Tuesday, September 18, 2012

In her own words

I first heard about Emily Finch from Bike Portland a couple of months ago.  She's a mother of 6 kids, who gave up the giant SUV and got a Bakfiets (and a host of accessories for carrying kids and stuff). Her story is amazing, and it's gone viral all over the world, but mostly as a human curiosity story I'm afraid, as many people can't empathize with even riding a bike with one kid, let alone 6. This video is a presentation she gave at the Bike-Walk summit in California last week.


While at this point in my life I'm never going to have 6 kids,  I think she's a kindred spirit, in that she looks at the giant rolling stepstool and says "why not"  and then figures out how to get it strapped into the bike and home.   Giant package of fireworks? No problem!   Nine kids?  We'll figure it out!

I also love that she admits that it's not always smiley faces and cheerful kids.  But then again kids have temper tantrums in Suburbans every day across the nation, and there's no reason for that to be an argument for or against biking with kids.  But the overall message is that she's happier on the bike than without one, and that her kids are learning important lessons about self sufficiency.


3 comments:

  1. Remarkable and commendable! Reminds me in a way of a National Geographic picture I once saw of a Southeast Asian family on a typical diamond framed bike: father pedaling, mother sitting across the cross bar holding a child or two, another perched on the handlebars and one or two on the back. I think there were six all told. Not the way we would do it today in our safety-conscious world. There's a carless family in my neighborhood with one of those extended bikes - two backless seats behind the rider. The kids are getting bigger so they put an electric assist motor on it.

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  2. Is there a YouTube title for that video? The link here is blank.

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    1. You know, the link seems to come and go- I'm not sure what the deal is.
      I can play it right now, but I noticed last night it was blank when I was checking on an ipad. You can try this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7COaTRgnVxo
      or just google "Emily Finch Youtube"

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