Category Archives: Xtracycle

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

Disaster Relief Trials this Sunday in San Francisco

The start of the Portland Disaster Relief Trials

The start of the Portland Disaster Relief Trials

This summer in Portland, we attended the combination Disaster Relief Trials (DRT) and Fiets of Parenthood. Both have always seemed to be more or less a Portland kind of thing in hypotheticals, although they turn out to be an everywhere kind of thing in actual natural disasters, like say, Hurricane Sandy. Something happens, and suddenly people can only get around on bikes.

In the meantime, why not practice? So for the last three years Portland (among other cities, but isn’t it always Portland?) has been running practice rounds, where people on cargo bikes (and in one case, a skateboard pulling a trailer) run around the city picking up water and supplies and hauling their bikes over obstacles. In the Portland 2014 DRT there was even an electric-assist class, and a “Replenish” class for families like us, who are not into extreme sports kinds of challenges and who are always dragging small humans around. San Francisco has reorganized this into slightly different classes, but they also have a family-friendly bent, with open, open team, citizen (read: family), citizen team, and e-assist classes. I like the team concept a lot.

I’m a bit late to be announcing this party—sorry, it’s been busy—but it’s definitely an event worth checking out if you are cargo bike-curious or already a fan.

Here’s the press release from Xtracycle, and a link to the event itself.

“Xtracycle is proud to be the presenting Sponsor for the 1st annual SF Disaster Relief Trials – 25 years and 2 days after the legendary Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989.

This event is designed to simulate a ‘critical supplies run’ 4 days into a disaster – cargo bikes being the tool to help procure food, water, medicine and supplies for our families, friends and neighbors in need.

On October 19 at 11am, come to the Presidio (Main Post Lawn, Montgomery Street) to see what a cargo bike can do.  We will be commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake by displaying a fresh approach to citizen-led disaster relief.  Cargo bikes have the greatest power to affect relief in dense urban environments like San Francisco.

DRT SF is being organized by Scott Perkins, the Neighborhood Emergency Response Team (NERT) leader for the Presidio Neighborhood.  Scott is a dyed-in-the-wool family cargo biker who is excited to show off cargo bikes to emergency managers and neighbors alike.

San Francisco’s NERT program was developed as a reaction to the 1989 LomaPrieta earthquake: a program to empower citizens to address local disaster recovery needs when first responders are fully absorbed by severe emergencies.  There are other fire department-facilitated citizen response teams throughout the country: elswhere known as NET or CERT or similar.  As the DRT movement is focused on promoting neighbor-to-neighbor assistance, these citizen-involvement programs might be one of the best in-roads for making cargo bikes a conventional response tool.  A DRT competiton will highlight the possibilities.”

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Filed under advocacy, events, Portland, San Francisco, Xtracycle

A series of family biking events, 2014 edition

There is a lot to do if you are interested in family biking, mostly in San Francisco but also beyond. Here’s everything I know about this summer so far in date order—and don’t miss the good stuff at the end.

July 13th (11am-4pm): Richmond Sunday Streets

We went to Richmond Sunday Streets last year—this was a great event for kids to ride their own bikes because it was car-free all the way from Golden Gate Park to Clement Street. We had no worries about cross-traffic for miles.

July 19th (11am-5pm): Fiets of Parenthood and the Disaster Relief Trials, Portland, Oregon

We are finally going to make it to Fiets of Parenthood, which will be held at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry on July 19th. Come to compete or to test out cool cargo bikes—Splendid Cycles claims they’ll have a Bullitt with the new extra-torquey BionX D system to try. There is also a new class in the Disaster Relief Trials, the non-competitive Replenish division, as well as the competitive classes competing for time (we are so not doing that). To participate in Replenish you have to haul a non-pedaling passenger (no tandems). Our California contingent will be easy to spot, as we’ll all be on child seat-equipped Bromptons. Go Grizzlies.

August 24th (11am-4pm): Mission Sunday Streets

Our first Mission Sunday Streets in 2012

Our first Mission Sunday Streets in 2012

Mission Sunday Streets is the first we ever attended and it’s always the most crowded, but it’s no less awesome for that. We usually hightail it to Dynamo Donuts first thing in the morning, then turn around and return at a more measured pace. Our bikes are easy to spot if you’re looking for us.

September 2nd (10am-11am): How would you make buying and using a cargo bike easier? A conversation with Vie Bikes at Koret Playground in Golden Gate Park (look for the sign near the Carousel)

Vie Bikes is a new company formed by three San Francisco cargo biking parents intent on making it easy as pie to find, buy and use the best cargo bikes on the market. Among other things, Vie will offer month-to-month leasing, and built-in quarterly service that comes to you. Vie is planning to launch in San Francisco in the coming months, and expand in to new cities thereafter. Stop by Koret Playground to talk with Vie’s founders, including long-time Hum of the City reader Kit Hodge. Vie is looking for feedback from both people who have cargo bikes and people looking for them regarding key aspects of our service.If you went through the process of shopping for a cargo bike again, what would you change?If you’re in the process now, what are you finding challenging? Be part of shaping a company that will transform cargo bike use across North America. RSVP to info@viebikes.com. Can’t make it but want to weigh in? E-mail info@viebikes.com with your thoughts. We’ve known Kit for a long time and were very excited about the idea of a cargo bike leasing company, which is both totally novel and totally cool. I hear there will be sample bikes to check out as well.

September 14th (11am-4pm): Western Addition Sunday Streets

Western Addition Sunday Streets 2013

Western Addition Sunday Streets 2013

Western Addition Sunday Streets is one of my favorites because a large section of it goes through neighborhoods rather than a major commercial strip. It’s also much less crowded because the route hauls people up over Alamo Square, so beware. We usually start at Chili Pies and Ice Cream and wander over toward Japantown.

The final two events are only relevant for Rosa Parks families, but if you are such a family (or you’d like to be eventually), please feel free to join our community even before school starts.

July 12th and August 16th (11am-1pm): Rosa Parks Incoming Kindergarten class family potlucks

Family bikes round up in the lower courtyard. Incoming kindergarteners can meet and play with each other and their future teachers. These are fun events—at the August potluck, classroom assignments should be out as well. We may miss the August potluck because of our Camp Mather trip, but we’re going to try to make it to both. Hope to see you there.

Happy riding this summer.

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Filed under Brompton, destinations, electric assist, family biking, Portland, San Francisco, Xtracycle

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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Filed under EdgeRunner, electric assist, reviews, San Francisco, Xtracycle

Destinations: Blue Heron Bikes

This is what you get when you go to Berkeley: wild turkeys.

This is what you get when you go to Berkeley: wild turkeys. It’s not safe crossing the Bay.

I’ve been disappointed for years now that San Francisco has no family/cargo bike shop. Things are certainly better than they were a couple of years ago, when we started looking for our 2-kid hauler, but shopping around for a family bike in the city still involves a lot of “around”: wandering from bike shop to bike shop, none of which are necessarily on the same transit lines (and none of which, pretty understandably, have any parking for cars.)

Welcome to Blue Heron. Let's ride some bikes!

Welcome to Blue Heron. Let’s ride some bikes!

Back in 2012, it was a no-brainer to tack a train ride to Portland for cargo bike shopping onto our summer trip to Seattle to visit my mom. At the time Portland had three cargo bike shops that seriously considered the needs of family riders. Last year, however, I started to hear from other families about Blue Heron Bikes in Berkeley, which opened shortly after we returned from Portland in 2012. They said it was a real family bike shop. They were right.

These people think of everything.

These people think of everything.

We didn’t make it over to Blue Heron until early 2014, but it was worth the wait. Having visited a few family bike shops already, we knew what to look for: kids’ bikes, cargo bikes, and a Lego table. Check, check, and check.  (Clever Cycles in Portland, which represents the pinnacle of family bike shops in the United States, also adds a large play space, inexpensive rentals of many of the bikes it sells, and FREE DIAPERS IN THE BATHROOM to that mix, but this is the result of years of practice.)

Hi, Rob!

Hi!

I no longer patronize bike shops that give me attitude—and anyone who’s walked into a typical bike shop with kids will know what I’m talking about here—so the other critical attribute of a family bike shop is being nice to anyone who walks in the door.  I’m no longer the best judge of that personally, given that my husband likes to walk into bike shops and announce, “This is my wife and she writes a blog about family biking!” However on our first visit to Blue Heron about half a dozen novice family bikers stopped by, and Rob (the owner) and his staff were lovely to all of them. Those poor families also had to endure us talking their ears off about the bikes they test-rode, but you can’t blame Blue Heron for that. Check Yelp for the many five-star reviews from people who showed up on other days.

The family bike corner

The family bike corner

What kind of bikes can you get at Blue Heron? Lots of bikes: they stock Bromptons, Bullitts (sent down from Splendid Cycles), EdgeRunners, and Yuba Mundos. I’ll admit that Bromptons aren’t usually considered family bikes, but that’s how we ride ours, and Emily Finch is now hauling four kids on a Brompton + Burley Travoy, so I think they qualify. Blue Heron also has some quirky stuff like a Japanese cargo bike that they’ve rigged with a rear child seat.  I haven’t ridden that bike, because I figured we’ve tried their patience enough. My kids wanted to ride all the bikes they had in front, and my son announced afterward that he wants a mountain bike. My daughter cried all the way home about our decision to not buy her the purple bike she rode while we were there, because “It’s near my birthday!”

Swoopy looking EdgeRunner

Swoopy looking EdgeRunner

The kids did not stop with the bikes in their own size. They also asked to ride the Bullitt with the large box, so we did, and I haven’t stopped hearing about how we should upgrade to that box since. And they also wanted to ride the EdgeRunner. The last EdgeRunner I had ridden was a pre-production model, but the 2014 EdgeRunner was significantly more awesome. We loved that bike. I haven’t stopped hearing about how we should get an EdgeRunner either. We’re going to try the assisted version next, and hopefully a Kinn Flyer and a Workcycles Fr8 too (more reviews!)

Although Blue Heron is located on the Ohlone Greenway in the flats, which makes for lovely test rides, Berkeley is not without hills, and they will also assist your family bike. They had BionX versions of a number of the cargo bikes they sell ready for test rides. Fortunately they didn’t have a BionX EdgeRunner in stock when we were there or we might not have escaped without buying another bike.

There's a largely unused parking lot behind the shop, great for kids' test rides

There’s a largely unused parking lot behind the shop, great for kids’ test rides

From my perspective, Blue Heron has only one dreadful, depressing flaw, and that is that it is in Berkeley. Getting to Berkeley is an all-day commitment for us, even now that our kids are older. However I understand why families in San Francisco are making the trek across the Bay. Getting a cargo bike from Berkeley to San Francisco is a real adventure—one dad took his new Bullitt on BART, which meant carrying it on the stairs, and another family rode theirs down to the ferry to get it home.  I’m not sure I’m ready to commit to that kind of adventure, but we’ve been there twice now and I have no doubt that we’ll return.

For us, a trip to Portland was the only way to compare the different possible bikes we could have bought. We wouldn’t have to make that same trip now. I’m glad we did go, of course, because if we hadn’t we would never had met the family biking crew in Portland, and we would have had to wait much longer to ride our bike. This is difficult and unpleasant to imagine. But if we were looking now, we’d start in Berkeley.

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Filed under bike shops, Brompton, Bullitt, destinations, family biking, travel, Xtracycle, Yuba Mundo

Even yet more San Francisco family bikes

It’s been a while since I posted about some of the bikes we see around town, which is misleading because I see more family bikes every day. Red Bullitts are so thick on the ground that I think they might have their own gang. Who knew that going with a blue Bullitt would be so passé? And I’m still trying to get a picture of the CETMA I see near our son’s school sometimes, but the dad riding that bike is just too fast for me. In the meantime, there are others.

This Surly has the motor on the front wheel, along with the clever wheel lock.

This Surly has the motor on the front wheel, along with the clever wheel lock.

The most common family bike we see is an assisted longtail, like this one. The EdgeRunner made a big splash in SF, but there are also a lot of pre-EdgeRunner Xtracycle options running around the city. I liked this assisted Surly because I thought the front wheel lock was a clever addition. The family riding this bike parked it outside the Jewish Community Center while we were there for an event with only the wheel lock, so they didn’t need a rack. I thought that was tempting fate when I first looked at it, but realized that without the need for a rack, they could park right in front, in full view of the security guard standing at the door. The bike was still there after our 3-hour event, and I saw it parked there again a week later, so it was evidently safe enough.

Bakfiets short from My Dutch Bike, which I am discouraging my daughter from climbing into when this photo was taken

Bakfiets short from My Dutch Bike, which I am discouraging my daughter from climbing into when this photo was taken

This Bakfiets short belongs to our neighbor up the hill, and is well-known in the city because the owner works for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, which is a totally awesome organization to which we donate an increasing amount of money every year. I am grateful for their tireless efforts to create world-class bicycle infrastructure here, and that infrastructure is a big part of the reason that I get the opportunity to photograph many awesome family bikes. Thank you, SFBC! I tell all my friends to join! The Stokemonkey (now back in production!) is a recent addition, which made it possible to ride up the hills around here with kids on board. I was surprised that she reported that it is kind of noisy, given that I had heard it was silent. But if it kills the hills, it’s probably worth it.

Cannondale tandem hanging out at work

Cannondale tandem hanging out at work

This Cannondale tandem appeared recently at the bike rack at my office. It’s been there every morning for the last few days at least. It looks like it might be set up for two adults, or maybe an older kid. I’m surprised it has so little carrying capacity—just one rack for two people? But maybe as kids get older you end up hauling less crap around as parents. That would be something, wouldn’t it? I like big bikes (and I cannot lie) but the prospect of being able to ride a lighter bike one day… I admit, this has some appeal.

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Filed under advocacy, Bullitt, family biking, San Francisco, Xtracycle

The underrated Kona MinUte

The same bike, but different

The same bike, but different

Although I have some issues with our original cargo bike, the Kona MinUte, they are mostly along the lines of “this is a good bike that with a little bit more effort could have been a GREAT bike.” If I were a betting person, I would bet that the MinUte is a product that is only really loved by one person at Kona, which as a company seems to focus more on what another family biker once referred to as “the weed market.” I wish this were not the case, but in the meantime, Kona pioneered the first American midtail, and what a great idea that turned out to be.

So I was very disappointed to learn that Kona is discontinuing the MinUte at the end of 2013. I recommend the Yuba Boda Boda to parents looking for an assisted midtail in San Francisco (that’s mostly moms), with the usual caveat about Yuba’s lower-end parts. I recommend the MinUte to parents looking for an UNassisted midtail in San Francisco (that’s mostly dads), with the usual caveats about the MinUte’s historically horrible brakes. There a couple more midtails out there, but to date I have not yet ridden a Kinn Cascade Flyer, so I can’t comment on anything but its smokin’ good looks one way or the other. And the very sturdy Workcycles Fr8 is not appropriate for our hilly neighborhood, plus it is too heavy for bus bike racks on local transit, so it loses one of the key advantages of owning a midtail. On the other hand, if you live somewhere flat, the Fr8 is the only midtail specifically designed to haul three kids, one of whom can be in front, which is delightful.

Although it is not a company that is focused on the kid market, Kona does some things really, really well, and one of them is gearing. The MinUte is geared like a mountain bike, so yes indeed you can haul your 50+ pound kid up really steep grades on this bike. And with an aluminum frame, the weight of the bike isn’t fighting you all the way up those hills. To the best of my knowledge, there is no other cargo bike with the same weight+gearing advantage currently on the market. RIP, MinUte. If you’ve been thinking about getting one, you’d better hustle.

Rosa Parks family with a very stylish 2013 MinUte tricked out for kid-hauling

This very stylish 2013 MinUte belongs to a Rosa Parks family and is completely tricked out for kid-hauling

The things that irritate me about the MinUte would probably be irrelevant if the family cargo biking market hadn’t taken such great leaps in the last few years. Now you can buy a bike that comes with kid-carrying parts designed for the bike. Workcycles, Xtracycle, and Yuba will not let you down on this front, and that makes their bikes inherently more appealing for a parent picking up cargo biking. Getting a MinUte involves some kludging that feels a little old-school now. If you live near our bike shop, Everybody Bikes, or one like it, they’ll do that for you, because they’ve set up so many of these bikes already, but otherwise you’re on your own. Kona does not have a standard set of stoker bars for kids to hang on to, wheel skirts to keep feet from being trapped in the spokes, or pegs for foot rests. If you buy a MinUte from Everybody Bikes they’ll set up you up with all of these things on request, and it will look really good too, but that’s their initiative and not Kona’s.

But we live in a hilly neighborhood near this particular bike shop, so it’s not just us on a MinUte: we have neighbors with MinUtes as well, and one family joins us at Rosa Parks every morning—how cool is that? For parents with one kid or two widely spaced kids, a midtail is probably the best kind of cargo bike. Granted, you don’t really need a cargo bike with only one kid, but it can be handy—I find a midtail less unwieldy than a bike seat with an older child, plus you can carry more non-kid cargo. Matt likes the MinUte’s carrying capacity so much that he plans to keep riding it after our kids are on their own bikes. Assuming, that is, it is not stolen again after Kona stops making them, which would break our hearts.

And as mentioned, most midtails can go on a bus bike rack, or on Amtrak using their standard bike racks. Score! Lifting them up to a bus bike rack is not without its challenges—the MinUte, which is the lightest one I’ve tried to put on a bus, is definitely a lot of work to position, but eh, there are lots of heavy bikes in the world, and in my own personal case, my arms are not the weak link.

This neighbor DIYed a nice kid seat with a wooden back, which is drilled directly into the wooden deck.

This neighbor DIYed a nice kid seat with a wooden back, which is drilled directly into the wooden deck.

When we got the replacement MinUte, we learned that Kona had not ignored all of the issues that came up with the first year’s model. The MinUte now has a much nicer centerstand than before, only a fraction narrower than the best-in-class Ursus Jumbo at half the price. Kona now allows you to swap out the standard wooden deck for a plastic deck with holes predrilled to hold a Yepp seat. I’ve been told that the standard brakes are better. The bags are still not so great, but hey, they are included in the price of the bike, so it’s hard to complain too loudly about that. Again, it’s really more a good thing that could have been great.

We will miss being able to tell people where they can buy a MinUte like ours—although the Bullitt gets the most attention, all our bikes are kid-haulers, and as a result they all get noticed. I wish Kona were willing to jump into the family market wholeheartedly. The MinUte fills a niche for families in hilly cities and I’m not sure there’s another bike out there yet that can do the same thing. But Kona is discontinuing the MinUte, so I will have to hope there is something new in the works.

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Filed under commuting, family biking, Kona, Xtracycle, Yuba, Yuba Boda Boda

More bikes I have seen

Surly Xtracycled Karate Monkey with Stokemonkey electric assist--so many kinds of awesome!

Surly Xtracycled Karate Monkey with Stokemonkey electric assist–so many kinds of awesome!

Now that I am getting out and about more, I can continue my effort to catalog every unusual bike in San Francisco. There are more interesting hobbies, I’ll admit, but it entertains me (my other hobby is the even more obscure effort to catalog every word that means its own opposite, e.g. sanction).

This bike isn’t a kid-hauler, which is my favorite kind of bicycle by far, but it could have been (update from a more observant friend: yes it is! check out those stoker bars). I was not familiar with the Surly Karate Monkey before I saw this Xtracycle outside a café one weekend morning. But check it out: it’s a Stokemonkeyed Karate Monkey! That’s an awful lot of monkeys on one bike. It must own the hills. I couldn’t tell whether the box was a battery backup, but this bike looks like it gets around. The sticker references a shop in Seattle. You’re a long way from home, monkeys.

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Filed under electric assist, San Francisco, Xtracycle

Where the family bikes are

Family bikes like circus arts.

Family bikes like circus arts.

We tend to spot interesting bikes in the morning. I’m not sure why. I almost never get pictures because we’re booking to school, but last week was a particular doozy. One rainy morning I passed a recumbent bike that not only sported six poison-frog yellow Ortlieb panniers (with the rider in a matching jacket), but actual jingle bells. And almost every morning I also see some of San Francisco’s significant homeless contingent, or as I sometimes think of them, “self-supported locally-touring riders,” with each bike hauling not only a sleeping bag and a duffel bag but at least two full garbage bags of recycling. Matt found a generous collection of family bikes at the acrobatic center where he took our son this weekend.

Where I hit the motherlode (aside from our son’s school, of course) is Rainbow Grocery. Last Friday I took the day off after a particular grueling week; and instead of heading to work after school drop off I went to Rainbow. On the way in I saw our friends’ Big Dummy, probably because they joined us in car freedom last week, and together we checked out all the other family bikes locked up.

Another ad hoc family bike, with a seat on the rear rack

Another ad hoc family bike, with a seat on the rear rack

The first was one of the many ad hoc family bikes around the city. This bike was immediately familiar, though, because I’d already talked to the mom about her bike while we were riding on the Panhandle. I really liked the seat she’s screwed into the rack, which I’ve never seen before, and I would love to find another because it looks like the perfect addition to a midtail deck. Her kid is apparently still pretty small, but trustworthy enough to hold on to stoker bars. I asked her about footrests, because there aren’t any, and she said that she always keeps panniers with a kid on board, and her kid’s feet go inside. Personally I’d use a sturdier rear rack, but then again my kids are bigger.

A one-off: the Fraser Pack Mule

A one-off: the Fraser Pack Mule

The second bike that pulled up while I was there was a longtail I’d never seen before, a Fraser Pack Mule from Southern California. I asked the dad riding it and he said it was custom, purchased long before the Surly Big Dummy hit the market. I was really impressed by the integrated back support on the deck. And  although it is evidently usually a single-kid hauler he said that he sometimes carries both of his kids on this bike as well (as long as they’re not fighting, a caveat that’s all too familiar). They live on a hill, but he left the bike unassisted because he has to carry it upstairs to park it, and wasn’t sure he could handle hoisting another 20 pounds on top of an already heavy cargo bike. How cool is this bike?

Anyway, I think I need to figure out a way to get to Rainbow Grocery more often on weekday mornings.

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

These are the ways we ride to school, continued

EdgeRunner, Mundos, trailers, trailer-bikes

Rosa Parks parents rolling in: EdgeRunner, Mundos, Boda Boda, trailer, trailer-bikes

Last year I wrote about some of the bikes we saw at school drop-off. We have a new bike to take our kids to school (the Bullitt) but the big news for us this year was the group of new kindergarten parents on bikes. They outnumber all the rest of us put together. When we were first assigned to Rosa Parks in 2010 I never would have guessed that these families would be coming two years later.

This year’s kindergarten parents came riding multiple Yuba Mundos, and at least two of them are assisted (it’s still San Francisco). There is a bike with a trailer, a real rarity in San Francisco. There are a couple of bikes with trailer-bikes for kids, and an eBoda Boda. And joining them in 2013 is a brand new assisted Xtracycle EdgeRunner.

At the kindergarten end of the yard it's bike-central

At the kindergarten end of the yard it’s bike-central

I catch these parents sometimes when I’m riding up Webster from the south, and we make a little bike convoy. On occasion my son has reached over to the deck to zip up another kid’s open backpack while we talk. Parents and teachers in cars wave to us at stop lights, and we wave to families walking to school from the bus stop.

Bikes with yellow jackets

Bikes with yellow jackets

The kindergarten parents are such a cohesive crew that I am seriously considering replacing my beat-up, broken-zippered windbreaker with one of the day-glo yellow ones that they all seem to wear so that I can look like part of their posse. And historically I have not been a fan of day-glo yellow.

Hey, Boda Boda.

Hey, Boda Boda.

After drop-off I sometimes ride with another family whose route to preschool mirrors my route to work. On the rare occasions that I leave our son and head out before school starts, I have spotted Rosa Parks families coming down Post Street in the opposite direction as they head to school.

Some of the families with older kids are in transition. The third and fourth graders are moving to their own bikes, or sometimes a kid’s bike hitched to a parent’s bike with a TrailGator (there is still a lot of traffic in the city). Our son’s love of the Bullitt’s rain cover has temporarily postponed his desire to ride his own bike, at least while it’s cold and rainy, but I’m sure this will change as he sees more and more kids riding on their own.

Rain? What rain?

Rain? What rain?

Riding our kids to school on our bikes is still not typical, but at Rosa Parks it’s not exceptional either. The neighborhood infrastructure for bikes isn’t more than a bit of paint, but evidently this is enough. There are traditional bike lanes and sharrows on some of the streets near school, and drivers are used to looking out for bikes. Every morning there is a row of them parked along the fence at drop-off, in addition to the bikes like ours left at the actual racks.

All aboard!

All aboard!

I remember reading about families with in other cities with neighborhood schools that organized regular walks and rides to school and thinking, at the time, how unrealistic it seemed for San Francisco, with its citywide school lottery. I was sure that it would never happen here, with families coming from all directions and every neighborhood. But who really knows what creates enough critical mass to form a bike community? I was wrong. And I couldn’t be happier.

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Filed under destinations, electric assist, family biking, San Francisco, trailer-bike, Xtracycle, Yuba Boda Boda, Yuba Mundo