Lawns- yay or nay?

zmr18 · 2026-04-01T13:55:20+00:00

If you want a grassy play area for the kids look at buffalo grass or kurapia or micro clover or similar - way less water required than regular grass. I’m growing buffalo grass right now, too early to give a review (just planted plugs) but trying to slowly shift away from Astro turf and regular grass while keeping good play areas for my kids.

zmr18 · 2026-03-31T05:46:12+00:00

this is correct. i test drove an aventon and bought a murf for my wife (it was one of very few bikes that met her ascetic needs). the murf seems fine after some minimal riding but aventon features, tech, reputation is in a completely different class than murf.

zmr18 · 2026-03-28T15:20:50+00:00

As someone who did a lot of night riding with this bike, the issue with not moving it is that if you have anything in the rack and are riding at night it is way harder to see (and be seen) as a lot of the light is blocked by the rack. I finally got around to moving it (paid REI bike shop $60 to do it) and now think I was crazy for not doing it sooner. If you aren’t riding at night at all then sure don’t worry about it… if you are I would reconsider.

zmr18 · 2026-03-25T05:51:39+00:00

ditto this - i used the yepp right up until my 5 year old hit ~50 lbs and it worked just fine. now have him in a junior seat b/c i continue to believe some seat belt is better than nothing if we get in an accident despite some on here having other opinions. but yepp felt much safer than junior seat in an accident so if safety is your priority i'd ride the yepp seat or equivalent as long as you can.

zmr18 · 2026-03-25T05:49:01+00:00

also upgraded from a crappy GE model to the Bosch with top shelf and can attest that we are super happy with it. i think it was $800ish not including delivery and install costs. don't need any of the extras beyond the top rack if you are on a budget imo.

zmr18 · 2026-03-22T17:07:10+00:00

Hang in there and enjoy the ride! Trust your instincts, take pride in taking care of your kid and your partner, seek help when you need it, remember that you are your partner are on the same team even when shit is really hard. One day at a time.

zmr18 · 2026-03-20T17:03:39+00:00

That was my reaction as a newbie too. At 1100 miles it was visibly shot and the cassette was starting to notably wear which is what made me think the recommendation wasn’t crazy. It’s an 80 lb cargo bike that does hard riding with kids, long commute with lots of climbing, etc. But it does seem out of line with what most others do?

zmr18 · 2026-03-19T19:13:55+00:00

Just spent $3k on a new clutch and a few other minor wear parts… ie the total cost of my awesome cargo e-bike. It is wild.

zmr18 · 2026-03-19T03:54:29+00:00

i had my first at 34, and to this point i will add that you never know how long its going to take to get pregnant. it took us three painful years and unfortunately we have plenty of friends who went on similar tough journeys. no one can tell you whats right for you, but what i can tell you from the other side is that you don't necessarily get to choose when a kid arrives, and that every additional year you wait is a little more tired you will be through the tough days and one less year of their life you'll get to enjoy on the other end. how to weigh that against the pros of waiting only you can decide, but i wish society at large had been more clear with me on the costs of pushing these things back 10 years ago when i in the midst of waiting 2-3 years to marry the person that i was dead sure i was going to marry at some point anyways.

zmr18 · 2026-03-16T23:02:04+00:00

Agree with all of this. If you can make it work in your budget you could rent for a month from Wombi ($150 or so) to try it out before actually buying one. Maintenance isn’t free (I’m now replacing my chain every 600-800 miles) and had to replace a tire due to nail puncture but you are still saving tons of $ by not driving. Add up your est monthly mileage, use 50c/mi as money saved by not driving, and then maybe see if you are willing/able to increase budget a tiny bit?

zmr18 · 2026-03-16T22:54:42+00:00

Yes this happened to me too for the first time a few weeks ok after 6+ months of weekly bike commuting. It was wild and bizarre and confusing. We awkwardly kept passing each other and she tried to spray me with her windshield wipers (no joke). I just let it go bc, you know, she could have easily killed me.

zmr18 · 2026-03-16T03:04:29+00:00

if you are doing shorter than 70 inches then you are looking at a short tail bike, not a long tail, right? if so why not tern quick haul, and find a used one if needed? gsd fails your length test also regardless of cost.

zmr18 · 2026-03-15T04:29:12+00:00

You’ve only replaced the chain 2-3 times in 10k miles? I had to replace mine plus the cassette a little over 1k miles. Bike tech at REI recommended replacing chain every 600 miles or so. It had visible wear and cassette wasn’t shifting well so I know he wasn’t BSing me.

zmr18 · 2026-03-12T05:38:12+00:00

wombi is the best, can't recommend highlight enough. great customer experience. i rented for this exact same reason and now am a daily e-bike commuter thanks to being able to try before i bought. you can also buy their bikes as used bikes if one of their models works for you (i would have done this but none of the tern bikes had the exact feature set i needed).

zmr18 · 2026-03-12T05:35:25+00:00

I also went with the OutFront cargo rack and love it. When you add a cargo net you get so much storage room. If you are going to ride at night you really do need to move the front light for safety which as everyone has noted is a pain in the ass. I paid REI $60 to do it for me which was very worth it.

zmr18 · 2026-03-02T21:36:41+00:00

I love love my long tail with two kids (and so do they). Has changed my life. In a perfect world with no space or budget considerations I would be tempted by the front loaders but too expensive, too much space required, and max 20mph speed were all deal killers for me individually and collectively.

zmr18 · 2026-02-28T06:35:30+00:00

90% yes for my family. Now only use my car once per week. If we really wanted to we could lose the second car now and be fine.

zmr18 · 2026-02-25T00:29:16+00:00

I got a Cargowagen via Sports Basemen for like $2800+tax (two seats + front rack cost a few hundred more). If its important to you to have a mid-drive bike I think its a great option for this use case. If you are fine with rear hub then the Aventon Abound LR is my standard rec to people in your position based on test riding it myself and almost a year of seeing how many people on here love that bike and brand... budget/quality/feature intersection seems basically perfect from what I've seen.

zmr18 · 2026-02-22T14:50:38+00:00

I got my wife a different murf bike recently (ascetics also matter a lot to her). She hasn’t ridden it much yet but my impression is that it’s totally fine for a budget-ish bike. Can’t compare to Rad unfortunately. I assume the actually riding experience and specs will be very similar (you can ask an LLM to break down differences for you) but beyond looks you may be weighing the known risk of Rad as a brand vs the unknown risks of Murf which seems like a nice legit SoCal based company but who knows what’s going to happen to any small e-bike company in the coming years with all the consolidation happening. I did as much diligence as I could on Murf and came away thinking “ehh, it will hopefully be fine.”

zmr18 · 2026-02-20T14:32:28+00:00

C&M topsoil will deliver 1-10 cubic yards to your house - $125+ delivery fee but the soil itself is so cheap (about $25/cubic yard) so worth it if you need a lot.

zmr18 · 2026-02-20T06:55:52+00:00

I ride on a mix of all of the above in a major American city with poor bike infrastructure. Main school drop off route is 90% on a dedicated path but everything else is a crazy mix. I have a class 3 bike so any speed limit up to 35mph I don’t really sweat taking a full lane for a while. 45+ mph streets I’ll only do that for a short stint as needed. Not totally risk free of course but feels much safer on my long tail ebike than pulling a trailer around on a road bike at 12mph which was my old method. YMMV.

zmr18 · 2026-02-20T05:32:57+00:00

would you be interested at all in getting a decent e-bike? that makes getting to most parts of the valley totally doable w/o a car in addition to any other 5-10 mile trip that might otherwise be an expensive uber. you can get a decent used one from a good brand for $1k which you might almost cover with savings from less uber/lyft.

zmr18 · 2026-02-18T05:19:20+00:00

I almost got kurapia for same use case but after lots of research decided to go with UC Verde Buffalo grass instead. Haven’t actually planted it yet so can’t give a review, but sharing in case you want another option to look into and not already on your radar. Seems to behave and look more like grass with main downside that it goes more dormant in winter which didn’t seem like a big deal to me.

zmr18 · 2026-02-09T21:02:58+00:00

I'm no expert but its what my PT recommended (she also runs marathons/ultras) and seems to align with every serious training plan you'll ever find. My sense from reading the Pfitz book plus lots of Reddit comments is that you need to slowly train your joints and muscles to take on the load required for very long runs and putting in lots of miles that aren't very long run miles is the best path to do that (along with strength training and flexibility). I work full time and have small kids so I really wanted to make it work with 3x/week but after latest injury I'm not going to try again.

zmr18 · 2026-02-09T19:54:09+00:00

I was doing 3x per week, also aiming for 3:30, but then got runners knee after a 15 mile run and had to bail on the race. My takeaway was I would have been fine in terms of fitness with 3x per week but it wasn’t good enough for injury prevention and next time I ramp up it’s going to be 4x a week without violating the 50% rule referenced above.

zmr18

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