Scott Hebert

Autumn picked my bike up from the bike shop this week. My bike had been in the shop for a week, and I was really chomping at the bit to get it back.

Autumn showed up with something new in tow: a Giant Halfwheeler ST. This is the craziest contraption I’ve ever seen, but our youngest son loves it. Basically, this thing attaches to my seat post and let’s me drag him behind while he pedals along and “helps.”

Here are some notes about the device:

• In our house, it only works on my bike. Autumn’s bike is designed in such a way that the bottom of the seat post is fairly low compared to the back tire. This causes the connecting post from the halfwheeler to drag on the rear tire.
• The halfwheeler attaches in such a way that there is a lot of left and right lean possible. Hopefully this is helping our son learn to balance on his own.
• The pedals on this actually work. It’s possible for the kid on the back to move the bike on his own.
• I now have a turn signal on my bike. Our son takes care of that for me.
• Apparently, our youngest son plans to race bikes or motorcycles. He throws himself into every turn with his knee down. This probably surprises no one that knows him.
• If your child has any size, expect to be thrown about a bit. I’m a fairly large man, but when 50+ pounds worth of son and halfwheeler shift left or right, I can feel it.

I would sincerely recommend this to anyone that is interested in doing a lot of biking with their kids. Our youngest son is too small to do much more than a mile in a day, but with the halfwheeler, we’ve easily done 15 miles on 3 separate trips.

Tags: biking, family