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FamilyTech: Wee Ride 'Wallaroo' bicycle seat for kids
Thu, 19 Mar 2009

In the middle of last year we went out and picked up our first bicycle seat for our little girl. If you're up early on a weekend or have time before/after dinner and want to burn some calories for yourself and have a blast with the little one, biking is a great option. It was still alien for me to be out the door at 7am to the park, but it was a fun way to pass the time and we ended up going out probably 4 or more days a week every week. Awesome.

That was this post should you care.

Now that winter is coming to close we're all very sick of being couped up inside - Play-doh is good, and colouring is great, but she just needs to get out and run and dig and climb.. she's sick of her toys and its getting harder to invent ways to entertain her :) So I plugged her into the old bike seat and with her new found words she exclaimed 'too tight!' and 'too big!' so it was time to retire that awesome little device -- at least we got a few months out of it!

After reviewing options at Zellers ($89.95) and Walmart (I forget) and Canadian Tire ($89.95) I checked out Toys-R-Us again, just like last time. Usually not an inexpensive place (and always a challenge to get a small child away from after a shopping run) they nevertheless, just like last time, had a pretty good price on the "Wallaroo" sized bicycle seat. $59.95 CDN seems pretty good for a device we'll work over all summer and likely have to discard next spring..

The Toys-R-Us page is here

After our first outing last night I thought I would offer a few comments; let me break it down into positioning and balance, size, cost and construction.

Position/Balance

The Wee-Ride we had last year was front-mount, by which I mean the chair is in front of you (between your arms when driving the bike.) This is convenient and clever for a lot of reasons -- you can see the child (and any mittens they may toss aside) and they have an unobstructed view. As she got older she also learned to hole the handlebars and attack the brakes and gear-shift, which was cute after the first surprise braking :) The new device is rear-mount which makes me a little paranoid since I cannot see her, but at least she can see me. I worry that she will tire of staring at my back, but hopefully the landscape whizzing by will entertain.

For what its worth in last nights first trip out, she was crying out 'Weeeee!' a lot, so I think she enjoyed it :)

With both mount-positions it was trivial to get used to the different weight and balance, and as a guy it was still easy to mount the bike. (Most guys I know swing their leg over the back tire to mount, but now I have to go bent-knee'd in front of the seat due to the large throne out back.)

Momentum is a little funny though with the new arrangement; if you're parallel to a curb and then jog-left to go up onto the ramp to the sidewalk you may feel this seat jiggle and sway as you do the sharp turn, say. When going off a curb or doing any quick turns or drops, you wil feel the resistance as the seat swings around back, since its pretty heavy (30 pound child) and big (tall!) -- it wasn't a problem, but it did surprise me a few times to feel that 'drag.' See below.

Size

The previous seat was a great size; small, comfortable for the child, and had a little padded play area out front (I assume should the child get whipped forward its to cushion the blow.) The new seat is more like a small throne, very large and high-backed. I've seen smaller rear-mount seats around so thought this one seemed large, but it does seem very comfortable - I had my daughter sit in it at the store - and lets her sit back, or lean into the chair at the sides. The foot compartments are pretty deep and adjustable for a growing child. Overall the chair seems well made.

Really, the goal (aside from carrying) of these seats is to keep the feet out of the spokes, and this chair should be fine; the legs naturally dangle into the approproiate compartments, and the plastic is molded around to cup the child at all points so she'd have to go out of her way to get into anything .. just dawdling or kicking will not be a problem.

The chair can be removed from the bike pretty easily, as the previous younger-child model can be.

Construction

The chair is a strong plastic and seems fine for its purposes; a large lock-screw is used to hold the seat to the mounting bracket, so that it can be moved forward or back as the child needs, and can be removed alltogether. There is a safety strap fixing the chair to the bike, presumably for use if the bracket slides down the post .. seems dubious to me.

The main curiosity is the design -- it uses a U-fork that plugs its tines into a bracket mounted on the main post under the real bike seat. The bent part of the U then sticks up and back over the wheel and the seat mounts onto it. Pretty clever in a way, as its a free shock absorber -- drop off a curb and the chair just bounces an inch, no biggy. It strikes me they could pretty easily have run a bar down to the wheelmount axle to make it much stronger, but maybe they would have had to pad the chair heavily or otherwise provide shocks... still, as long as the bracket on the post holds it should be fine. If it slides down then at worst the wheel will start to rub on the seat bottom which should present no danger beyond your deceleration.

Cost

The cost seems good -- $59.95 for a bike mount seat seems fine to me. $100 was starting to cross my line of interest, but I imagine thats where you get shock absorbers and such in the kits, but this seems a well built and inexpensive solution.

We loved the previous front mounted seat so much it gave me some trust in the brand, as foolish as that may seam.

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FamilyTech: Review: Wee Ride bicycle seat for kids
Thu, 12 Jun 2008

(Aside; I just described something to someone and liked the analogy, so thought I would repeat it here. Maybe its wanking but here goes -- I was describing one of the reasons I like to code so much, and so many free games and tools and so on; I compared myself to a 'chef' - as someone who likes to code "for other people", as a chef likes to cook for other people. There is a pleasure in the act itself, to seeing life come from nothing, to achieving the desired goal and all that.. but there is a joy also in making something from nothing and giving it to other people to also enjoy. So there you have it, at heart I'm an entertainer of the geek sort. A techsihibitionist?)

I'd like write up a full and lengthy review of the Wee Ride bicycle seat but let me be a little brief; essentially though it is a 'front mount' seat, which is to say it sits in your lap as you bicycle, so that a small child (40 pounds and less it suggests) can go biking with you, relatively safely. For this sort of device there are a few main options -- the common rear mount seat, the bicycle trailer/chariot, and the front mount seat.

At first I wanted to narrow down and the front mount appeals to me much more than the others -- the rear seat is traditional around North America but means the poor child is stuck looking at your back or side to side the whole trip (which seems dangerous to me with the child wanting to tip themselves over to see!), and of course you cannot much see the child should they cry out. (They are on the other hand protected from anything you might bike into such as tree branches or bugs in the air and so on.); the trailer can be cute (certainly everyone loves to wave at them as you go by right?) but shares similar issues as the rear mount seat.. it worries me that you cannot directly see the child, that something might run into the trailer behind you, or that you drag it into something :) Still, those are low chances, so trailers are a good option I believe.. and further, the better ones can double as pushcarts with an extendible handle at the back. Still, for my goal of just hopping on the bike and getting around, heading to the park or even to do small chores, the front mount seems ideal.

As to which brand, there seem to be a half dozen various seats that can be found; in my immediate area there are only a couple available, mostly at expensive bike shops. So while I did various reviews online and decided I liked the Wee Ride, it turned out to be readily available at Toys-R-Us and Canadian Tire, so that made the brand decision easier.

The price on Wee Ride is very good, certainly a very good value IMHO -- for a little plastic seat and mounting bar they're making some $$$ -- but for all the enjoyment we get out of it, $69.95 CDN seems a very good price. (Factor in you must buy a toddler friendly helment for about $25 CDN.. a helmet that is slightly different than a small child helmet.) (The seat was $69.95 at TrUs while being $89.95 at CanTire, fwiw.)

Installation really was quite simple -- theres a bar that you bolt on under your handle bars on the post, and onto your seat post. The bar extends as needed to fit various bike sizes (male or female styled), and bolts on using O-clamps so should fit on pretty much any bike; the construction of the bar is very good. The seat itself just has a single thumbscrew to attach it to the bar, which seems a little weaksauce to me .. but the advantage is the seat can be removed in one minute, should you wish to bike without the child carrier in place, which seems a good feature.

My only real complaint then is the buckles on the seat .. I need to adjust them tighter perhaps, but while looking around or fidgeting my 15 month old daughter can wriggle out of half the harness, though the waste belt stays good and tight on her. Furthermore, while in motion the drivers arms are cuddling around the seat, so theres minimal chance she could possible slip out.

As to seat positioning -- you might worry having an extra 25 pound child monted on the bar would raise the center of gravity and unbalance the cycle, but it seems not a problem; they suggest carrying a bag of flour around for a minute to get used to the weight, but in pratice it took me all of 5 seconds to be peddling around, no problem, turning and braking on hills and such. No problem whatsoever with balance (and I've not biked in years!) Furthermore the seat is not uncomfortable -- your arms go arond the sides to the handle bars no problem (though it might be weird on a 'road bike' with curled horn handlebars, but on my T-bar mountain bike, no problem. You do peddle a little wide, so your knees aren't near the seat.. so you lose a little power. Better exercise, and practice for when you want to waddle..... All told, fine!

Summary - the Wee Ride might not be absolutely perfect, but it is a Very Good value for the money, and is extremely fun to have. Did 10km or more last night to the park and back, and tootled around the area to explore. With my daughter. How awesome is that? And everyone you pass waves and giggles since it is so adorable.

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