Here it is, the bike loaded with 200 lbs of gear (once the children are in). Melissa made the pannier bags for this trip and they worked wonderfully. I welded the brackets. The Weehoo trailer was obtained from the company at a very reduced price as a way of sponsoring our trip.
I was very excited about our adventure, and every part of me wanted this to be a great ride. Numerous people took pictures of us along the way, and we received many verbal affirmations and thumbs ups. The setup just looked that cool.
The reality: The trailer with all this weight (but not beyond the rated maximum load) which is fully supported and balanced by attachment to Melissa's seat post was very unruly. I have an elite cycling past, and can handle a bike very well. For instance, I often track stand (if you know what that means) while waiting for stoplights to turn green. Despite this, I was constantly fighting to keep us on the road with this setup. If either boy shifted in his seat, the whole bike would whiplash right or left without warning. I became fearful of parked cars - not knowing when I might be thrown into one by this effect. This forced me to ride much farther into the lane than I usually would, which fully negated the advantage of the narrow stance of the Weehoo trailer design. In San Francisco traffic with bike lanes surrounded by buses on one side and busy traffic on the other I was on full alert, completely stressed out. The same environment on my road bike would be pure pleasure.
To be fair to Weehoo, we haven't tried the trailer with a single bike yet. It might be that our somewhat flexible steel tandem frame allowed for too much flex when coupled to the trailer, and that the tandem frame was as much to blame as the trailer. We will have to try it with a single once at home.
In short, our San Francisco ride went like this: We rode down the Oakland hills to the ferry, took the ferry to Fisherman's wharf, rode from Fisherman's wharf to the Golden Gate bridge, through the Golden Gate park and part way down the pacific coast. By late afternoon, just after descending a steep road while cooking the brakes at less than 15 mph due to fear of being tossed off the road into the ocean, I pulled over and stopped. I knew that many of the roads ahead would have modest shoulders or no shoulders at all. It was not going to be safe to continue on this way. I knew right from the start in Oakland that the beast was unruly, but I somehow expected to learn to tame it after 5-10 miles of riding. I am always up for a challenge. This didn't happen. It didn't get better. It just exhausted strange upper-body muscles that were apparently working overtime to wrestle the beast, and was emotionally stressful - not the way a bike tour should be.
After pulling over we sat at the side of the road for probably two hours before the internal dialog between my excitement, my ego and my sensibilities came to a consensus. We turned back and rode back to my aunt's place in the hills of Oakland. It took until nearly 10pm to arrive there. Surprisingly, Oakland after dark by bicycle wasn't as horrible as one might believe.
The next day we got a minivan from the airport, packed up our gear and headed back to the OC - just not the way we'd intended.
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