Stroller Derby

We've run out of parking spaces. There's simply no more room. Something's got to go and it looks like it's going to be the Bugaboo. We have too many strollers. By too many I don't mean thousands. It's only four. We only have two kids, however, so that's a lot, especially when you consider the fact that two of the four strollers are doubles.

When we got our first stroller my wife was about seven months pregnant with the boy. We deliberated for months over the issue, visiting stores and websites to determine the one that we could trust to last and not be so overwhelmingly ugly we would hate it. There were so many to choose from and costs ranged from cheap to are-you-kidding. The victor won us over, despite the cost, after we tried one out in the store. The Bugaboo is a stroller that gets it right, but charges an arm and a leg for the privilege. If it weren't for the conjunction of a tax refund and the increasing fear of a hormonally induced emotional collapse from a woman entering the last month of her pregnancy I wouldn't have been persuaded. It turned out to have been a great choice. The Boy practically lived in it for his first year. He slept in it as I read the paper outside in the mornings and rode in it at the grocery store and on walks. It's a fantastic stroller.

As the Boy got older we needed something that collapsed and folded more quickly and from which he could self-exit if the desire struck him. That led to a Maclaren Volo. Small, lightweight and easy on the eyes, the Mac was a hit for the kid. I use it for him at the farmers' market. He rides, munching on whatever he's munching and I can hang bags of veggies from the handles. It's easy as can be.

When the girl came along things changed. My wife took to carrying her in a sling early on and the Bug got very little use. Eventually, as my wife prepared for a March of Dimes walk, we realized that a double stroller into which we could put both kids was now a necessity. A friend gave us hers. It's a behemoth. Even when folded it's still the size of a Yaris and weighs a ton. We turned to it in a pinch, but it was just too much.

For Christmas my in-laws provided us with a Mac double stroller. Nifty and as compactible as the single, it's turned into the go-to mover for outings with both kids. Though it folds up nicely and easily it's almost always set up and ready to go in the primary stroller parking slot of our living room. That means the single Mac is in the closet and that means there's no room for the Bug anymore. The original double stroller is parked in the garage (where anything car-sized should go), so the bug is without a home there, as well. Strollers just bang into one another.

The poor bug is shuttled from space to space just trying to keep it out of the way. It's hardly the proper way to treat such a finely engineered piece of equipment that has served us so well. It's just one more old friend that's getting the short end of the stick as the kids get older.

For your own Stroller Derby, download Jonathon Coulton's,

very clever (if you're a parent),

Stroller Town

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