There are a variety of factors that contribute to a successful marriage—compatibility, empathy, a stubborn refusal to give up so you can prove your mother-in-law wrong. My wife and I have been married for 15 years and I can attest that all of these things matter, but one of the key reasons we’re still together is because of the BOB Duallie Stroller.
Sandals SPRANDI CP81-18810IVDZ Green.
We have twins. They’re 11 now and wonderful children when they’re not being completely irrational tweens, but the brief period between birth and, say, age 11 was absolute insanity. Particularly those first few years when the kids depended on us for everything. Having two babies at once is stupid. At least one of them is always crying. And they never sleep at the same time. Ever. So, as a parent, you spend a lot of time crying and not sleeping, too. And arguing. There’s so much to argue about when you’re sleep-deprived. Sometimes you argue just to stay Black on the drive back from Mommy and Me music class.
My wife stayed at home with the babies for the first few years of their reign, while I went to a cushy office job, so I can only imagine the emotional torture she went through on a daily basis between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. But there was a lunch break. Every day, I’d come home at noon and take the kids for an hour-long run in the BOB Duallie, a rugged, side-by-side double stroller that was a godsend for our relationship. Point Star Ox Women S Shoes White-enamel Red-navy. That lunch break gave me the chance for some guilt-free exercise while affording my wife a mid-day break from having to cater to two tiny dictators.
The kids were only a few months old when we first started the ritual. I had to stuff blankets around them to fill in the space of the seats, like when you’re in middle school and you’re Home Ec. teacher gives you an egg to protect for a week. The kids were usually fussy at first, but a mile into the run they’d settle down and enjoy the ride. I’d talk to them in a soothing voice while I was running, pointing out dogs and flowers and detailing scandalous rumors about our neighbors. And the kids loved their stroller time. It gave them a chance to interact with the great big world in a more personal way than sitting in a car seat affords. We used the stroller to hit parks throughout town, getting up close and personal with dogs, catching leaves in the fall, and getting snowed on in the winter. The Duallie facilitated quality bonding time for us and helped establish the daily run as an important tradition in our lives.
BOB Gear Revolution Flex 3.0 Duallie Stroller
BOB Gear Revolution Flex 3.0 Duallie Stroller
Sundays were for long runs. I’d load the kids into our 4Runner and hit Pisgah National Forest, sticking mainly to the gated gravel roads. The bumps would put my son to sleep. My daughter never slept. She still doesn’t. Occasionally, I’d dip into the singletrack, but it rarely ended well. The Duallie is a wonderful vehicle, and it’s not an exaggeration to call it a performance machine. Its best-in-class mountain bike-style suspension and small, rubber tires are ideal for gravel and dirt roads, yet it falls short against big rocks and expansive root gardens. But that’s not a knock on the stroller, more a knock on my decision-making. No double stroller is designed to handle technical singletrack. I found this out the hard way when I almost dumped both children out of the stroller during a particularly tricky creek crossing. Fortunately, the BOB’s harness system worked with aplomb, and my kids sustained no major head trauma.
Side by side bucket mean the stroller isn’t skinny (pushing it across a crowded sidewalk is frustrating, and forget about going into stores with single doors). But the Duallie is no wider than its competition. These machines were just made for the great outdoors, not shopping malls. And it’s not light; the latest model weighs in at 33.1 pounds (roughly average for double strollers) without any kids or diaper bags. But it is a durable beast built to haul tiny people and lots of gear. And its storage system—which, with 10 pockets and a big basket, is better than some others out there—doesn’t exactly dissuade you from stuffing it full of “necessities.” I treated the BOB like an SUV, loading it down with snacks, blankets, extra clothes, a speaker, 13 bottles of water, and more snacks. Call it 150 pounds fully loaded. That’s okay, because I wasn’t looking for a svelte stroller. I was looking for a way to log slow, methodical miles with the two babies I was suddenly responsible for, and the Duallie let me do that. So many parents stop running when they have kids, but I used the BOB to train for my first ultra, the Rock Creek Stump Jump 50K in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Running 50K of trails on the side of a mountain is hard, but not as hard as pushing 150 pounds of babies and snacks up a city street while trying to hand feed Goldfish crackers to two kids.
Sadly, we don’t have the double BOB anymore. I stuffed my kids in that stroller long after they could legitimately fit inside the seats. BOB sets a 50-pound per-child weight limit, but mine were way beyond that before we retired the stroller. They’ll discuss that fact with their therapist one day, I’m sure.
And I actually miss that stroller. I miss the cupholders, and the little zipper glove box where I could stash my keys and a phone and my wallet. I miss running with Goldfish crackers and string cheese. Running is more fun with cheese products.
BOB has made some upgrades since I had my Duallie. The company added extra pockets, made the handlebar more adjustable, and gave it “peek and chat” windows so you can see your kids without dropping the visor. But it’s basically the same machine; sturdy and reliable, just in a sexy sort of way, if you can say that about a stroller.
If I had unlimited space in my garage and the funds to throw away at nostalgia, I’d still have it, bronzed and placed on some sort of pedestal, commemorating a magical but stressful time in our family’s history. But we don’t. We gave it to a young couple with two small kids. It was well-used but still fully operational. I like to think that when that family outgrew it, they passed it on to another family, and it will continue like that in perpetuity. Whenever a couple with too many kids is in need, the BOB Duallie will be there, saving marriages one run at a time.
