BayDad

I recently spent one of my daddy-afternoons driving around to various bike shops & sports shops checking out the different selection of child bike seats that are available.  I don’t have a fancy bike, and didn’t want to spend a lot of money on something that would likely only last a few months, if that.  So, after 3 different stores, I settled on this Bell “Cocoon” child carrier seat, which was only $50:

I got it home, and put it together, which was fairly straightforward, but took a couple hours.  Like many kid-products, there seems to be a bigger emphasis on cost than on ease of assembly.  It took me a while to get the whole contraption mounted to the rear of my bike, and I had several times where I was about to give up and junk the thing, and go buy the $200 version.

But, with enough wrangling, I actually got it mounted and secure, and have taken a few rides with Mr. Busy Bear.  He seems to really like it, and has a big grin on his face while we’re riding.   I was surprised by how different it is to ride with a 25 pound toddler on your rear.  It significantly changes the way the bike handles, and getting on and off with him in it can be harrowing the first couple of times!  So, if you get one of these, be careful!

We mostly just rode on Stevens Creek Trail, up to Whisman Park.  I was hoping that we could make it all the way to Shoreline Park, but we ran out of steam before getting there.   Maybe next time!

I’m on daddy duty 2 or 3 afternoons a week (4pm and on) so with the long summer nights, I’ve got a fair bit of time to spend with Mr. Busy Bear, which is really nice, and I’ve been trying to find more and more things to do other than just hang out at Mercy-Bush park!

One of my favorite things to do is go on local trips with my kids where the mode of the journey is as much fun as the destination. Some of my favorites have been:

Ride bikes from Palo Alto, over the pedestrian bridge near Oregon Ave. crossing 101 (stopping to wave at the cars!), and have lunch or ice cream at the Lakeside Café at Shoreline. Once, the little legs still had lots of energy after lunch, so we kept riding to Shoreline Cinemas to see a movie.

Take Caltrain up to San Mateo, have lunch there, then visit Talbott’s Toyland and see the model train displays.

<p> Take Light Rail to San Jose to the Tech Museum of Innovation.

What cool places do you like to go to that let you avoid using the car?

Funny, how many dads there are out there taking care of their kids on weekends.  Even funnier is the looks that a lot of them have.  They sort of look like kids who are being forced to do their chores.  Its as if its their duty to take the kids out on Saturday morning, and that means going to the coffee shop, and the off to some park or kid-friendly event where they’ll do their kid thing, and bring the offspring back home to mommy.

Thats all really sad, and I can see it almost every weekend at our local coffee shop, Dana St. Roasting Company (DSRC).  Just sit at a table on any given Saturday or Sunday morning (say, at 9am) and watch who’s coming through the door.  You’ll see more “dads with kids” than you’ve seen anywhere else in town.  The coffee shop becomes dad central!

But, we’re one of the few families that come there together, and we’re one of the few families that actually sit and enjoy the coffee (or milk, in Mr. Busy Bear’s case) and bagels & muffins, as a family.  Its chaos, for sure, with crumbs everywhere, kids running behind the counter, and lots of “Hi!”‘s coming from Mr. Busy, waving to everyone who’s waiting in line.  Everyone, including the staff smile and really seem to enjoy having him around, and I think it kind of lightens up the place.

But, I wonder about the other dads:  Are they just “doing their duty” for the weekend?  Where do they go after the coffee house?  And, most importantly, why do they seem so stayed and mildly anti-social?  Is it so uncool to be out with the kids having fun on the weekend?

If you want to hear a long drawn-out story, ask any parent about what it was like to have a newborn in the house for the very first time.  It’s an amazing change, and it takes a lot of effort just to keep things going from day to day.  It’s been just over a year, and I still remember it pretty vividly.

One of the things that I really think helped me get through that time were a good selection of “environmental” recordings.  My favorites are “Ocean waves at Sunset” and “The Underwater Cave,” but we have a few others: a rain forest, a stream, and some other stuff too.  At Amazon’s $0.99 per track, you can’t find a better deal.  That’s 2 hours of music for less than $2!

These have proven especially useful (and still are) for times when we have friends over and are having a dinner party or otherwise making a bit of noise around the house.  We have a stereo system in Mr. Busy’s bedroom, and we turn on the Ocean Waves pretty loud, and put the Squeezebox on infinite repeat.  After everyone is gone and he’s sound asleep, I can even turn of the waves directly from my PC without entering his room.  Thats a godsend!

We used it as a replacement for a white-noise generator, but I also think of it as a parental sanity generator.  Just imagine: It’s 4am, you went to sleep 3 hours ago, and there’s a crying baby who needs food, comforting, changing, or something.  You’re tired, he’s tired, and that about describes the situation.  Having something to mute the crying (after you’ve fed, changed, and entertained him) helps immensely.

I can remember more than a few nights spent sleeping on the couch, Mr. Busy in his swing, and the Ocean Waves blaring on the stereo.  There were nights where this was the only thing that could get him a good solid block of sleep, and getting a good nights’ sleep was the key to keeping him happy the next day, so you can see how important this was!

These days, Mr. Busy is sleeping well, can stay up later (9pm+) with little ill effects, and we’re working our way steadily towards a 7:30am wakeup time, which is just totally awesome!

Mercy-Bush park is like the community back yard for everyone with kids in downtown Mountain View.  It’s a small park, with a small grassy area, and a small jungle gym.  You wouldn’t think it was something special, would you?  Well, let me tell you…

Mr. Busy Bear took his first steps, swang on a swing for the first time, and met his first ‘friends,’ all by the jungle gym at Mercy-Bush.  It’s sort of like the parental version of the shared TV room in a college dorm.  Everything goes on there — people coming and going, you can see who’s with who, you can meet their kids, you can meet their parents and grandparents, you learn who gets home from work and when, and you can meet all the neighborhood nannies, too.

Mercy-Bush is like a tiny little oasis that reminds us that we can go outside and play every day.  It’s an invitation to walk two blocks down the street and spend some time having a little fun, going down a slide or climbing on the monkey bars. (Mr. Busy isn’t old enough for this yet!)

Is it worth a visit if you don’t live nearby?  I think so, if just to see the workings of a surprisingly idyllic neighborhood.  It’s not the kind of place that a lot of people drive to, so if you do come and visit, you’ll get to meet all the local families, and get a brief feeling for what living in Silicon Valley could be like.  Don’t hesitate to say Hi!

I like to think of Mercy-Bush as the gem of Old Mountain View, and I think the city does too…  See you there!

Hello!  Welcome to my first post on BayDad!

I’m Steve, your friendly author and local sysadmin.  I live, work, and raise my family in Mountain View, CA.  I’m a software engineer for a well-known technology company, and I’ve worked on software for video systems for over a decade. (Yikes!)

What I’m newest at is being a father, and particularly, being a father in the Bay Area.  I think this area has some unique challenges and opportunities for fathers, but when I set out to find a blog that was specifically about being a dad in the bay, I couldn’t find anything!

So, here we are, with an install of WordPress, a 1U server from PixelUSA hosted by Layer42 running Ubuntu 7.10 (no, I haven’t upgraded to 8.04LTS yet), and a cute DNS name registered with godaddy.  You get the idea?  I’m a dad, and I’m a geek, and these two things aren’t at all opposed.

My son just had his 14-month birthday (no, we didn’t actually celebrate this), and he’s super-cute, and I feel as though we’ve just now got this whole parenting thing under control (time to add more chaos, right?). I’ll be posting more pictures & galleries of his progress in the future.

So, to wrap up, I started this blog as a place for Bay Area dads to read & comment & discuss everything about being a techie-geek dad.  I think there are really a lot of special & different things about raising a family here, so I think we’ll have a lot to talk about!