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From the moment I first unpacked the Burley D'lite, I knew it was a winner, fit and finish throughout were excellent (Except for that one pin). The device assembled with clear instructions, and once completed, it made me "Jones" for the open road and summer trips with the grandkid! The interior is spacious and the child restraint system is as good as your that of your better car seats. Any children we had carried in the trailer seemed comfortable enough and oddly happy and contented to be there! Per the feature list, there are plenty of pockets to hold the "Stuff" that seems to accompany kids where ever they go and these pockets are accessible to them from their seats. Even with the full load of two toddlers, you still have loads of room for freight! It is merely a question of your legs and how much they want to pull!
To answer that question it is necessary to get some ground rules going forward from here. OK, so you blew 5 grand on your titanium roadie and you saved a whole 3.7 lbs. over your old aluminum Cannondale. Do you want to hook up 80 lbs. of kids and three bags of groceries and do a time trial? Nah I didn't think so! So, having gotten the entire performance thing out of the way, what is it like to pedal along with that much freight? Surprisingly easy actually! The key here is not being in any kind of a hurry! This trailer is a joy behind our Burley Tandem, and it is a whole lot of fun behind my Cannondale Mountain bike, tooling around the hood. But, you will start slower, and you will spend more time in lower gears. Once you get used to it, and you develop enough momentum, you will ride on happily. Although you will not average 17 mph. Twelve will be nice and 14 might be doable... for a while!
Once we get past the issue of jack rabbit starts and a more leisurely "smell the roses" pace, we find that the trailer barely lets us know it is there. This is good and bad! Good, because it shows the handling of the bike is relatively unaffected on the straight and level. Bad, because you need to know it is there and to understand some things.
- This trailer is wider then your bike and it tracks to the left of your bike a lot more than to the right! (to keep it away from traffic you need to compensate by hugging the right shoulder!)
- You have precious cargo (the kids, not the eight bucks of bottle returns)
- You take longer to get through intersections than with just your bike, your consist is twice as long!(There is no such thing as "Clear!"
- You are about to add a whole new dimension to your biking experience!
This little device opens up family biking to a whole new level, picnics on bike back, bringing dinner over to the "Kids House" and not needing the car. Local shopping with no hassles looking for parking, and bringing your tools along to support a group ride. All are doable with the Burley D'lite! It is as it's name implies, a Delight!
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