Carrie Yager
Employer: Stay at home mom
Neighborhood: Lloyd, lives at Hassalo on Eighth
Commute Distance: 1 mile to daughter's pre-school
Ride (s): Xtra Cycle Edgerunner
Favorite part of riding: Avoiding traffic, keeping her daughter happy
Least favorite: People driving who don't respect the bike box
Carrie when she got her new cargo bike!
Carrie moved to Portland a little over a year ago from Detroit, Michigan with her husband and two-year old daughter. They live in the Velomor, and a big part of moving here was selling their car and getting to living a car-free life. While Carrie originally started riding a bike when she lived in Los Angeles she didn’t really start using a bike as her main form of transportation until moving to Portland. She began riding for short personal trips, not necessarily for commuting. Her original motivation to ditch the car was convenience, it was way faster to ride a bike and avoid the traffic congestion LA is known for. Now she appreciates the good feelings that getting some exercise by riding brings, she feels less stressed and her daughter is happier on the bike than in the car.
Carrie’s daily commute to her daughter’s pre-school is only 1 easy mile and she says riding in Portland is so nice compared to Detroit. There are tons of bike lanes and neighborhood greenways and most of the time people driving are really courteous. While she likes getting to avoid traffic by riding a bike instead of driving, she has found that she her bike helps her explore her new city. She says it is easier to discover new parts of town on a bike, it’s slower and you get to see more. Carrie has found the bike invites people to strike up conversations and enables her to meet new people.
Before she got her Xtra Cycle cargo bike, she used a trailer but that was difficult to park and bring in and out of the house. Her cargo bike makes getting around much easier. Carrie says she found a great online community on Facebook with the Cargo bike group where was able to hear from other families about their experience and ask questions about different types of bikes.
Carrie’s advice for anyone wanting to start riding in Portland is to just go get out and try it. She said she used to obsess over maps to find the best route, but in Portland there are so many good bike route way finding signs, “I thought it would be a lot harder and it wasn’t.”
