scrawls.

scrawls

still cheaper than therapy*

3.10.08

Peg Perego Venezia

we've had this stroller and been using it for one year, now. Seeing as how you're one. We chose it because it was appropriate for newborn usage - it lies down flat - and because of the flippyness. It takes about five seconds, literally, to switch it so that you're facing in or facing out, and we call it flipping the baby and you don't like your face in the sun or in the wind, and sometimes you want to see the world, and sometimes you want Mama, and on sunny days when we're out and about you get flipped at every corner and it's so easy. But, you are wanting to face out more and more, even to fall asleep. This stroller - and i think they probably all are, but i don't have experience with all of them, but this one - it is nearly windproof, and when you were just tiny and lying in the bassinet-form all wrapped up, it was so warm inside. The wheels and suspension take cobblestones well enough that you don't hate them, and i'm not sure if that has anything to do with the stroller itself or if it's just because you've been cobblestoned since you were born and are used to it. Does pretty well in slush, okay on grass, gravel not so much. I think this is pretty standard, but the wheels are the absolute suck on gravel. Cracked sidewalks are not remotely a problem. You are now almost always sitting up in it and appear perfectly comfy. We have the 2007 model, and so it came with a parents' cupholder but it doesn't fit through our front door with it attached so we don't use it. We do use the baby tray, now, but not always. The front bar is getting hard to move around, i think the working parts have gotten dirty and sticky, so that's a little annoying. The five-converting-to-three-point harness is great, sure, but we are using it more and more often as an only-three-point harness. It clocks in at nearly ten kilograms, though, 22 pounds, so very much not a light stroller, though it is pretty narrow and quite maneuverable as these things go. It is not a sidewalk tank like some i've seen. But the weight is why i don't ever, ever take it on the streetcar alone (that, and the lack of elevators at the nearest U1 stop). Or, that, and the size and inconvenience - our nearest streetcar is always the old one with four steps to get on, and our second nearest streetcar is only a new one about a quarter of the time, or less. Even the 71 is only new sometimes but it only connects to the U3 and even that is way, way out. (They say that in 2019 the U2 will extend to Rennweg but, um, by then we will be so far out of strollers.) So i use the stroller almost exclusively for neighborhood walks, the grocery, the pharmacy, the general store.

And since i go to the grocery with it, i load up the basket with milk and orange juice and yogurt and things that are heavy. So the basket is finally, after eleven months is when it started and it's only getting worse even though i've tried to repair it with duct tape, finally starting to come apart. And i called Peg Perego after hearing good things about their customer service and apparently in Austria they don't have a warranty at all, so a new basket would be forty Euros, and for forty Euros i can get a whole new umbrella stroller, or almost half of a whole new really nice umbrella stroller, and so i am wondering. (We could have got a Bugaboo with a two year warrany, but that would have cost three times as much and harder to flip, as they say one shouldn't flip a Bug with the baby still sitting in it, and also the Bugaboos wouldn't fit through our front door so we'd have had to either get a new front door or lock it outside and be paranoid about it being stolen all the time. We could have got a Teutonia with a three year warranty, but that would have cost twice as much and not been flippy at all, though they have that skinny new model and i lust after it. If they had had the DIY Teutonia a year ago you'd absolutely be in one of those.)

We paid three hundred Euros for the Venezia. So if we sold it now, or if we donated it now, then it'd be a little less than one Euro per day of available usage. Which is better than paying for gas, right? Or something. Anyway, we have used it heavily, and we have beat it down with the cobbledy streets and the grass in the park and whatnot.

i have almost decided to buy a new stroller. If the basket hadn't busted and if i didn't use it for going to the grocery store every two days then maybe we could have really been a one stroller family. Which was kind of the goal, and we were for a long time, and if i get a new one we can get rid of this one and be a one stroller family again. Almost decided. And while the top rated umbrella stroller on baby-gaga i can't find here, if i decide that we do want a new stroller, it will be air-bubble light. But have a big and useful basket. (Does anybody make a carbon model? It could match the canoe ... )

Or do i just get a new basket? Since the umbrella strollers probably the baskets will never be so big. But after a year of hard use, one of each of the now-front wheels are worn way down, and one of them doesn't spin like it maybe should and scrapes across the floor if you try to turn it a certain way. And if i donated it, there is undoubtedly a lot of use left in the thing. Especially as it works so well for newborns. Hum.

Labels: emptor

scrawled @ 08:01