When we were planning our recent family bike tour, one of our big decisions was whether to use a bike trailer to carry one or two children in or to just use a cargo bike at home.
After seriously considering a bike trailer, we ultimately to just use a cargo bike instead. Here are some we considered in our decision.
Saving turtles. Swimming in lakes. Sleeping in a tent. Seeing the countryside from the seat of your bike. Family bike camping trips can be positive and lasting experiences. “Let’s Go Family Bike Camping” is a book to help families get started. Half the book is full of stories and photos from my own initial trips with one toddler and later two kids aged 5 and 8. I share our failures and fears as well as our successes and joys. The second half of the book is full of tips with ideas for your trips. It includes tips on planning, gear, entertaining the children and more.
See the full list of planned chapters below. Not yet written chapters are marked as TODO. Feedback on tips to include or that you’d like me to cover are welcome. At the bottom of the page is a form to subscribe to email updates about the book— the list will only be used for that purpose.
Continue reading Announcing “Let’s Go Family Bike Camping” Book
By: Don Galligher
This review compares the 2013 Yuba Mundo cargo bike with the 2014 Xtracycle 27D EdgeRunner. My daughters have named our matte black Yuba “Black Pearl”. The Xtracycle is named “Baliwick” after a butler in the Princess Sofia cartoon. Update 2022: Current models of Yuba Mundo and Xtracycle are similar. Xtracycle now calls the EdgeRunner “Stoker”. Neither model reviewed here has electric.
Troy is very casual about his epic 4,400 mile journey. Last year he noticed that the current Guinness Book of World Records for longest motorized bicycle journey was just over four thousand miles. He knew his bike could go that far. He knew he could go that far. He had his wife’s support. So he set out to break the record.
Of course it wasn’t easy. When he stopped by my shop last week on his way back to Rochester after cycling out to Colorado and back, I asked him about a bandage on his arm. “A dump truck ran me off the road. No big deal. I was able to lay my bike down on the grass, so just some cuts and bruises.” He kept a video blog about his journey. He describes many flat tires. He describes many electrical problems. On day 13 he describes how Continue reading Troy Rank’s Epic 4,400 Mile Ebike Journey and Why It’s Important
Xtracycle cargo bikes and Burley Piccolo Trailercycles are both great for family biking. Unfortunately, there’s currently no ready-made way to attach a Burley Piccolo to an Xtracycle.
This post describes the 4 known designs I’ve seen to connect a Piccolo to an Xtracycle.
Continue reading How to attach a Burley Piccolo to an Xtracycle
(April 1st, 2014) As this video demonstrates, a longtail cargo bike has a hidden danger: poor backup visibility. Because a cargo bike is longer than a regular bike, there exists a “danger zone” behind the rear wheel where the rider’s view is blocked. This video shows my attempts to develop a “backup camera” to alleviate this problem, with limited success. My camera is similar to cameras recently mandated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for all light vehicles.
It might seem obvious that someone who adopts a car-free lifestyle is making sacrifices in order to live by their principles. The implication is that we should pity them. Cars can go faster, farther, and carry a lot more stuff than bikes, right? So they’re better, right? Not necessarily. Urban families are finding that an electric cargo bike can be a step up—a big step up—in meeting their transportation needs. And any task they can’t do on a bike they can accomplish with a rental car or carshare car.
When we look at the amount of time we spend on driving, the distances we go, and the amount of stuff we carry in our cars most of the time, an electric cargo bike can accomplish the same tasks over half the time, but for about 1/100 the cost. Think about that. Would you pay 100 times more for Continue reading Electric Cargo Bikes Have Car-Like Utility but Bicycle-Like Costs: Cool!
If you are like many utility bikers, especially if you replaced your car with an electric cargo bike, not biking in the winter is not an option. No matter what the weather conditions, you still need to bike to take your kids to school, commute to work, and pick up groceries. Is that even possible in the winter? The answer is emphatically yes. You’ll find a bike can get you where you need to go in any weather, in some ways more comfortably, more quickly and more safely than other forms of transportation. Sometimes it takes a bit of a sense of adventure to get going, but once you do you’ll find dread of winter biking is misplaced. Here’s some tips to help you along.
There is a simple solution to bicyclist/motorist conflict that needs to be more widely recognized: electric bikes. To a great extent conflicts are caused by the difference in relative speed between cars and bikes. Electric bikes can help more cyclists close that speed gap. Motorists easily become annoyed and even enraged when they see Continue reading A Simple Solution to Bicyclist vs. Motorist Conflict
Every week during the summer I have to bike about 12 miles round-trip to pick up my farmshare vegetables. My route consists of three miles on a beautiful rails-to-trails path through the woods, three miles straight uphill to the farm, and then six miles home straight down Troy Road at speeds that can reach 30mph. Needless to say, I usually take my cargo bike for this task. Last week, however, I decided to Continue reading Minimalist Cargo Biking
