![]() We live on a fairly substantial hill, yet I had no fears about making it home. Starting to pull a load like that in the trailer nearly yanked my little folding bike backwards, but a push from the assist made riding normal again. One day I packed it up with over a dozen hardback library books and then bought milk and yogurt (in glass bottles) and some other groceries. If not so much, the Ridekick cargo trailer is worth a look. ![]() Some people will view hauling an unassisted trailer as strength training and other people not so much. For that kind of thing, it doesn’t necessarily make sense to add a rear rack, and a trailer will probably carry more anyway. If you’re looking at an (assisted) cargo trailer, maybe you have a fast and light bike but want to do major grocery shopping on the weekends, or have a long commute and want to bring a week’s worth of clean clothes on Monday and haul them back on Friday. Learning to use the Ridekick in Golden Gate Park And if you are hauling a bunch of tools or equipment every day then you don’t need me to tell you to consider a Bikes At Work trailer or a cargo trike or whatever. But if money is tight or if there are a lot of pickup and drop-off swaps between parents, then a child trailer makes a lot of sense. ![]() It is more fun to ride with the kids on the bike, in cities with a lot of traffic it feels safer to ride with the kids on the bike, and some of the logistical issues with the trailer, like the fact that it can be a pain to park, go away. If you are riding with your kids every single day and rarely ride without them, it probably makes more sense to jump right to a cargo bike or assisted cargo bike. My sense after riding with both trailers and assisted trailers is that they are a product for people who need to haul loads sometimes. Other people, I suspect, are interested in an assisted trailer for different reasons. The appeal for me of an assisted trailer was that it was a temporary solution to my problems getting around by bike while I figured out how much strength I’d get back in the longer term. However Ridekick was willing to drop one off and let us use it for a while, which was absolutely fabulous of them. I had hopes that the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition offered one of them as a membership benefit-they do have other trailers for members to use. I originally started looking at an assisted trailer as a possible way of getting around the city when I was just back to weight-bearing and much weaker. However I did recently get to try the Ridekick cargo trailer, which anyone can buy right now. I was pretty impressed with the Ridekick child trailer, but it’s still a prototype so you can’t buy it yet. The Ridekick cargo trailer (unattached) with Brompton
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