I Never Thought I'd Buy A Cruiser Bike. Then I Had Kids.

Kids change a lot of things—including how happy strangers are to see you (and your tiny passenger) biking by

You never know what might make future you happy. [SELFIE OF BRENDAN AND JAY ON BIKE]

(Photo: Brendan Leonard)

Published April 27, 2024 05:00AM

As I pedal my cruiser bike nowadays, I often have to remind myself that although people are smiling in my direction, they are not smiling at me. For most of my life as an urban cyclist, I wouldn’t say people have been “happy” to see me on my bike. Indifferent, yes, tolerant, for the most part, and very occasionally, aggressive and/or threatening. But now, when I’m on my cruiser and people see Jay, my 28-pound passenger strapped into a plastic seat between the swooping handlebars, they smile. Or wave. — (All illustrations: Brendan Leonard)

I was never anti-cruiser bike or anything like that—I mean, they were fine for other people. I just didn’t want to own one. For most of my adult life, my living space wasn’t big enough for more than one or two bikes. I couldn’t be an “N+1” person: [Text of N + 1 rule: “The correct number of bikes to own is n+1. While the minimum number of bikes one should own is three, the correct number is n+1, where n is the number of bikes currently owned.”]

Since 2016, I have owned a commuter/touring/gravel/bikepacking/road bike built by my friend Gregory, and for my needs and athletic ambitions, it’s been perfect. [Photo of Gregory and custom Chocolate Spokes bicycle]

When we moved into a house with a garage, a couple other bikes materialized, but even when Hilary hopped on the vintage Peugot cruiser she found, I rode my one bike. I just always wanted to get somewhere, fast. Or at least efficiently. Give me a couple gears so I can get up to 18 mph without pedaling like the Road Runner.

I didn’t even take my dad’s offer of a *free* cruiser bike, a Felt Cycles New Belgium cruiser you could only obtain if you worked at New Belgium, or if you lived down the street from an 80-something guy who won one in a raffle and was open to selling. Which is what my dad did in 2008 or 2009. [PHOTO of 2008 Felt Cycles New Belgium cruiser bike]

Then we had a baby. I became, as someone once put it, “my family’s assistant manager.” Hilary took the strategic lead on nearly everything, and I helped execute that strategy. Many new objects showed up at our house, handed down, gifted, and sometimes even purchased new. During my assistant manager duties, I was dismayed to find that a front mount child bike seat, strategically purchased by our family’s CEO (Hilary), did not fit on any of our bicycles in a manner that would allow pedaling, which is necessary for propulsion of a bicycle. [PHOTO OF THULE YEPP MINI bike seat]

So I asked my dad if he was still interested in getting his New Belgium cruiser out of his garage permanently. And, he was. The bike seat fit on the cruiser, and we got Jay in it as soon as he could safely fit. We set the seat so it worked for both of us, and we were off. I mean, off as fast as you can really go on a very heavy one-speed bicycle with coaster brakes.

An old friend of mine who loved road cycling used to joke that if it wasn’t at least 40 miles, it wasn’t a real bike ride. Which I get. But I also quite immediately found a different kind of value in looking down at my kid’s helmeted head and his tiny hands hanging onto the handlebars. [PHOTO LOOKING DOWN AT JAY ON A BIKE]

Jay is at ease during our bike rides—like his dad and mom, he prefers a bike seat to a car seat. When he’s bored or fussy, instead of googling “things to do with toddler for 45 minutes,” I often just grab our bike and pedal loops around our neighborhood. It generally chills him out, and sometimes he even points to the bike and wants to get up in his seat. People wave, or smile, or sometimes, like the guy in his yard one morning last fall, they’ll matter-of-factly announce: “That’s cute.” I have jokingly called it “Baby On A Bike As A Public Service,” but really I’m doing it for myself: Pedaling the long way home from daycare pickup is sometimes the best part of my day.

In the existential sense, most bike rides don’t really ever go anywhere, and it’s really just a feeling we’re after, or maybe a story. I’m sure there’s some lesson here about learning to slow down or something like that, but when I think about the old me who had no use for a cruiser bike, I think it’s more like this: You never know what might make future you happy. [SELFIE OF BRENDAN AND JAY ON BIKE]

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