made it there without falling asleep. and this time, we brought aina’s training wheel, so that we can attach them on baby thyme when ari is too tired to follow aina around.

so, this tandem ride thing seem to go well so far :)

for more pictures on the Park Connector outting, they are all in the trying out the trail-gator album.