small children disturb your sleep, big children your life
Yeap, the bigger they grow the more creative solutions are needed. Problem is obvious, kids wanna ride with you, but they have stamina for one million miles but right now they are not in the mood for it. So you need to have bike trailer, simple as that. But kids wanna have real bike, and ride a bike, with you on a trip. EVERY TIME !
Other solutions: bike tow, like follow me, or other. Yeah right, i would like to see how to tell 3-year old kid NOT TO SLEEP while he whats to. Towing a sleeping child seamed scary. So bike trailer was the only comfortable solution for me and kids. We chose thule chariot 2 trailer, and kids ride on Woom bikes 2 and 3. It also come in handy with carrying groceries or extra luggage.
So trailer it is.
How to mount a bike, no two bikes on a trailer?
I've tried bunch of setups, layers, ropes, tapes, clips, 3D printed hooks... all for nothing. But recently i have tried, with great success a great mounting possession for bikes. The main principal is to put a kids seat post on the metal (aluminium) bar of the trailer and the handle bar need s to be tight to the trailer handlebar bar. After few meters it turned out that an extra line is needed to tight trailer handle bar to the trailer frame to cut the wobbling movement while braking. It looks like this:
So this setup tortured out great! It has many advantages:
super even kids bike weight distribution. Kids bike are balanced perfectly, whole weigh is delivered straight to the trailer metal frame and then direct to the trailer axle.
no extra weigh on trailer hook.
simple to mount / tie.
trailer handle bar does gets damage a little, but it is super cheap to change the sponge on it even for original part from Thule.
This set is suitable with rain-cover.
trailer is a bit longer like 16 inches.
Kids bike are secured and the whole setup is very stiff.
An extra line (marked on one of the photos as red/yellow) makes the whole set very stable.
Riding and maneuvering didn't changed much (extra weigh noticeable when riding uphill).
fully accessible trailer trunk.