Category Archives: EdgeRunner

August 30, 2016 · 12:52 pm

An ordinary life

I want to try the Tern Xtracycle for sure.

I want to try the Tern Xtracycle for sure.

I used to write posts more often. Part of that was novelty value. The switch from driving everywhere to biking everywhere was pretty exhilarating and there was a lot to learn. There still is, but despite the fact that I have ridden more cargo bikes than anyone else I know who does not run a bike shop (and some people who do) I’m no longer the best person to assess the handling of family bikes, mostly because my kids, at ages 10 (almost 11) and 7, are really heavy. I still do it though, just on a very extended schedule.

We also still carry our kids on the bikes, but it’s almost always one kid at a time. They’re moving to riding their own bikes and our son is now old enough to ride the bus to school on his own (well, buses: there’s a transfer), or at least as much “on his own” as it is to ride the same bus as 100 other middle school students. We still commute by bike, sometimes by bus. We rent a car when we need to cross the Bay Bridge as a family (no bikes allowed on the western span) or when we go camping in Central California, or whatever. We take cabs to the airport. We take the train when it’s an option, which is rare, unfortunately. We do not miss owning a car, and in related news, we like being homeowners in San Francisco.

We rode to the Japanese Tea Garden. Pro tip: don't try to drive to Golden Gate Park.

We rode to the Japanese Tea Garden. Pro tip: don’t try to drive to Golden Gate Park.

What people call “alternative transportation” is our ordinary life, and honestly, I kind of stopped paying attention after a while because it doesn’t seem remarkable. At least once a week, one of my colleagues stops at my office, and asks, “Did you bike to work today?” And I say, “Of course I biked today. I always ‘biked today.’”

Alternative transportation is not a bad term though, because it means that we have alternatives. We aren’t tied into getting places any particular way, or to a huge cost sink of a car. Looking for parking has long since become a foreign concept to me, and the biggest maintenance expense we have ever racked up on one of our cargo bikes was in the low three figures. And to this day, when I ride past the line of cars backed up at stop lights, or behind construction equipment, or in the endless wait for summer camp pickup, there is a part of me that thinks, “Suckers!” Obviously I have room for self-improvement.

We travel all kinds of ways, and I wish everyone could. Both Matt and I have aging parents who probably should not be driving, but they live on steep hills without transit on roads with a posted speed limit of 35mph, successfully designed to encourage drivers to take it to 50+mph (and they do), and there is definitely no 8-80 bicycle infrastructure; there aren’t even consistent sidewalks. Their only alternative to driving is to move. We know kids who grew up in places without transit or sidewalks, and to this day the thought of taking the bus terrifies them. Car culture doesn’t allow alternatives, and thus it traps people who are unable to drive, and similarly traps people who are able to drive into taking those who aren’t everywhere they need to go.

Our daughter has moved up to the Torker; our son has moved up to the Brompton.

Our daughter has moved up to the Torker; our son has moved up to the Brompton.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though, and here we are, hanging in in the new normal, proving that even carrying kids by bike can become unremarkable after a while. We see more families on the road with us every year; it makes the commute fun. When I was riding my daughter to summer camp earlier we saw another EdgeRunner with kids on it and she yelled, “One of us!” There are still plenty of people who haven’t tried it yet though. Every week, we get buttonholed by parents walking to their cars who say, “That bike looks awesome! Do you love it?” Yes. Yes we do. It’s still awesome.

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Filed under car-free, commuting, EdgeRunner, family biking, San Francisco

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December 14, 2015 · 9:59 am

Christmas tree by bicycle, 2015 (and the 5th year in a row)

Loading up...

Loading up…

It’s December, the time of year that we head to the Christmas tree lot and draw stares as we load up a tree on our bicycle. This is the fifth year in a row that we’ve done this. Given that there were earlier years when we didn’t bother to get a tree at all, our son (now 10) has only the vaguest memory of bringing a tree home with a car. Our daughter (now 6) has no memory of that at all.

Over the years we have tried various bikes to bring the tree home but honestly, this was just messing around, because we have a Bullitt, and it is the rare case when the Bullitt is not the best tool for the job. What can’t it do? I suppose it can’t literally fly, but beyond that, it’s got us covered. Anyway, we used the MinUte the first year because we didn’t yet have the Bullitt, and again another year after we’d foolishly lost a Bullitt part. It’s not that tricky; virtually any bike can carry a tree. However it’s cold in December, so ultimately the appeal of dropping the tree on the front, securing it with two bungee cords, and skedaddling on home has won out. It’s much faster than loading a tree on a car. The drivers who were loading up their trees at the same time that we were can attest to that (to their dismay).

See? Easy!

See? Easy!

This is the second year in our new place, and now our route to the Christmas tree lot is straight uphill. Our kids had ambitions to ride their own bikes last year, but having tried that particular hill once, preferred to be carried this year. They begged me to carry them both on the Brompton, and yes, even at their advanced ages I can still do that. However I was not excited about the idea of carrying them both up a steep hill on an unassisted bike so I made them ride the EdgeRunner.

Bringing a tree and two kids home by bicycle is still the kind of thing that will get a family noticed, even in San Francisco, where it is not completely outlandish. Every year I watch drivers in oncoming cars notice our little convoy: their cars slow, their heads swivel, and their mouths open. It is entertaining. I would rather be normal, of course, but until more people get in on this action, I’ll settle for being noticed.

They're getting taller

They’re getting taller

There was rain forecast last weekend—it has actually been raining, which is great—and the kids had swim classes at noon, so we had a narrow window to get this particular errand done. We’d never timed ourselves before, but this year we did, and it turns out that in less than 90 minutes, we had ridden to the lot, picked up a tree, brought it home, put it up in the living room, and decorated it. At various points I also made everyone stop for photos. In normal parental time units, this is something close to actual time travel. Ho, ho, ho.

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December 17, 2014 · 4:24 pm

Christmas tree by bicycle 2014

We were having camera trouble at the lot, so this mug-shot is the best we've got.

We were having camera trouble at the lot, so this mug-shot is the best we’ve got.

There was a time when we didn’t get a tree every year (because technically we’re a Jewish family, albeit a California-Jewish family affiliated with the Japanese-American community, so we celebrate holidays of the world on like a daily basis). However now that we go everywhere by bike, it’s an annual thing. And we’re getting better at it. This was the fourth year we went tree-shopping by bike, and every year the trees get taller, the loading time gets shorter, and the trip gets less precarious.

It's easy to park cars at the Christmas tree lot, but it's even easier to park bikes.

It’s easy to park cars at the Christmas tree lot, but it’s even easier to park bikes.

In the first year we picked up our tree by Kona MinUte, and in the second year we hauled the tree by Bullitt. We also forgot to take the cover off before leaving that year, and lost a critical part, so in year three we went back to the MinUte. And then this year we hauled by Bullitt again, remembering this time to take the cover off in advance. We’ve also moved since last year, so instead of going downhill then uphill again, it was all uphill on the way to the lot, and all downhill on the way back.

We don't normally ride on the sidewalk, but it made for a good photo.

We don’t normally ride on the sidewalk, but it made for a good photo.

Our bugaboo has always been that we have the lot nail on a stand for the tree, which makes the tree wide as well as tall. This year we were enough of a caravan that we were already all over the lane. So we dumped the tree sideways on top of the Bullitt’s bucket, snapped a couple of bungees to the side pins to hold it in place, and rode on home. No problem.

The EdgeRunner pinch-hit with some simultaneous bike- and kid-hauling

The EdgeRunner pinch-hit with some simultaneous bike- and kid-hauling

The big change this year is that instead of me carrying both kids home by Brompton (still totally possible) they wanted to ride their own bikes. Our son made it all the way to the lot. Our daughter made it about two blocks uphill before she lost the ability to climb any further on her little single-speed bike. We had expected this, so I had ridden the EdgeRunner. It only took a minute to pop her bike on the back and tow it once she gave up. Having both a boxbike and a longtail is awesome. It’s like having two minivans, with magical park-anywhere-and-avoid-all-traffic powers.

This year, we got a seven foot tree.

This year, we got a seven foot tree.

We don’t have to carry stuff by bicycle, of course. We have a car share membership, which my daughter announced to everyone in her kindergarten class during a field trip that passed by our house. So our decision to haul the tree by bike is a choice—we could drive if we wanted to, but where’s the fun in that? Nonetheless, when we got to the lot we spotted some friends from kindergarten there, and they were very concerned that we wouldn’t be able to get the tree home. “Please, let us carry it home for you on our minivan,” they begged us.  I couldn’t be more grateful that we have the kind of school community where people volunteer to help. Still, this was our fourth year in a row of carrying trees on bicycles. We’ve totally got this.

There are people who’ve been hauling trees by bicycle longer, but it’s not a competition. Until next year, happy holidays!

 

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Filed under Bullitt, car-free, cargo, EdgeRunner, family biking, San Francisco

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October 31, 2014 · 9:36 am

Our new cargo bike: Hello, EdgeRunner

2 kids on deck with their feet in the bags and a stadium blanket. They're kind of wusses.

2 kids on deck with their feet in the bags and a stadium blanket. They’re kind of wusses.

People who see us around San Francisco may have already noticed that we have added a new cargo bike to our stable. Around when school started, we got an EdgeRunner. It’s fantastic.

I realize that we are in a fortunate position in being able to buy a second cargo bike outright. When we sold our minivan in 2012, we got enough money from it to buy two assisted cargo bikes. So we used about half of that money to buy the Bullitt, and we saved the rest for some vague future transportation need. At the time we weren’t sure whether we’d want to replace our car eventually, and figured the money we saved could be a nice down payment if it came to that. Two years later, we’ve found that we are just fine with renting cars for our very occasional driving trips, and have no desire to own one.

However we were feeling that it would be very helpful to have a second 2-kid capable cargo bike. The construction work in our garage smashed up the mamachari (RIP, mamachari), so we were suddenly down a bike. With two kids going to the same school for the first time this year, we were in the new position of wanting each parent to be able to pick up and drop off the kids together—before, we could split up because each of them was going to a different place at a different time. That was way more complicated, but it also meant that riding around on one-kid-hauling bikes wasn’t a big deal. Moreover, our son had become a strong enough rider that he was ready to go to school sometimes on his own bike. The problem with that was that the kids take a bus to their after-school program, and there are no bikes allowed on the bus. So if he was going to ride, we needed a way to get his bike from the drop-off at school to the pickup at after-school.

One option was to assist the Kona MinUte—because both kids are too heavy to haul around unassisted now—but it was a tight fit for two kids even when they were smaller, and left the question of how to haul our son’s bike unresolved. If you’re in the bike-on-bike-hauling business, your best bike is a longtail. We had taken enough test rides over the years to know that our favorite longtail, by a long shot, was the EdgeRunner. So around the time school started, we headed to The New Wheel to buy a BionX EdgeRunner. They were our bike shop of choice because they know so much about assists—anyone can take care of an unassisted bike, but having an electric assist-focused shop to maintain our bikes is an enormous luxury and it would be crazy not to take advantage of it. Also they are very nice. Even though we have to cross town and haul up serious hills to get there, which is not fun with kids when an assist is on the fritz, it is worth the effort.

This is Davey Oil's stoked EdgeRunner with the same massive front rack.

This is Davey Oil’s stoked EdgeRunner with the same massive front rack.

Because I’ve gotten particular about certain things over the last couple of years, we put some unusual accessories on the bike as well. I credit G&O Family Cyclery for these particular specs, which I tried and loved on one of the EdgeRunners I rode while visiting Seattle to compare the BionX to the Stokemonkey. Specifically, we added a frame-mounted front rack and Rolling Jackass (very regrettable name) center stand from Haulin’ Colin in Seattle. The front rack was a huge pain to install, given that no one in San Francisco had done it before, and almost made me wish I’d flown my bike to Seattle instead of having the rack put on locally. But the payoff was a massive front basket (I have a Wald Giant basket zip-tied to the rack) that is independent of the steering and absolutely rock-solid, and that has easily swallowed loads like: my work tote, both kids’ backpacks, a clarinet, and a bag of groceries, with room for more. Finally, the EdgeRunner’s tiny rear wheel meant that I was getting a much bigger boost from the assist, which in my still-weakened state, meant that this was going to be my primary ride for a while.

The transition to riding the EdgeRunner with both kids was not without its issues. Our son doesn’t ride his own bike every single day, because he tends to go at a maximum speed of 7mph, making even my normal pace look like road racing. When we leave home on the later end of normal, we have to stick him on the trailer-bike to make it to school on time, and that means I’ll end up carrying both kids home in the afternoon. Although both kids easily fit on the EdgeRunner’s deck, for the first two weeks sharing the deck they fought so relentlessly that I actually found myself yelling, “I can stop this bike right here!” I am happy to report that this was a short-term problem—they eventually settled down, and now they usually have pleasant conversations sitting face-to-face during the times that they share the deck. The only remaining annoyance is that our long-legged son will drag his feet on the ground sometimes, which acts as an unwelcome extra brake and does his shoes no favors. He’s getting better about this.

Loading up my son's bike for the tow.

Loading up my son’s bike for the tow.

There are compensations. The biggest is that when he does ride, it is laughably easy for me to tow his bike to work in the morning, and to his after school program in the afternoon before riding home. It has definitely reduced our load and is improving his stamina (and although he doesn’t like to admit it yet, he’s in a much better mood when he rides to school and back home). The bike can also haul unusual loads that were formerly pretty tricky. When I had to pick him up from school a couple of weeks ago because he’d gotten sick, I had no trouble towing the bike while he was nodding off on the deck. That kind of doubling-up has historically been the Bullitt’s weakness.

Our daughter is our primary deck-rider, though. The EdgeRunner deck has a bit more space for a kid than the Bullitt, but it is also uncovered. This has led to some complaints about having to experience weather, and some excitement. We have a Hooptie around the deck, and given our daughter’s personality, that was a smart move. She treats the deck as a combination small room and performance space, and kind of does what she feels like doing back there. Sometimes that’s lying down flat to take a nap. Sometimes that’s standing on the deck on one tiptoe while holding onto my shoulders. Sometimes that’s leaning waaaaaaaaay over to one side to check out something on the ground (at which point I once again feel a sense of gratitude for that low deck, because I can feel her doing it but it doesn’t dump the bike). The EdgeRunner is our mullet bike: business in front, party in the back. Our daughter has been a frequent flyer in the hospital emergency department since she was less than a year old, thanks to her try-everything attitude , which means that we have more experience assessing what constitutes a serious physical risk to her than we ever wanted. I’ve learned not to worry about her shenanigans, because her balance is excellent, she’s corralled by the Hooptie, our route consists of quiet streets and protected lanes, and I’m usually riding at (much) less than 10mph behind my son. However I definitely get a lot of drive-by parenting. I mean that literally. People in cars pull up next to us and tell me to tie her down, sometimes pointing to their own kids strapped in 5-point restraints in car seats as examples. I am already so over this. And I have begun to wonder, from a philosophical perspective, what it says about us as a society that our kids spend so much time literally tied down.

I digress.

Seriously, these bikes are all over San Francisco now.

Seriously, these bikes are all over San Francisco now. These are the racks at my office.

Riding an EdgeRunner is also fun because it makes me to feel like I joined a club. Although it gets a lot of attention from people who don’t ride bikes, it is definitely the bike of choice among San Francisco parents (along with the Yuba Mundo). As one might expect, most of them are BionXed up as well. There are two EdgeRunners on the Panhandle riding to school most mornings, and I see a blue one just like mine almost every day, coming the opposite way on Post Street after I’ve dropped off the kids. There sometimes yet another EdgeRunner, with a Yepp seat, parked at the racks at my office. After a couple of years riding the Bullitt, which raises eyebrows wherever it goes and has tourists snapping photos, the relative obscurity of riding an EdgeRunner is a nice change of pace.

Most importantly, it does what we need it to do. The addition of the EdgeRunner means that Matt and I can each ride a cargo bike that can haul both kids, and/or their bikes, wherever we’re going. Even though the BionX is not the most powerful assist you can put on a bike, we have used it to get up the hills of Bernal Heights with both kids on the deck. That’s steeper than we ever hope to go on a daily basis. And with the regenerative braking it has crazy-range–I sometimes feel as though I’ve returned home with the same charge I had when I left.

We came late to having two big cargo bikes, but it’s been working well for us. Having two kids in the same school has allowed our schedules to ease enormously, and having two big bikes to haul them and their bikes around as needed makes it easier still. Our son may be slow when riding his own bike, but we’re still beating our old car commute times. I’ve heard a lot of people say that having a box-bike and a longtail is the perfect two-cargo bike situation. Based on our experience so far, I’d have to agree.

 

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Filed under Bullitt, car-free, commuting, EdgeRunner, electric assist, family biking, San Francisco, Xtracycle

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June 23, 2014 · 3:47 pm

We tried it: Xtracycle EdgeRunner (assisted and unassisted)

Test riding the stoked EdgeRunner in Seattle. Thanks to Davey Oil for the chance to ride, and Madi Carlson for the great photo!

Test riding the stoked EdgeRunner in Seattle. Thanks to Davey Oil for the chance to ride, and Madi Carlson for the great photo!

In 2012 I rode the prototype EdgeRunner. It was a hard bike to review because it wasn’t really in production yet, so a lot of the specifics were unsettled. I liked it, but that review does a lot of blah-blah talking about longtail history as a result of my uncertainty about the ultimate production model.

Since then I’ve had the chance to ride real EdgeRunners, both unassisted (at Blue Heron Bikes) and assisted (both stoked and BionX, at G&O Family Cyclery). These are much easier to review, although I suspect my reviews will always be long reviews (not to mention they’re all my personal opinions and other informed observers may differ, YMMV, etc.) For those with shorter attention spans, here is the 6-word summary I’ve promised for all reviews going forward.

EdgeRunner: Best longtail ever. No contest.

I’ve mentioned before that my first impression of the EdgeRunner, when it was just a picture on the Xtracycle home page, was: “Wow, that is one ugly bike.” Let me officially eat crow: in person, the EdgeRunner is lovely. And it is awesome to ride.

What I like about the EdgeRunner:

  • The EdgeRunner feels like riding a regular bike. Cargo bikes, as a class, are the minivans of bicycles, and in general that is reflected in their handling and speed. They are typically a lot of work to ride. However the EdgeRunner is about as close as you can get to a cargo bike that rides like a normal bike without violating the laws of physics. (Our Bullitt is similarly nimble, but obviously, as a front loader, it is nothing like a regular bike.) This is a bike that a novice rider can pick up and ride with a minimal learning curve. That said the first test ride on any cargo bike should be sans cargo, especially live cargo.
  • The EdgeRunner is stable. My biggest concern in the past with longtail bikes (and the Madsen) has been that we both ended up dumping the kids. All that weight on the back of the bike can be very difficult to control while holding the handlebars in front—and neither Matt nor I is particularly lacking in upper body strength. The EdgeRunner’s big innovation is a smaller rear wheel (20”) which means the deck can be a few inches lower, and those few inches make a world of difference with respect to handling. Over the last year I became very cautious while walking a bike with my kids on it because on occasion my bad right leg would twist right from under me without warning. I was so confident while walking the EdgeRunner that I did things I probably should not have done, like walk into a shop holding the bike up with one hand and pushing the door open with the other. Yet I never felt that the bike would tip, and it never did. The lower deck also means that the EdgeRunner can take downhill turns at higher speeds. On longtail bikes with higher decks, the weight on the rear pulls against the turn, and it genuinely feels like the bike could tip over. This is not a concern with the EdgeRunner. The smaller rear wheel is truly a game changer.
  • This is a lightweight bike (relatively speaking—no cargo bike is truly lightweight). As a result, there is less of it to haul around. There are two places you can really feel this: when trying to go up hills, and when trying to start from a dead stop. These are also the two places where I feel the most vulnerable while riding—other traffic often fails to appreciate the slow starts endemic to cargo bike riding, and going up hills is its own horror story—the slower you go, the more the bike wobbles. Although there is sometimes a tradeoff to be made with respect to the weight of the bike and how much you can haul on it, happily the EdgeRunner also swallowed the weight of both my kids—now much heavier than they were over two years ago when we first went cargo bike shopping—without complaint.
  • The Xtracycle accessories are the best longtail family biking kits I have ever seen. In terms of family and cargo biking innovation, Xtracycle is unmatched. The deluxe models sold by most family bike shops even come with dynamo lights, which is nothing I’ve seen before on any non-European family bike. The deck is now designed to have Yepp seats pop directly in, while older kids can be corralled by the adjustable Hooptie (no need for stoker bars). The Xtracycle bags (recently upgraded) can haul almost anything, and do particularly well with long and skinny things that are tough to dump into a front loader. Add in various cushions and foot rests and the SideCar to haul cargo and this is an astonishingly versatile bike.
  • Longtails are easy to park. As much as we love our Bullitt, it can be a bear to park at normal racks, despite the fact that it is the skinniest front loader of them all. The EdgeRunner, like all longtails, can be bumped over curbs and at worst, will stick out a bit more than usual from a bike corral. This is a much more flexible way to travel than with a box bike or a trailer.
  • The parts are not crappy. To get cargo bikes down to price points that keep inexperienced riders from choking in disbelief, there are often compromises made with respect to the quality of the parts. This can be very scary indeed when it comes to, say, brakes, because a bike that is carrying 100 extra pounds is not a bike that should be skimping on stopping power. There are various models of EdgeRunner and the quality of the parts improves with each increased price point, but even the cheapest models do not compromise basic safety.
  • The EdgeRunner comes in multiple frame sizes. This matters less for me personally, given that Matt and I are similar heights and right in the middle of the size range that bike manufacturers consider normal. Other people are not so fortunate. Having different frame sizes expands the range of people who can ride the bike—and it means that more petite people aren’t trying to push a bike that’s heavier than they need.
  • The EdgeRunner is compatible with multiple assists. Lots of bikes can handle a range of aftermarket electric assists, but none more than the EdgeRunner. We tried the EdgeRunner with both the BionX and the (throttle) Stokemonkey, but it is also, at the moment, the only bike that can use the brand-new pedal assist/pedelec Stokemonkey. (When I say “pedal assist” I am using the EU legal definition, meaning an assisted bike that will only move if you are already pedaling. Although there are other definitions, this is the one that most people I speak with intuit when they hear the term pedal assist.) This gives a fair bit of freedom to find the kind of assist that works for whatever terrain and loads you’re hauling, or maybe more importantly, the kind of assist that’s supported by a local bike shop.
  • The EdgeRunner is relatively inexpensive. No cargo bike that can safely carry my kids could ever be called cheap. Extra parts and engineering are required to turn a basic one-person bicycle into a cargo bike. The base model of the EdgeRunner is $1500—this bike doesn’t have accessories or an assist, but it will get the job done. The deluxe EdgeRunner with a family kit (Hooptie, center stand), dynamo lights (totally worth it), upgraded brakes, and a BionX assist powered for San Francisco hills is $4700 at The New Wheel in San Francisco, and comparable elsewhere. In comparison, in 2012, when we priced a Big Dummy, the base model was $2000, while an assisted Big Dummy ran about $4500—but that was without dynamo lights or a Hooptie. Currently a base model Yuba Mundo is priced at $1300—$200 cheaper, but also much heavier. (A BionX Mundo with comparable accessories to a deluxe EdgeRunner is too complicated for me to want to price.)

What I don’t like about the EdgeRunner:

  • With all longtail reviews, I make my usual complaint that they’re not front loading box bikes, which is sort of unfair and sort of not. I like having our kids in front—we can hear them better, we can intervene if they start fighting, and the weather protection is unbeatable. For us, the rain/wind canopy has been the thing that lets us ride in any conditions—there is a point at which our children (who are wusses, it must be said) will wail without ceasing if asked to ride exposed to the elements. I also like that with the front loaders you just throw stuff/kids in and go—there is no need to pack stuff carefully or balance the load. We have been known to shove the kids in and let them sort out where they’ll sit after we start moving. The Bullitt can take it. However to be fair, our front-loading paradise is not without its serpents. Front loading box bikes cost a lot more than longtails, and learning to steer them can be harrowing for some people (like me). However these things are in our past so I can now safely ignore them.
  • The Hooptie, as awesome as it is when the bike is on the move, can be a bit of a hassle on starts and stops. Our kids are capable of climbing to the deck of an EdgeRunner without assistance, but they can’t maneuver on and off the Hooptied EdgeRunner by themselves because the rails are too narrow for their helmets to fit through. We have to lift them over. I suspect this might be an issue for our son and his giant head even if he were un-helmeted. There are circumstances where this could be a plus, but mostly I found it a pain. Update! This issue was resolved with practice. After a couple more rides, they learned to swarm onto that thing like a jungle gym, with no help needed from me.
  • The lower deck of the EdgeRunner means that older kids—even my not-especially-tall 5-year-old daughter—can drag their feet on the ground and slow or stop the bike whether I want them to or not (not). Sometimes on our rides my son didn’t even realize he was doing it. It’s pretty easy to tell when it’s happening from the sound and the fact that the bike becomes hard to pedal, and to tell them to stop, but it’s annoying, and it’s not doing the soles of their shoes any favors either. I would definitely be investigating some kind of deck for their feet if we rode this bike regularly.
  • Xtracycle is still ignoring the front of its bikes. It is understandable that a company that started by creating a longtail extension would be focused on the back of the bike, but one place where Yuba’s innovation reigns supreme is the creation of its front frame-mounted Bread Basket. Xtracycle has yet to release a comparable front basket, and this is a stupid, annoying omission. Front baskets are incredibly useful, and it is a waste not to use the space above the front wheel on a longtail cargo bike.
  • Speaking of accessories, the stock EdgeRunner saddle is the most uncomfortable anvil I have ever had the misfortune to ride. I am not very picky about saddles, as a rule, yet I wanted to rip this one off and throw it into San Francisco Bay. It’s not a very expensive upgrade to change out a saddle, but my guess is that pretty much everyone will want to budget for it.
  • Although the EdgeRunner has a relatively low top tube, it was still a bit of a trick for me to get a leg over it. That is because my leg is still vaguely mangled. I have the advantage, at least, of being relatively tall at 5’7”. I imagine that it would be worse for someone shorter, even if that person were more flexible than I am (yet—I am getting better quickly). I don’t really see any way around this one—the top tube provides a lot of the stability I like so much about the bike. But it’s something to consider if you are short or inflexible.
  • With longtail bikes, you need to pack the bags and balance the load. It’s not necessarily a big deal, but when conditions are unpleasant, or when you need to make multiple stops (each of which involves loading and unloading the bike) it can be something of a hassle. Squirming kids are also more noticeable on the back of a bike—you’ll do better with this issue on an EdgeRunner than on any other longtail because of the lower deck, and for that matter, relative to a normal bike with a rear seat. But it’s no issue at all on a Brompton with a kid seat, or on a front-loading box bike.

Overall, these are not big complaints, and there are kludges or fixes for the things that bother me. For our kind of riding, the EdgeRunner is a category-killer in the longtail class.

Seriously, these bikes are all over San Francisco now.

Seriously, these bikes are all over San Francisco now.

Would we buy an EdgeRunner? Will we? Well. Maybe?

My poor mamachari is essentially stroking out at this point. It was old and rickety before it got run over, and yesterday its power cord was crushed by the construction workers fixing the rotted wood in our garage. We had expected that the mamachari would be our second cargo bike until both kids were riding on their own bikes, but now I’m not so sure. And as much as we love the Bullitt, it would be far more practical to have a longtail and a front-loader than to have two front-loaders. So let’s say this is a question we’ve begun discussing seriously.

So I’m very glad that the EdgeRunner is available now, because if we do buy a longtail, the decision of which one to buy has become very simple indeed. There are reasons to buy other longtail bikes—the Mundo can carry extreme loads, and the Big Dummy can be more useful in certain conditions—but for the purpose of hauling kids around town, we found the EdgeRunner unbeatable.

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June 10, 2014 · 5:43 pm

We tried it: BionX v. Stokemonkey

Test riding the stoked EdgeRunner in Seattle. Thanks to Davey Oil for the chance to ride, and Madi Carlson for the great photo!

Test riding the stoked EdgeRunner in Seattle. Thanks to Davey Oil for the chance to ride, and Madi Carlson for the great photo!

One of my colleagues recently taught me two great tricks. The first is to never use the word “but” when talking to people because it  always ticks them off. The second was that anything could be summed up in exactly six words. She writes six-word biographies for every graduating student in her program. It is amazing. Given that I am a chronic offender in the Too Long: Didn’t Read sweepstakes, I’ve decided to open all of my reviews with the six word summary. Here’s one now.

BionX: Easy to use

Stokemonkey: Powerful

I’m sure that the respective producers of BionX and Stokemonkey electric assists now wish that they could reach through the screen and punch me in the face. Good thing it’s a virtual world.

There are basically two heavy-hitters in the world of electric assists for cargo bikes. They are BionX, which is a rear-wheel assist (motor on the rear wheel hub), and Stokemonkey, which is a mid-drive assist (motor on the frame running through the chain). The Stokemonkey was out of production for a long time, and now it’s back. I had the chance to try both assists on the same bike, the Xtracycle EdgeRunner, while we were visiting Seattle over spring break, thanks to the lovely G&O Family Cyclery. G&O was the only shop I have ever seen that had both kinds of assists on the same model of bike, which I rode on the same hills on the same day, with both my kids on the back. It made for a near-perfect comparison. The kids ate a few crackers between the Stokemonkey ride and the BionX ride, but still.

I have already written about other brands and types of assists—there are front wheel assists, like on the original Yuba elMundo, and other companies make both rear wheel and mid-drive assists. I’m concentrating on BionX and Stokemonkey because most people shopping for an add-on family bike assist end up choosing between these two, for reasons that center around power and reliability. Both have good odds of hauling a loaded cargo bike around, and they have the reputation of being the least likely to die within a few months of purchase (or immediately after the warranty expires). People who know a lot about electric assists may end up finding or hacking something better. Nevertheless your average rider wants something that does not require the patience and ability to read through and comprehend the forums on Endless-sphere. (Note: when I refer to “pedal assist” here and everywhere else, I am using the EU legal definition, meaning an assisted bike that will only move if you are already pedaling. Although there are other definitions, this is the one that most people I speak with intuit when they hear the term pedal assist.)

BionX

We have a lot of familiarity with the BionX, because it’s the system on our Bullitt. It has served us well, although it is not perfect.

  • How much does a BionX cost? $1800 installed by The New Wheel in San Francisco (SF-suitable system with 48v battery)
  • How much does a BionX weigh? 14.1 pounds including battery

What I like about the BionX

  • The BionX is easy to use. This is a set-it-and-forget-it system combined with a throttle. You can get a boost across intersections by pushing the red button (the throttle), or set a level of assist from 1 to 4 and feel super-powered as you blaze through the city. The pedal assist is the best of any electric assist that I have tried, and I have tried a lot of them now. The BionX was the first assist that I ever tried, and in a way it spoiled me for other assists, because it is truly intuitive to use. There is no learning curve. Anyone who has ever ridden a bike can master it immediately. Many people end up leaving the bike in a relatively high gear and using the different assist levels as gears, and this actually works pretty well.
  • It is pretty powerful. BionX systems come in different flavors, and we got the most powerful, with a 48v battery. It works well in San Francisco on our daily rounds, which feature a number of serious hills (Twin Peaks, Alamo Square, Lone Mountain) and various unnamed elevation changes that would qualify as hills in a less topographically challenging city. Families in Seattle, which has less steep hills yet is nonetheless pretty hilly, seem content with the 36v battery system. The cheapest and least powerful systems are probably best for handling stiff winds in areas with mild hills.
  • It requires minimal maintenance. There are people who will argue this point. The consensus from the bike shops that we patronize is that they use their assists in a different way than we do. We rarely use the throttle; instead, we use the assist levels to maintain a steady speed and effort level. We do not burn through power trying to race other riders. We have the shop check the wiring every few months. With one major exception, which is that we initially had spokes on the rear wheel that were too thin, which broke by the dozen, the system has not given us grief. We replaced those spokes with much thicker ones and haven’t had issues since.
  • It is silent. Lots of assists make a humming noise, or much louder noises. The front wheel assists I have tried definitely sound like motors, and the EcoSpeed mid-drive frankly sounds like a motorcycle. One of the reasons we like riding bicycles is the relative quiet and the opportunity for conversations with our kids, and so the noise of some of these systems was a deal-killer for us. This is not an issue with the BionX. It is the ninja of electric assists.
  • It has regenerative braking. This means that you can use the BionX system to slow (or stop) the bike and recharge the battery while going downhill. It is debatable whether regenerative braking adds much to battery capacity—there is loss in any system. In an area like San Francisco, where steep hills abound, careful route planning can actually mean you get some power from the regenerative braking, although this may not apply outside the city. It is inarguable, however, that using the regenerative braking through the motor saves a lot of wear and tear on the bike’s brakes. And it offers me a lot of peace of mind, given that we have had brakes fail in the past. I view the BionX regenerative braking like skydivers view a backup parachute.

What I don’t like about the BionX

  • Starts can be slow and difficult. The system is set up to kick in once the bike reaches 2mph. If you are trying to start a loaded bike from a dead stop on a steep hill, you may have trouble getting to that speed. This is particularly the case if, like me, you have a bad leg. Outside of G&O, which is on a moderate hill, I could not get started with both kids on board. I had to walk to bike to a level area. This is evidently something that can be modified—you can reset the controller so that the assist kicks in at a much lower speed [update: as low as 0.5 kph]. Now that I know this, it is high on our to-do list. That modification would help a lot, yet it does not change the fact that no matter what, the initial effort on the start is going to be human-powered. This is our biggest issue with the BionX. It was less of a big deal before I was injured.
  • It gives up on really steep hills. There are hills in San Francisco that we cannot get up with a fully-loaded bike—the system overheats, which means it’s back to pure pedal-power at the worst possible time. For people outside of San Francisco, this may be no limitation whatsoever, because SF is the second-hilliest city in the world, also very windy, blah blah blah. This actually turned out not to be a huge deal for us. The system is powerful enough that it can handle most of our trips, and we prefer to take alternate routes for 18%+ grades whether we are riding assisted bikes or not. On the extremely rare occasions where there there is no alternative, there’s always transit or car-share.
  • The proprietary battery limits the range. Also it’s annoying. The BionX system is completely self-contained. It’s like Apple computers. You can’t get a battery any more powerful than the battery they supply. You can’t set up a backup battery to extend your range, except by carrying another battery and swapping it in, and their batteries are expensive. There is a big logo on it, which is irritating. However the main issue is that you have no way to control the range other than by picking one of their batteries: you get what you get. The range is not unreasonable, and it handles most of our needs, but there are times when we have to be sure to carry the charger and find a place to plug it in, or suck it up and accept that some of the trip home will be exclusively human-powered. Thankfully that is a much less painful prospect now that we no longer live on a steep hill.
  • The system can be finicky.  Matt has dropped two controllers and when you drop them, they break. In one case, the controller seemed to be fine but then the bike started jerking when the assist was on max, because it wasn’t really fine. Replacing the controller costs $100. Argh! The bike shop suggested that we super-glue the third controller in place. There is a certain amount of loose connection hassle with some of the controller parts—the wire to the regeneration system sometimes works loose, and so on. We have the wiring checked regularly and so we haven’t had those problems. I classify this in the same category as our constant brake checks. A certain amount of attention is required.

Stokemonkey

And then there is the Stokemonkey. I’ve ridden a stoked bike for exactly one day, so I can’t offer an opinion that is nearly as informed, and for obvious reasons I have no idea about maintenance.

  • How much does a Stokemonkey cost? $1250, not including the battery (varies) or installation ($125 at Clever Cycles in Portland)
  • How much does a Stokemonkey weigh? 21 pounds, not including the battery

What I like about the Stokemonkey

  • It is incredibly powerful. I would go so far as to say it is virtually unstoppable. The chain or the frame will break before the assist gives out. This is not always obvious when you are riding, because weirdly, it doesn’t feel like it is helping. However I know that the ease I was feeling while hauling 100 pounds of my children up a big hill was not natural, especially with a broken leg. If I hadn’t been sure while I was riding the stoked EdgeRunner,  it became obvious when I rode the BionX EdgeRunner, because it took a lot more effort to get up the same hill. Neither was particularly hard, but the Stokemonkey was definitely easier. I doubt there is any hill that would overpower it. Maybe a vertical wall.
  • Starting on a hill is easy. When you push the throttle, the pedals start moving and the bike starts moving. Even with warning, it was hard to be prepared for this. However I had no fear of stopping mid-hill on the Stokemonkey. It cranks right back up to full when you hit the throttle. Starts are my biggest weakness, and so this feature was, for me, the Stokemonkey’s greatest appeal. It destroys all fear of hills. No matter what the incline, it will always start.
  • It is compatible with multiple batteries. If BionX is the Apple of electric assist, Stokemonkey is the Windows environment. You can wire any battery into it, or, if you are like me, your bike shop can do it. That is a cost savings, and there is also a learning curve involved—I have no idea how to pick a battery. Any shop installing the Stokemonkey should have a good idea though.
  • It is pretty quiet. It is not totally silent like the BionX, and I don’t think that any mid-drive assist could be that quiet, because mid-drive motors run through the chain and there is some noise involved with that movement. I found it unobjectionable. There is one exception to the generally quiet nature of the Stokemonkey. If it is installed on a box bike it will be pretty loud, because the noise of the chain will echo through the box.

What I don’t like about the Stokemonkey

  • It is controlled by a throttle only. If you want the assist to kick in, you have to hold the throttle down. It did not take long for my thumb to get sore doing this. I might get used to it over time, but I doubt that I would ever stop finding it annoying.  There is not set-it-and-forget-it option with the Stokemonkey. I’ve ridden enough assisted bikes to know that this is not really workable for us. There are too many hills and too many places where we need to take our hands off the handlebars to signal.
  • It is not pedal assist, yet you must pedal. Truly, the Stokemonkey is neither fish nor fowl. When the assist comes on, the chain moves, and so the pedals also move. You have be right there ready to move your legs. Even with warning, I kept whacking my ankles on the pedals on starts because I wasn’t ready for this. On the flip side, when you release the throttle, the pedals keep moving for a little bit on their own, so again, whacked ankles. Personally I found this a small price to pay for instant starts on hills, but still: ouch. Word from people who have stoked bikes is that you get used to this and adjust relatively quickly. In the interim, wear thick socks.
  • The learning curve is not insignificant. Using a Stokemonkey was described to me as being a bit like driving a manual transmission car. Amusingly enough this analogy came by way of Davey Oil, who does not drive. Nonetheless it is pretty accurate.  The bike will start to shudder if the Stokemonkey thinks you are in the wrong gear, and then you have to shift down to make it settle. My son, sitting on the back of the bike, noticed this immediately, and he found it both fascinating and disconcerting. “You need to shift, mommy!” In combination with the pedals whacking me in the ankles, it required a lot more attentiveness to the assist while riding than I was expecting. This comes at the price of paying attention to other things, like traffic. With this system I would need to spend time getting comfortable on quiet streets without the kids on board before I would feel confident taking it out on a daily commute.
  • The Stokemonkey is only really suitable for certain bikes, mostly longtail bikes. [update: I was wrong, modifications to the original statement follow.] Stokemonkeys are not appropriate for early-model Bakfietsen with roller brakes, or presumably any bike with borderline brakes, because the bike can then get up hills that it can’t safely get down. The mounting of a Stokemonkey is evidently somewhat complicated. This seems to be the case for a lot of mid-drive assists.

The winner: everybody

That was our experience, and to my surprise, it did not feel like a definitive win for either the BionX or the Stokemonkey. I had assumed that when I tried the Stokemonkey I would feel like an idiot for getting the demonstrably less powerful BionX (not that we had a choice at the time) and that I would immediately want to swap out to a Stokemonkey. Although I was really impressed with the Stokemonkey, I didn’t feel like it was a BionX-killer. Moreover, I have no good sense of what I would want when we get a new bike, which for various reasons is on the horizon.

Both systems have strengths and weaknesses, and moreover, both systems can be tweaked/are currently being re-engineered. Grin is working on a pedal-assist, set-it-and-forget-it version of the Stokemonkey, suitable for EdgeRunners only, which [update] has just been released. This resolves my biggest issue with the Stokemonkey (and it means I could probably justify buying an EdgeRunner to myself). On the other hand, resetting the BionX controller to a lower start speed would probably resolve our issues with starts on hills, and San Francisco has a dedicated BionX shop that can handle any maintenance issues. In contrast, getting a Stokemonkey would be a long-distance operation for us. Moreover, BionX is releasing a higher-torque model suitable for super-steep SF hills this year. There isn’t an easy answer. On the other hand, there are no bad decisions to make here either.

In the meantime, I’m incredibly grateful to have had the chance to try both systems on the same bike (which is, incidentally, an awesome bike). Thanks G&O! Thanks Xtracycle!

 

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April 10, 2014 · 1:41 pm

Hills v. hills: San Francisco and Seattle

Mugging for the camera at the airport

Mugging for the camera at the airport

Last week was our spring break, and the kids and I headed north to visit my mom while Matt flew to Australia for work. This kind of thing is why I make no pretense that our car-free, zero waste schtick is carbon neutral. That said most of our travel is for business, and I believe I speak for both of us when I say that a tax on business travel that would ensure we did far less of it would be pretty awesome.

Anyway, we took the Brompton, which in circus-mode can carry both me and the kids. Flying with the Brompton was an unrelieved nightmare, due to Allegiant Airlines. They are dead to me. Their motto should be: “We will terrify your children.”

Madi demonstrates the two-kids-on-a-Brompton option.

Madi demonstrates the two-kids-on-a-Brompton option.

Nonetheless it was nice to have the bike once we got to Seattle. However I was surprised to find that despite the photos I have posted, even people who know family biking were impressed that it is possible to carry two kids on the Brompton. It’s fun, although not something I would do regularly on long rides. And I asked my son to run up the hills because I’m not the rider I used to be. And this brings me to: hills. Seattle is a hilly city, but hills in Seattle are different than hills in San Francisco.

A lot of San Francisco was built on landfill, which means that there are large chunks of the city (e.g. the Marina, the Financial District) that are perfectly flat. San Francisco doesn’t have a fixie culture because everyone is a masochist. It has a fixie culture because it’s possible to live without ever leaving the Mission. However once you want to go somewhere else, it gets tricky. The hills loom like walls, and although it’s possible to thread the needle sometimes using routes like the Wiggle, eventually people like us who go to work in offices (in Laurel Heights) and have kids in school (on the other side of Lone Mountain) have to start climbing. And San Francisco hills take no prisoners. Once we load 1-2 kids on deck, even with an assist we’re working hard. So riding in San Francisco is often: la-la-la-la-OMFG-OMFG-OMFG-wheeee!-la-la-la, etc.

Seattle is hilly in a more consistent way. In comparison to the totally-in-your-face hills of San Francisco, Seattle’s hills feel almost passive-aggressive. They meander up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down. I kept wondering where the steep hills were, because from my perspective there weren’t any. However the relentless low-key up and down is not the kind of terrain I’m used to riding and it wore me out (this has happened before—I got smoked by Madi from Family Ride on a deceptively mild-looking but seemingly endless hill in August 2012, while being fried by the equally foreign 80+F temperatures).

Bullitt-surfing is understandably more of a San Francisco thing.

Bullitt-surfing is understandably more of a San Francisco thing.

From the hill perspective, if riding in San Francisco is like occasionally ripping off a band-aid and screaming in agony, then riding in Seattle is like slowly peeling band-aids off by the dozen while feeling the adhesive tug on every single hair. Except that riding bikes is way more fun than that, of course. There’s nothing wrong with having to make an effort, it proves I’m alive and makes me stronger. I’m sure that if we lived in Seattle I would get used to Seattle hills and find them normal. Admittedly sweating on the way to work is a non-starter in my life, but this is why the universe has provided electric assists.

And speaking of assists, on this trip we stopped by the newly-opened G&O Family Cyclery, which had the Holy Grail of assist comparisons available for test rides: a Stokemonkeyed EdgeRunner and a BionX EdgeRunner. I love EdgeRunners (I-will-not-buy-another-bike-I-will-not-buy-another-bike-I-will-not-buy-another-bike) but had never tried an assisted version before. They are even better than the unassisted versions. We took the stoked and BionX EdgeRunners up and down the hills of Seattle, and if it wasn’t the same kind of challenge we face in San Francisco, it was still a fascinating experience.

My dissertation advisor had five mottos. One of them was, “Whenever you go away on a week of vacation, there’s always two weeks of work waiting for you when you come back.” Alas, this is painfully true, so coming soon: BionX v. Stokemonkey.

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