If there’s one thing Doug and I have learned as parents, it’s that theory and other people’s ideas are great, but you never really know how you’re going to handle something until it happens. And great big investments don’t always pay off when you make them before you know how your kid is going to react. Or you, for that matter. . .
Before Max was born, we just assumed we’d use a stroller a lot. Doesn’t everyone? Or at least everyone who wants to get outside with their kid, and we definitely knew that much about ourselves and the kind of parents we intended to be. We were going to be outside a lot, and it was just a matter of how and how early we could get Max involved in hiking, biking, boating, you name it. How else do you take a little infant or toddler on the walks that will lead to hikes, other than in a stroller?
For lots of reasons, including our natural parenting style, Max’s personality, and the fact that we live on a BUMPY dirt road, we almost never used the stroller we got as a shower present. Instead, we did a LOT of walking with him as a baby, using an Ergo soft backpack carrier. I could walk for miles and miles with Max on my back, exploring the old logging roads and trails near home or hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. And while I could have put him in the stroller for short walks on our road, it just didn’t feel right. For one, Max didn’t really start talking until he was two-and-a-half, so it was much easier to communicate with him right next to me. And the few times we did try the stroller we had, he seemed to go into some kind of apparently stressed-out stroller-trance. He’d just sit there clutching the leaf or rock I’d handed him as though unaware of it. In the Ergo he’d check it out and “talk” about it as though it were a mysterious treasure, whether it was a hemlock twig or a rock with mica bits.
Last summer we began to think about getting back on our bikes for the first time since Max was born. A section of The Northern Rail Trail goes right through our town and it’s an easy one-mile ride to get to it. We’d gotten a bike trailer for Christmas and we found a helmet to fit Max, but we wondered how he’d feel about riding in the trailer. Since he had barely ever been in a stroller, we thought it would be a bit of an adjustment, certainly a big change from riding on Mama’s back. So we decided to use the stroller as a transition. We could walk and stop and check on him and chat with him about what we were seeing, trying to keep him engaged and interested.
It was right around this time that we had the opportunity to try out a BOB Sport Utility Stroller, made by the same company that makes the BOB Trailer which EasternsSlopes.com’s Founder, Tim Jones, uses for tandem bike touring. Tim liked the trailer so much, he wrote it up as one of “Our Favorite Things.” The stroller we’d gotten as a shower present was a nice one, but definitely a “city stroller,” NOT intended for dirt-road-roughing-it. Who could blame Max for spacing out when he was not only isolated in his little pod on wheels, but being shaken and bounced like a paint can in a mixer? Would the BOB’s rugged suspension smooth out the bumps and make the ride more enjoyable? And how would it compare otherwise?
While many of the BOB’s features were similar to the city stroller we had, it was definitely sturdier, definitely suitable for rough roads and even, possibly, some hiking trails. Put side by side, ours was a decent stroller, while one might say the BOB was “hard core.” Aside from the suspension, the most obvious difference was the front wheel, which did not swivel on the BOB we had. (Other BOB models do have a swivel front wheel, with an option to lock for stability.) At a slow walk this didn’t make much difference, but with any speed, whether jogging or outrunning deerflies, the fixed wheel on the BOB was a huge boon, keeping the stroller from bouncing from rock to root to rock.
And overall, it did indeed seem a more pleasant ride. At least Max didn’t turn into a zombie. We tried it and can’t recommend it for a walk in the woods on an old, rough, eroded logging road, but it certainly admirably handled the washboards and ruts and rocks of our country dirt road. If I’d wanted to jog on the packed stone-dust bike trail down the road, the BOB would have handled that nicely, too.
I did notice that some features standard on other strollers are add-ons with the BOB. If you want to bring your coffee with you, the handlebar console is an accessory you have to add. Ditto a snack tray for the kiddo.
While I don’t think the BOB would have turned us into stroller people, or changed our parenting style, I would certainly recommend checking it out as an option if you see yourself using a stroller on rough terrain, particularly rough roads. It’s rugged, well made, and, though Max wasn’t saying, it’s apparently a lot more comfortable than a stroller designed for smooth sidewalks.