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An Interview with a Mac Ride Family: Jonas Stefansson

Posted by Ashley Howard · December 20, 2019

Some families simply live and breath adventure: Jonas Stefansson and his family are one of them. We’re constantly amazed, and a little jealous, of all the wonderful adventures we see them on, thanks to the many photos they’ve tagged us in on Instagram.

As we speed towards a new year, we started thinking about the adventures we want to take as a family in 2020. Time and time again, the amazing places Jonas, his partner Arna and his little shredder have explored kept coming to mind. This family is so inspiring, we just had to reach out to them to hear firsthand about their experiences on the trails together. Check out what they had to say below.

How long has your family been using the Mac Ride seat?

We got our seat at the end of summer 2017. Our son Benni was just 18 months when he got on the seat but I would definitely have used it earlier if it was available.

What was the push for you to commit and purchase the seat?

There was really no push, I came across it online and it was love at first sight, straight to checkout!

How has the Mac Ride seat positively affected your family?

We’ve been able to ride so much together and kept our adventures going sharing them with the little man.

Arna and Benni (Iceland)

You and your family are very adventurous. What advice do you have for other families that would like to bike with their kids who might be a little more nervous?

I feel the seat is very safe and you get to control and guard your child very well. Of course, you have to adapt your riding to suit their capabilities, take short and easy rides to begin with and keep it fun - a mid-ride snack or treat always brings a smile. If you ease into it and build up your riding together it is incredible how much confidence you have riding with them upfront.

What’s been your favourite experience with the Mac Ride seat?

We have had so many that it’s really hard to pick. However, one of the great ones was this summer when we did an amazing singletrack ride at Iceland Bike Farm, 15km / 3.5 hours, descending about 800m through the amazing nature on a perfect Icelandic summer day. The ride is quite technical but we rode it with ease, smiles and laughter the whole way. Also, getting to ride our local Bike Park at Hlíðarfjall this summer was such a blast.

Jonas & Benni

How has riding with the seat helped your child to pick up vital biking skills? Do you think the seat has helped them learn to bike on their own faster?

Yes definitely. First of all, it starts their interest in biking in general. But I also think they learn a lot of balance and handling from riding on the seat.

What are your MUST-HAVE items when biking with your family?

Helmet of course! But here in Iceland you pretty much always have to prepare for the weather turning fast, it can get cold or wet at any time - no matter how good the weather is at the start of a ride. Adding some extra clothes to the backpack for the little ones is key, nobody is having fun if they are cold out there. Chocolate milk and some trail mix is also key and sometimes Benni’s Bluetooth speaker will hang on the backpack playing his favourite riding songs. :)

Jonas & Benni (Iceland Bike Farm)

In a lot of your photos, your son is always looking very happy and very stoked. Are there any ever melt-downs or issues biking with your child, and how do you deal with them?

Those photos are not lying, he is always having a blast. There have only been a few times when the smile wears off and it has mainly been due to him getting cold, cold hands especially. We haven’t tried the foam grips so the handlebar does get quite cold at times. We try to have him riding in thick gloves or mittens and sometimes I will wrap the handlebar with tape to insulate a little. If he gets cold and unhappy we would stop and try to move and warm up, bring out the snacks and maybe add on a layer or new gloves. Unhappy moments are rare, the seat seems to guarantee smiles.

What is your favourite trail to ride with your son and why?

We really can’t pick one. We just love riding together no matter what it is. From just riding to play school and picking him up, to riding all our local trails, the Hlíðarfjall Bike Park and exploring around our country making new amazing memories together. It’s all wonderful.

For us, the Mac Ride seat is simply a game-changer in bringing our child into the riding scene from a very early age. You get to explore and experience so much together, learn to trust and know each other and again make great memories.

We’re at a loss for words. We’re so thankful that this family loves the Mac Ride seat, and that they’ve really taken advantage of the opportunities it provides for their family to get out there on adventures together. We’re so excited to see what Jonas and his family get up to in 2020, and we’d love to see what you and your family get up to as well. Tag us on social media and get your Mac Ride seat today!

Child Seat vs. Bike Trailer: Making the Best Choice for You

Posted by Ashley Howard · September 09, 2019

As parents, we become masters of balance. We balance housework with playtime, sleepless nights with frequent naps, and our hobbies and passions with family time. When it comes to that last point, that means bringing the kids along. When it comes to biking, there are many options for getting out for a ride with your kids. Deciding which option is right for you will depend on your comfort level, your child's age and abilities, and the terrain you choose to explore. Best place to start is looking at the pros and cons of a bike trailer and a child bike seat.

Bike Trailers

Bike trailers are little tow-behind systems that hook onto your bike and provide your child with a little home on wheels to nestle into for a ride.

Advantages

The advantage of a bike trailer is that ultimately, it’s lower to the ground making it safer, some would argue. Your child is enclosed in a bit more material and is generally a lot closer to the ground in case of a fall. Another benefit to a bike trailer is that it doesn’t alter the balance on your bike as much. Having the weight being towed behind the bike rather than mounted on the front or the back can help you to remain balanced as if you were riding alone. The added room in the cosy little trailer means kids can bring blankets and toys along for the ride.

Disadvantages

Trailers can make braking more difficult especially in wet or slippery conditions due to the weight coming up from behind. This weight can also make it hard to back up or manoeuvre around corners. The big concern with bike trailers is that if you are on any kind of road or near traffic, the low positioning of the trailer can cause drivers to miss noticing it. Not to mention, the wider shape of the trailer can lead to it being nearer to traffic than a bike. A real downside to a trailer is how your child is too far away to interact with on a ride. This is a big one for us. As mountain bikers, we love to be able to chat with our kids on the trail and we want them to have a great view to experience all that the outdoors has to offer.

Child Bike Seat

There are many kinds of child bike seats. You can have front-mounted and rear-mounted, little chair-like seats or seats like Mac Ride that mimic a usual bike seat. For the sake of this blog, we’re going to talk about the broader category of child's bike seats that are mounted directly onto a parents’ bike.

Advantages

With a front-mounted seat, you can anticipate weight shifts more easily, helping with any decreased balance you may find from having your child on the bike with you. The big advantage we love is that our kids can talk to us and share in the experience of the ride. With your child on the bike with you, they can point out things that interest them and ask questions. Another big benefit is that being on the bike itself is helping them to learn the mechanics of riding a bike and how it feels to lean and turn.

Disadvantages

The biggest disadvantage of using a child bike seat when riding is how it affects the balance of the bike. This extra weight can make mounting and dismounting difficult and we do recommend being a very comfortable biker before choosing to use a children's bike seat over a bike trailer. Some parents find that a front-mounted seat limits their range of motion for pedalling, so this will depend on your bike and your stature.

Overall, what your choice will come down to is your preference. We love using the Mac Ride child bike seat as a family because we want our kids close enjoying the adventure with us on the trails. It was this desire to have our children involved in the experience that pushed us to design the Mac Ride seat in the first place. The choice between a child bike seat and a bike trailer will depend on your goals and hopes for your ride with your child. If you want to know more about other families experiences with the Mac Ride seat, we have a few stories on our blog. To shop online for a Mac Ride child’s bike seat, check out our online store.

An Interview with a Mac Ride Family: Justin & Wenonah

Posted by Ashley Howard · August 16, 2019

We love reviews and feedback on the Mac Ride kid’s bike seat. What we love even more is hearing from families, like Wenonah’s, about all the great memories they have from biking with their kids. We love sharing these interviews with you and hope that they give you some ideas for family biking adventures or how to get the most out of Mac Ride.

When did your family start using a Mac Ride seat?

We saw the initial Kickstarter ad and immediately bought into the concept of the Mac Ride and ended up investing in it.

What was the catalyst that made you decide to purchase the Mac Ride seat instead of other kids bike seat on the market?

We liked that it would not be the type of seat where she sat back and did nothing, but our child would be involved in our ride, holding onto the handlebars and feeling how the bike handled during a ride.

Where has your favourite family adventure been so far together? Why?

The best ride was a 16-mile ride in Patapsco State Park (just south of Baltimore, MD). We brought snacks and spent the majority of the day traversing the trails. This trail isn't tame and included large climbs, downhill sections, stream crossings, and technical sections. Being smart and safe, we walked sections that were too sketchy. It was a great day on the bike.

Do you think the Mac Ride seat helped your daughter to learn biking on her own? If yes, in what ways?

The Mac Ride helped our daughters understand riding in two main ways. The first being that you have to lean a bike into a turn, we think she developed an understanding of the forces in play as a bike enters a turn from feeling what we did. The second key skill was reading the trail and knowing when to stand up. The Mac Ride and the stirrups allow her to stand and absorb the roughness of the trail, and with some verbal prompting, she could be saved from a sore backside as we went over roots and rocks.

Specifically related to girls, what positive effect has biking had on your daughter?

Our daughter has many positive influences with regards to cycling. The Mac Ride allowed her to get out with our bike club's all women's group even earlier and see other women cycling. Between the Mac Ride and using a balance bike, our daughter had the confidence to start on a pedal bike and skip the whole training wheels phase of learning right when she turned 4 years old.

How old was your daughter when she first got on the Mac Ride seat? How did that first ride go?

The first ride with Mac Ride was in May of 2016 when the initial version was shipped to us. Our daughter had just turned 3 years old and was already riding her balance bike. She was already more than big enough to start her out the day we received it. We spent that day riding up and down our 1/3 mile long driveway getting everything adjusted for her and figuring out this new toy. She loved it right away and within days we had it out on the local trails, experimenting with what we could and could not do with it: what was too tough, how to move our weight around to get over logs and through streams. Now that we have a newborn daughter, we will probably get her onto it when she is under 2 years old on smooth trails and have her use it for years to help develop and hone her biking skills.

What advice do you wish you had been given about riding with a toddler that you would like to give someone just starting out?

Make it a positive experience, start on smooth trails for only short rides. To make it worth it for them, take them to a playground or somewhere else they want to go have fun and then back, so it gives them a break in the middle. Keep stepping up the distance and difficulty on the rides. We kept telling our daughter that these were the trails that we normally did. She was so excited as a 3-year-old doing the same biking trails that her parents were doing, instead of pedalling around the playground.

We know that your daughter is a race winner! When did she start showing interest in the competitive side of biking?

Our daughter has been around bike races since she was born as her father participates in Enduro races. She got the concept of a start line, race pace, and a finish line early in life. While stationed/living in Maryland, we took her to her first balance bike race when she was 2. She was really excited to be around a lot of other young kids who were riding, but she was the only one on a balance bike. When we moved back to the Williamsburg, VA area, we signed her up for a kids bike race series. At 4 years old, she raced in the balance bike category. That year, she was able to take first place at nearly every race and then won first place for the overall series. The next year, she moved up to the 6 year old and under pedal bike category. She learned some hard lessons as she often placed 4th or worse. But, when the points came out for the overall series, she was in second place, she learned the importance of showing up for every race of a series. This year, she raced in the same category again but took first place in every race and won the series. As much as she has a strong competitive spirit, she tells the other kids good job and has even stopped during a race to help a friend who crashed. As we look at our next military move, she wants to know if there will be kids bike racing where we are moving.

How has it been as parents watching your child compete?

It has been thrilling and humbling to watch her race. It is of course exciting to watch her get out there and show off her skills, but we have also had to teach her that winning is not the only reason to race, a hard lesson to understand as a young child.

What was the progression from Mac Ride seat to race-winner like? What was involved in that journey?

We used the Mac Ride until she was just too tall to fit on it to go on longer rides with our family and our mountain biking club. Her transition from balance bike to pedal bike was during that last season of Mac Ride usage. We were still participating in longer rides with family and the club, and she started taking her own bike and would go as far as she could. She has been quite inspired by the other riders in our club, especially since many of them are at her races so it feels like an extended family. The Mac Ride was very significant in teaching her how to look ahead and read a trail so that once she could pedal she was ready to hit the trails rather than just flat surface riding.

We loved hearing from Wenonah about her family’s experience with the Mac Ride kids bike seat. Biking with kids isn't always easy, but with some of the newer options out there for the biking family, it can be a lot more fun than we ever dreamed of. We are now offering the TowWhee system for parents whose kids have outgrown the Mac Ride seat.

Buying the Right Bike For Your Little Shredder

Posted by Ashley Howard · July 10, 2019

Buying your child a bike can feel just as labour intensive as purchasing a car seat or stroller. We found that there were a few things we had to keep in mind when buying bikes for our kids.

An interview with a Mac Ride Family: Tim Sage

Posted by Ashley Howard · June 10, 2019

We caught up with another one of the families using the Mac Ride child’s bike seat. Tim Sage and his family have been sharing their adventures with us on Instagram, and we are loving what we see! This little family of four really knows the joy of biking with kids. They get both of their kids biking on longer adventures thanks to the Mac Ride seat.

Don’t take our word for it, though. Read what Tim has to say about his family’s experience biking with kids using a child’s bike seat below.

How long has your family had the Mac Ride child’s bike seat? How old were your children when they first started using the seat?

We received our first Mac Ride for Christmas in 2017. We started practising in the driveway with our son Max when he was about 15 months old. We enjoyed it so much we got another MacRide for Christmas in 2018, for our daughter. She is just starting to take some short paced practice rides on it now at the age of 14 months.

Now that Max is 2.5 years old, we have started hitting more mountain bike trails with him, and we can’t wait to get Kirby, our daughter, out there when she is a little bigger.

Where is your favourite place to go for a family ride?

We have a great paved trail near our house that goes from a decent sized lake all the way to the downtown area. We love the shade and being near the water - it doesn’t hurt that the local skatepark is on the way too. There's a great 10-mile route we take that hits the skatepark, a few playgrounds, and ends up at a bakery that has some awesome cupcakes. With our daughter now able to join us I have a feeling we will be adding some swimming stops to the route this summer.

What is one of your favourite stories from biking with kids using the Mac Ride seat?

It is really hard to pick just one. Now that both kids are riding with us on Mac Ride seats, we have loved getting everyone out together. Recently, we rode to town for an outdoor concert and festival. We knew that parking would be difficult, so we loaded the bikes up and parked a little farther away and rode into town. On the way in, we ended up going down a decent sized hill (by Texas standards) and picked up a little speed. I was worried that it might be a little overwhelming for our daughter, but as my son and I passed her, she was laughing and smiling. At the bottom of the hill, she started ringing her bike bell, and my son rang his in response. It’s hard to say exactly why that moment sticks out, but I know my wife and I will always remember it.

How has the Mac Ride child’s bike seat positively impacted your families adventures?

My wife and I both love riding, and we have for a very long time. The Mac Ride seat has enabled us to show our kids exactly why bike riding is so awesome! We can all talk, laugh, and ring bells together! It’s a no-brainer that a kid is going to fall in love with riding if they can blast through the trees on some single track with a little speed rather than try and struggle with training wheels in a driveway. The Mac Ride shows our kids how awesome bikes can be, and they both seem to have a very advanced interest in moving on to balance bikes. Every now and then our son will show some bike handling skill that is pulled straight from his time on the Mac Ride (you should see him carve a berm on his balance bike!)

What are some of the obstacles that you have encountered with teaching your child/children to bike? How have you overcome them?

Our main concern with riding was getting our kids to want to wear a helmet. Both kids hate hats for some reason, so we were naturally concerned that they wouldn’t want to keep a bike helmet on for very long. Surprisingly they both love riding with us so much they don’t mind helmets. My son even guilt trips me if he sees me riding without one.

How would your child/children describe their experience with the Mac Ride seat?

Well, our kids love them, there is no doubt about that. Max loves going over bumpy singletrack and ringing his bell at any dogs he sees. Kirby loves to ride with her mom and have the wind in her face. Our kids are both so young still that their smiles and laughs do the talking, but trust me, they love it.

We love hearing from the families using the Mac Ride seats! If you would like to be featured and tell your family’s adventure story, please reach out to us. Ready to get your own Mac Ride child’s bike seat and start biking with your kids today? Shop online and get your Mac Ride seat in the mail. See you on the trails! To find more images of Tim and his families adventures, find them on Instagram.