Early Friday morning we loaded up our son and headed down to his pediatrician's office - for his four month check-up. So, yes, he was in a car seat, and, yes, he was wearing a helmet - though I honestly have to say as his head is still an inch smaller than the smallest helmet we could find, I don't think it offered much protection other than satisfying the legal requirement here in Portland. Instead of just tossing his seat onto the floor, which even in the long box would have taken up almost all the cargo space, I used some straps I made as motorcycle tiedowns to strap his seat, atop a thick squishy foam pad, to the bench - worked great for stability for him, and if hunkered down a bit I could see his face under the rain cover (not raining, but we figured an added margin of safety from...I don't know...bird attacks maybe, and a bit warmer). After about two seconds of riding, he was fast asleep, and I think I only jostled him enough to stir from that sleep once on the trip down, though not all the streets we took were in the best of shape.
The trip was just about 2.5 miles and pretty much downhill from our place - you can see the map
here. It was a great morning and pleasant trip - the only stumble was in parking the bike; our pediatrician's office has a nice off street bike rack, but it's in a sort of open corridor that's also the wheelchair entrance and the bakfiets was either going to take up the entire bike rack or stick out and block access for wheelchairs. In the end we parked on a curbside bike rack at a bit of angle so as not to get in anyone's way.
The way home was also quite pleasant despite being mostly uphill. We had a choice of several blocks of gradual uphill or one block of really steep - we rode down the steep and up the gradual and it worked quite well.
Returning home from that first outing we were definitely in favor of cargo bike ownership.
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