Xtracycle Sighting

I saw this long bike in Silver Spring over the weekend. Props for making a sissy bar out of the footsies. I never considered putting a bar on the back like that. When my girls are big enough I'll have to follow suit.

Father's Day Haulings

I spent my father's day running errands with the kids. We went to the pool and then the grocery store. The XtraTrucker handled the load with ease. The only sketchy moment was when my youngest decided it was fun to throw her weight from side to side to make the bike wobble.

When I got home I used the bike to return a neighbor's tiller with plenty of room left over.

Happy Father's Day to me!

Cargo Bike Grocery Run

Whenever I'm discussing cargo bikes the topic inevitably shifts to grocery retrieval. It seems that when people think of cargo bikes they try to imagine the heaviest thing in their lives and apply it to a bike trip. In turn, for most people, the heaviest and most awkward thing imaginable is 3 or 4 bags of groceries. While groceries can be quite heavy, there are much heavier things in need of conveyance; gardening supplies for one can be super heavy. Unfortunately my local Home Depot is not a bike friendly trip away. This was my first grocery run on the LHT and it worked out fine. Loaded up with a weeks' worth or food for the family (aka 500 apricot Clif Bars), the LHT had a little more twist in the ride than usual but nothing too bad.

Speaking of gardening this seasons first batch of worm compost tea was brewed up and applied to the vegetable garden this week.

Xtracycle Add Ons

I added some DIY foot pegs to the Xtracycle last week. These are re-purposed bar ends that slide perfectly onto the xtracycle v-racks. When my daughter gets too big for her seat I'll move the bar ends down as needed.

I saw this on another blog and thought It looked like a good fix. To waterproof your xtracycle, take sections of road tube and slide them up the racks. When they are all the way on, take the bottom half of the tube and roll it up over the top half. Next put the racks back on the frame and unroll. The tube should create a nice waterproof sleeve where the racks meet the frame.

It's the little things...

Kidical Thinking

This past Saturday I took the family down to the ABC's of Family Biking at the Capital Hill Montessori School. With my oldest daughter on the LHT, we meandered through Silver Spring and Takoma Park eventually connecting to the 14 St. bike lane. I hadn't taken this route into the city before and was pleasantly surprised. It's a great hilly ride through beautiful mostly tree-lined neighborhoods. We took a detour past Obama's house on my daughters advice but upon arrival she was less than enthusiastic.

The event had a good turnout with lots of cargo and family bikes accompanied by cargo and family people. It's always cool to swap ideas and share tips with like minded bikenerds. 

I was able to test ride a Christiana with a full payload which was fun. 

My daughter was partial to the Bullitt.

...and of course there were Xctracycles everywhere.

By far the biggest plus of the day was learning that after 20 miles my DIY child seat was fully naperational.

Kudos to Megan and the gang for throwing together a very cool event.

Video from the event.

Kidical Mass DC: The ABC's Of Family Biking

This Saturday (4/21/12), a group called Kidical Mass is teaming up with DDOT and WABA to put on the ABC's of Family Biking.

This free event, the first of its kind in the Greater Washington area, will celebrate the joy of biking with children and introduce local families to the tools, skills and equipment that can help them start biking together. 

This event appeals to me as I have a family and we're often found biking. I'll be the one drooling over the Belgian cargo bikes.

Saturday, April 21st from 11am – 2pm at Capitol Hill Montessori at Logan

On the family biking front I met this dude, (hand and shin are shown below) who came up with a pretty cool solution for his daughter's foot rests on his Kona Ute. He uses static line to make stirrups. This seams like it would give a passenger piles of leverage. I'm also digging the flipped up drop bars, well played dude at Whole Foods whose name I forgot.

On the anything bike related front, I spied this Bone Shaker in an old barn and took a picture of it. That's pretty much all that happened.

I'm as Tuesday as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!

Xtracycle: DIY Child Seat

My first project was to make a new snapdeck and attach a child seat to it for my eldest. As I spec'd out wood for this project I found the scratch and dent section on Xtracycle's website and scored a scratched and dented snapdeck for half price. Perfect for drilling holes into! 

After dremeling the legs and springs off a Topeak child seat, I attached it to the snapdeck using 5, 1/4" bolts with large washers for stability. Now, when I'm taking the little one to school I put her snapdeck with the seat on and when I'm going to work or running errands I put the regular one on, easy peasie. As a precautionary measure when I have her seat on the xtracycle I strap the bars together in the front and back to make sure they tight and secure against the snapdeck. 

When she's older I will move the seat back for my youngest, put a pad on the snapdeck and add a hadelbar for my oldest.

Xtracycle: The Longer Haul Trucker

As previously stated, I have been slacking. Here is my attempt to catch up.

For a long time now, I've been wanting a sport utility bike of some kind. I think this has to do with the amount of kids I have. When the first one was born the idea crept in that it might be nice to have one some day. By the time number two arrived I was in a state of full on man/gear lust. At first I thought I might just spring for a bike trailer and the I could tow the kids to school and go to work in one trip. The problem with this is that I park my bike in my cube and it would suck to have to negotiate a trailer through the office every day. I definitely wanted an SUB.

Being a Surly fan I considered a Big Dummy, but I am a cheap scrounging bastard so the consideration was fleeting. The logical step was to put an Xtracycle on the LHT(yeah you know me), but that too had a stiff price tag (cheap scrounging bastard*).

I decided to use the vast social media empire I built over the years to my advantage. On February 21st I tweeted "anyone in DC want to sell me their Xtracycle?". At the time I thought this was one of the douchier things I've done, which it was, but it worked!
Soon I had a shinny used Xtracycle Free Radical with bags waiting to be installed. I had to purchase another chain and tandem length shifter and brake cables for the extended rear. I also had to do things like measure the elevator at my office to make sure this SUB would make the trip I wouldn't be hiking a 7 foot bike up the office stairwell.

The install went smoothly with no troubles. I had heard of LHT owners complaining that the Xtracycle didn't fit well because of the LHT's longer chainstay but I didn't run into this problem.

The Xtracycle and the Long Haul Trucker seem work pretty well together; the LHT is strong and is already geared for hauling heavy loads. The Xtracycle design is impressively simple, it's easy to install and has a cult following that documents tons of mods and DIY projects.

Now it's time to get my DIY on.

Monday! Thou yeasty milk-livered haggard!