Bicycling with kids: follow-me recommended¶

(Dutch note: Nederlandse versie staat in het ligfiets gedeelte).

Kids are sometimes a bit too small to cycle all by themselves. Especially when you’re on a cycling holiday. A common solution is to use a one-wheel extension bike that you connect to your saddle with a long boom.

Unless you buy a real expensive one, the stability is often bad or disastrous:

You have a long boom that can twist a little or a lot.
All forces are concentrated in one 2-3 cm wide spot: just under your saddle. And by “force” I mean “kid partying in the saddle”. Only the most expensive extension bikes have a tight enough mechanism to restrict the movement in a meaningful way.
I’ve seen kids move from side to side between -10 and +10 degrees of list… Urgh…

A way better solution is the FollowMe coupling. You use a normal kid’s bike, so your little one can cycle by itself on the camping.

The forces are way better manageable. Instead of 2-3 cm, you have the entire width of your bike (some 10-15 cm) to handle the twisting forces. In practice it is as solid as a rock. And for “just” some 250 Euro, which is cheap compared to the real usable extension bikes.

Here’s a short video shot in 2008 to give a better impression.

We’ve sold our follow me in the mean time. The power of the internet: we got contacted by the buyer: “do you know if there are second-hand ones for sale, I cannot find them?”. Just when I removed and cleaned ours in preparation for selling it. Great.