We knew Cara was in the market for a new bike, but we kept putting it off. With how much we ride bikes (including the crazy mountain biking she’s done on her strider- see our YouTube video here), we also knew that a cheap bike from Wal-Mart was just not going to cut it. Since we didn’t know what to do, we just did….nothing.

Then we found out about WOOM Bikes. These are seriously awesome. After learning about this company I knew we wanted one of their bikes for Cara, and after a short email conversation they were gracious enough to send us a WOOM3 bike for review.

Note: The company behind WOOM Bikes is German, so ‘woom’ is pronounced ‘voom.’ Makes sense, right?

The short story is that, as parents, we absolutely LOVE this bike. Cara loves it too and has totally taken off riding as we expected her too. Yes, they are pricey, but they also have a fantastic Upcycle program (if you don’t have younger children to pass the bike on to). With how much we ride and enjoy riding long distances having a great bike for our kids is super important.

For the longer version, read on for our Our Top 6 Reasons WOOM Bikes Are the BEST:

1. Ease of Assembly

I do have some experience adjusting and maintaining bikes, but none was necessary. The bike arrived packaged carefully, and nearly fully assembled. The included instructions were easy to follow, and there were only a few steps. Mostly, putting it together involves tightening screws with an allen wrench. No allen wrenches? No problem. Included in the package with the bike was the allen wrenches needed, along with a pedal wrench needed for attaching the pedals.

All in, it took only 30 to 45 minutes start to finish to assemble the bike and Cara was pretty excited when we pulled the bike out from behind the Airstream:

2. Handbrakes designed for small hands

Neither of us felt comfortable taking Cara mountain biking with just a pedal coaster brake. After talking to a generic bike shop about putting a handbrake on a kid’s bike, he mentioned that most kids’ hands are too small to reach and lack the pulling power to actually stop themselves with a handbrake. WOOM has totally solved this problem with brakes specifically designed for little hands. Cara has no problems using the handbrakes to come to a standstill even from pretty fast speeds.

3. Steering dampener

There’s a small rubber ring that attaches the front wheel to a boss on the frame. This keeps the front wheel from turning all the way around, or a child from turning the wheel too far too fast and eating hard on the pavement. This might sound like a small thing, but really helps a child worry less and feel confidant learning to ride.

4. Freewheel design

USA laws are different in that we require a coaster brake for young kid bikes. This makes it incredibly difficult to get started on a bike because they can’t pedal backwards to line up the pedals for a good take off. Woom has figured a way to design the Woom so that it can have a freewheel and skip the whole coaster brake problem. It is awesome. We just had to make sure she could fully rely on the handbrakes, but since she hadn’t ever ridden a bike with any brakes, there were no bad habits to unlearn.

5. Lighter is Better

Have you ever hefted a generic bike from Wal-Mart or Target? They are HEAVY. Just think of your small child having to pedal that sucker up a hill. Its all work and no fun! The lighter the bike, the easier it is to ride, and the more fun your child will have! WOOM easily takes the prize for the lightest child’s bike I have ever lifted.

6. Great seat

This sounds petty, but when you want your child to stay on their bike for long periods of time, the seat just has to be comfortable. WOOM has done a great job with this, as the seat is comfy but not overly plush.

In addition to the bikes, WOOM also sells accessories you can add on:

Water Bottle

Definitely an essential for kids. Plus, its fun. Be warned that in order to install the water bottle holder onto at least the WOOM3, you have to remove the chain guard. This is not a big deal on a bike with no gears and the chain guard is useless anyway. It is just another USA law they have to comply with.

Gloves

They may not seem that important at first, but after watching Cara ride 5 miles on her strider bike and end with her hands all torn up and red they became essential. Longer distances = more stress on hands, and having your child wear gloves is an easy fix. WOOM’s gloves are great. They are full fingered, but have air vents up the sides of each finger so their little hands don’t get too hot. Plus, they are super cute and Cara loves the ice cream cones!

**We had JUST bought Cara a pair of gloves before the bike arrived (wasn’t aware they were sending us gloves to review as well!!) so that’s what the pink ones are. She loves them equally and will wear them interchangeably depending on her mood.

In Conclusion

We absolutely love the WOOM3! Cara loves riding her bike, and for a family of people on bikes that is really important to us. Since our very first riding session on this bike (pictured here) we have had the bike out many more times in the weeks to follow, and Cara continues to grow in her strength and confidence. After the review period, we have the option to buy the review bike (with a discount) and we will be doing so. I only wish WOOM had been created a few years earlier,so we could’ve started our older kids on them!

For those of you that are more visual here is our YouTube review of the WOOM3:

During our first 6 months of travel we had grand plans for road riding. We both had really great (and expensive) road bikes as we had been riding centuries (Sam more than me) and were accustomed to training for and riding longer distances. We dreamed that even on long driving days, one of us could get dropped off on a bike, ride 40 miles to where the other waited with the Airstream, and then even take a shower immediately! How amazing!

Has that really ever happened?

Not even close.

We realized pretty quickly that we just didn’t have time for long road rides. 20 miles? Probably. 40? Not a chance. We also learned that a high proportion of state parks and even National Parks have great off road trail systems. Turns out it was much easier to get in a mountain bike ride than a road ride.

I need to interject here with the fact that we are bike people. Nice bike people. We know many full time travelers that get a cheap beach bike for bopping around the campground & easy riding along the boardwalk. We are more serious than that. Despite the bikes living outside on top of our truck, we knew we’d want high performance replacements for our road bikes. I mountain biked quite a bit in college and was actually pretty excited to get back into it!

So what did we do? We switched up our bikes. We now have a pretty sweet mountain bike and a cyclocross. Sam and I are similar in height, so even though the fit isn’t perfect for both of us, we can share bikes and switch back and forth who is riding which one. Its definitely an advantage as we can carry less bikes with us!

Here’s what we currently have:

Canondale 29er Mountain Bike

We love the Canondale brand, so we went to Infinite Cycles (a local Utah shop) to talk to the super helpful employees and figure out which bikes we wanted to get. The employee there suggested a 29er bike (meaning the tires are 29″ instead of the normal 26″) because it could keep up with the cyclocross better on pavement. Instead of buying new, we hunted around on Craigslist and the local KSL classifieds and found a barely used one that would work perfect for us! This was also has hydrolic disc brakes which we weren’t originally looking for, but have turned out to be a definite bonus!

Canondale Cyclocross

We weren’t really aware of the awesomeness of the cyclocross until we started looking into it. There are some definitely frame differences between these and road bikes (something about lower bottom bracket, balance, etc.), but I couldn’t tell them all to you. The employee at Infinite assured us this would be a great fit for what we needed. We love that it still has the drop handles for when we want to do more serious road riding, but the the tires are thicker with more tread so it can handle gravel and even some dirt/sand without completely falling out from under us.

Diamondback Outlook 24″ for Rachel

Rachel originally started out with the Canondale Street 20 and we switched up her bike when we got back to Utah (it involved a serious re-arrange of the back of the truck). I made the mistake of buying her a cheap, crappy, department store bike from the local classifieds (I blame it on the stress of selling everything we owned at the time) and then spent $100 trying to tune it up. We made it to Portland before we realized she now hated to bike. It wouldn’t shift easily, it was incredibly heavy, and coming off the amazing Canondale she was having a rough time. We hunted around some bike stores in Portland and found her this used Diamondback Outlook for about $100. We gave them the department store bike to turn into scrap metal.

It has gears in both front & back which gives her extra power on the downhill and an easier climbing experience and she’s been doing great!

Canondale Street 20 for Andrew

Originally bought for Rachel back when we were road riding (she did a 25 mile ride with Sam at age 7), this bike has slicker tires and creates a more bent over body position when riding. It still does great off road, is light weight and Andrew totally rocks it. It has one chain ring in front, and then 5 gears in back to give him more power without overwhelming him. Rachel can still toast him with her 21 speed, but he does a good job keeping up.

Bootscoot or Strider Bike for Cara

This little strider bike has made it through all 3 of our kids. When we bought it for Rachel at least 7 years ago, strider bikes were a new thing and have come a long way since then. Since this was still working , we never felt the need to upgrade but some of them now come with a foot rest (for encouraging kids to pick up their feet) and even a hand brake. Oh how Cara could use a hand brake! She’s taken so many spills on this just because she gets crazy fast and the tires start to wobble and then she goes head over heels! Good thing she’s a tough, little girl.

She started learning how to use this back in Virginia (Sept 2013) and although she started out slow and cautious, it didn’t take her long to be cruising along at high speed. The idea behind striders is to teach kids balance without having to worry about pedaling. Once they get the balancing down (the hardest part about riding a bike!) they can easily switch over to a regular bike without needing training wheels.

She’s definitely ready for an upgrade, and I have an exciting announcement to make in a couple of weeks for what she gets to ride next. I’m extremely excited, because I know she’s totally going to rock it!

Ride-aLong Bike for Cara

I already wrote an entire post about our Ride-aLong and how its great for riding longer distances as a family. While the strider is great for campground riding (or even mountain biking! Have you seen our YouTube video? Cara was amazing!), there’s no way she’d keep up riding 10 miles on pavement. With the Ride-aLong we definitely have more options as a family. When we upgrade Cara to a larger bike, we’ll probably still keep this around until she’s in at least a 20″ bike and can keep up easier.

Having more expensive bikes does have its risks (getting stolen for one thing) but we also mostly keep them mounted to the truck with the Yakima system and so far haven’t had much trouble. The benefits and opportunities are definitely worth the risk, and we carry insurance. 🙂