Experiment In A Basket

For a great while now, I have wanted a handwoven bicycle basket from David Hembrow. You may know him from his blog, A View From The Cycle Path.

I have had my Batavus for three years now, and it has taken quite awhile to get it exactly where I like it. Instead of jumping into buying things that look like they will be great, but end up not being used, I have purchased or made most of the things on my bicycle only after really thinking about it or experimenting with cheep alternates to see what is truly useful. For the last year and a half I had repurposed the removable Wald basket from my old bike by zip tying it to the front rack.

This bike was nothing but old stuff thrown together!

The rack its self was the cheapest I could find, $18, because I was not sure I would I like having a front rack on the bike. Now that it has been on for so long, I can't imagine the Bat without it. So when the one that is there now becomes too disreputable for my taste I will find a much better one knowing that it will be something well purchased.

Back to the basket. Having someone make a basket, and then ship it across the world is not something to take lightly. What if it just isn't right? My Wald basket was great because it was impervious to weather, was really cheap ($18, just like the rack) and when empty didn't cause much wind drag or collect water in the rain. The problem for me was it wasn't meeting my aesthetic requirements. Every time I looked at it, it just wasn't hitting my eye the right way. Some may find this a silly reason to replace something that works, but my front basket is something that is always in my line of sight when I ride, so if it is ugly it will always rankle. With that in mind, I had started thinking about David's beautiful baskets again. Not only are they aesthetically pleasing, they are works of art that I can buy directly from the artist (I am a total sucker for that kind if thing). But again, what if I didn't like having it on the front of the bicycle?

Zip ties will tie down just about anything!

A solution presented its self to me last week in the form of a giant picnic basket being sold at a sidewalk sale. With negotiating it came out to $7 and that meant I had the correct basket for my experiment. Will having a larger basket, with greater wind resistance on a crappy fork mounted rack work for me? So far, it has been a mixed bag. Even unloaded I notice a change in the front end handling, especially in the wind which blows hard constantly these days. It isn't horrible, but I am not sure how much I like it. This basket is also not going to work in the rain as it is lined and kinda cheap, so I will not get an idea of winter riding with it (David's baskets are good even in the snow). On the other hand, it has a great lid which keeps things in and the sun out and it looks great.

For now, the jury is out on what my final decision will be. I really love how terribly traditional the Bat looks with the basket on, I may just end up with a Peterboro one, but the call of David's baskets is still quite strong. One thing is sure, taking time to make these decisions pays off. My bicycle is exactly right for me and riding it is always a pleasure.

Freakin' Yuppies

Yep. He is riding in a cargo bike playing on an iPad.

The best part- two women in a minivan pulled up next to us with three kids in the back seat. When she saw Declan playing on the computer, she conceded defeat.

My Bike Is Turning Cantonese

I really think so. Go ahead, hum it. You know the tune.

I am not quite here yet, though.

Waste Disposal

We had a few used tires to get rid of.

Happy to say, they are now gone. Good thing to, because old tires smell like cat pee.

Chair Delivery

Since buying La Ballena, you may think that I reserve it for all of my cargo hauling needs. Not so, not so! I can find a way to get almost anything on my Bat.

Huge purse in the front. A dozen chicken eggs, a dozen quail eggs, 6 avocados, a bunch of leeks, 2 lbs of lamb sausage and a jar of home preserved lemons in the left pannier. An abandoned Japanese chair in the right pannier. Had I been successful at the Apple store, I would have had a new IPad on their somewhere as well.

It isn't just me hauling chairs and other things, either.

Kid? Check. Backpack? Check. Fishing gear in backpack? Check. Folding chair? Check.

Who needs a rack when you have strong biceps?

Meet the bike nerd

Last month we received an email from the "bike nerd" aka Seth Werkheiser. I think it's pretty adventurous and cool when people are able to pack and go. Just go. Go.

My name is Seth Werkheiser and I'm nomadic bike nerd without a zip code to call home, traveling from city to city with a laptop and toothbrush.
I left Brooklyn on July 31 and now I'm biking across Pennsylvania before heading South for the winter.



how to bike 30 miles with all your posessions

As told by Seth:

My story: I've been biking since I was like, 10 years old or something. I'm 34 now. Lived in NYC for almost six years. Lots of biking in the city. Then my hours got cut at work (I'm a freelance / contractor web-editor for AOL Music). Instead of trying to squeeze every penny and eat ramen noodles I decided to get rid of all my possessions and bike across the US with my laptop and clothes. I'm in NJ now. I'll be in PA this weekend for a few stops (Stroudsburg, Bethlehem, Philadelphia, Hershey, Everett, Pittsburgh) then onto Ohio and south from there.

Soooo I work M-F, 9-5pm. I log off, then ride and hang out with friends.

It's funny - when I got my hours cut I didn't now what to do! Like, I ALWAYS worked from 9am to 7 or 8pm. I was always checking email, even until midnight. I couldn't go out to dinner without looking at my iPhone every five minutes. Now? Now life starts at 5pm, and I've been biking more than ever! Losing weight and feeling good.

Check out my blog: thebikenerd.com

•• thanks bike nerd!! ••

Are Two Heads Better Than One?

As there are many things to write about our trip to Portland, I will just wimp out on the written word for now and give you this bit of silliness.

(amazing bicycle courtesy of Metrofiets!)

Precious cargo

The other day I had a few minutes to spend and observe the recent changes to Market st. from the view of a muni rider. I decided to step out of the bike lane universe, got off frenchie and walked over to the little Muni island, which stands in the middle of the street. I luckily had my camera within reach because it was a really cool moment to see this happy mom, telling her daughter about some kind of cartoon I am not quite familiar with.
I thought that was nice. A good sign of the times and the good things to come ---- and already happening. Here and now.

Market street at 9th.

Have Rack, Will Drink Coffee

Someone asked me once what the point of a rack was when you could just wear a backpack. I could have showed him this picture as my response. No rack would mean no portable coffee table to allow me to stand outside the café and take pictures.

Duh!

Groceries

We had to get some food shopping done this weekend. The cupboards were bare (despite a whole lotta of canning going on). We took the xtracycle and Cameron had his pannier on, but we still ended up filling my bags, too. Even Úna had a messenger bag to fill up.

By the time we got home, the shopping haul looked like this-

To get a sense of scale, my table is 6 feet long. On it are-2 bottles of wine, 2 bottles of balsamic vinegar, a pound of bananas, 2 pints of blackberries, a bag of chocolate covered blueberries, 5 pounds of tangerines, 2 huge boxes of TLC bars (Cameron keeps them at school as emergency snacks), 2 pounds of salad greens, assorted herbs, 2 pounds of trail mix, 5 pounds of pistachios, 10 pounds of cat food, 4 pounds of figs, 2 pounds of bread, a wedge of mimolette, 5 pounds of zucchini, 3 pounds of heirloom tomatoes, 2 pounds of rhubarb, a large bag of naan, a large jar of assorted pickles, a small jar of pickled banana peppers, a large eggplant, lemons, a pair of wool socks and 2 flannel shirts. Add to this my huge purse and a five year old... please do not tell me that a family of 5 needs a car in a place like San Francisco.

We ended up in several different places, today, including Costco. If we had driven, it would have been awful with all the parking lots and traffic. Instead, we had a good time enjoying the sun (light, at last!!!! No heat, but light!!!!) and snacking as we rode along.

You should try it!

Black & Tan

Installment two of this ground breaking series of posts. Others talk about handlebars, I talk about baggage. Today I talk about my canvas stuff. I never really intended to have so much, but here I am with a bunch of it.

The small, faded black saddlebag is from Acorn bags. Acorn are hand made bags created by a husband and wife team in Los Angeles and when I first heard about them I wanted a bag for my new Batavus. I couldn't resist handmade in California. It took me three months to successfully order my bag and I have loved it from jump.

note my amazing winterizing : )

I used to keep it on the Bat as a handlebar bag for my camera. My newer cameras do not fit in it so it is now a permanent fixture on my mixte. Although the bag faded a bit too fast for my taste, I love how well made it is and how perfect it is on S.A.M. It holds my lights when not in use, my tools and patch kit, my lock keys, a fold up shopping bag and a seat cover. I love that I can keep the flap fastened loosely and slip my hand under it to unzip the pouch to get at my stuff. Super fast, super easy. It is also secured enough that I usually just leave my basic stuff (minus the keys) in it when I am parked.

The really big saddlebag above is on my road bike. It, like the panniers in the top photo, were gifts from Hubby the Bike Man after he found them through some discussion forum he is on. They are from the Minnihaha Company. They are mass produced out of the country, but I couldn't afford to have full panniers made in the US for a bicycle that I will only tour on occasionally (he paid less than $30 for each of the bags). The panniers have shoulder straps that make them easy to carry off the bicycle and a simple bungee chord and hook system that works with one hand to get them on and off the rack.

No matter how nice they look, though, having only small buckles for the leather straps makes getting in and out of them, especially the saddlebag which has the buckles under the bag, inconvenient. I always think twice about getting anything out of them. However, this also means that nothing falls out of them easily. For small things like my wallet and keys and cell phone that I need to get to easily I use my Hambone bag.

Hambone bags are made by a friend of mine, here in California. Mine is leather and has a detachable purse strap so I can carry it off the bicycle (it looks nice with just about everything). It only works on a diamond frame, so I only use it with the Hoff, but I love it and the fact that I bought it from the maker directly is even better.

One of these days I will do some actual touring and use my canvas bags for their intended purpose. For now, I use them for unpredictable, non-food related shopping days or times when I need dual panniers (which is any day I am carrying too much crap back from the thrift shops : )

Next stop on the baggage line- huge European bags that can smuggle people in them.

Heels and hills

Our city isn't flat.
Our city isn't 90° in August.
Our city has all kinds of bicycle riders.
San Francisco moms on wheels rock.

Baggage. We All Have It.

One of the common challenges of a life lived without a car (or with only occasional car) is how to carry your stuff with you. I, for one, am consistently amazed at what I bring with me places (not to mention how much all that crap weighs!). Equally amazing, to me, is how one cargo solution that works today will be utterly wrong the next. This means that I, being a little obsessive about having the right tool for the job, have a few options for carrying crap around the landscape.

I will start with the most recent solution (it is the easiest to find pictures of). Carrying a camera all the time can get kind of complicated. I don't have the talent with my point and shoot that Meli does, and I end up carrying much bigger cameras. Wearing them all the time can become tiring and I hate how fussy camera bags are (especially if I have to carry them around when off the bicycle). So I did this-

I use a bag that holds my lenses and wallet and decided to come up with a way to make it into a pannier (I hate having my camera bounce around in the basket). I use these really cool clips to turn my bag into something that can be secured to the rack.

These clips could be used with a variety of bags and purses. In the future, this will be super helpful as I will be removing the front rack from the Bat once I am no longer carrying Declan everywhere. I could use this set up with any of my Coach bags, my Timbuk2 purse, my backpack... just about anything. Those clips hold 25 pounds each, so I am good to go! The rack keeps the bag out of the spokes and the whole thing is easily removable and isn't as awkward as carrying around a big pannier when not pedaling.

That is enough about baggage for today. I will write about my other options at another time. You, of course, are waiting with baited breath.

100 mile radius potluck

This was written by Mark Stosberg along with his capture, which is our "Picture of the Week" in our banner above. I thought it was a great story and so I asked Mark for his permission to re-post here, so here it is. Enjoy!

coming home from the 2nd anniversary of a the 100 mile radius potluck

It's hard to believe its been two years since we started going to the 100-mile-radius potlucks here in Richmond, Indiana.

Everyone brings a dish ideally sourced from with 100 miles, but over time we've found there are some standard cheats: olive oil and salt.

In the photo above you can't see also carried two folding chairs like we did two years ago. (The prior photo is linked above). The two chairs are strapped to the other side of the rear rack. They were easily dropped into an 18-gallon Rubbermaid container which is there.

The major differences in the bike experience from two years ago are of course that the box bike has been replaced with this electric Yuba Mundo, and my wife is piloting it instead of me.

If we were going to load of the box bike with the baby plus cargo and needed to get some place quickly, that notably lowered the odds of the box bike being used, if we went by bike at all. That means that kind of bicycle use was more limited to the weekends, when there were two of us and we had more time.

Electric assist has been a game-changer-- my wife regularly choses the bike for trips with the baby plus cargo, even when she needs to get there quickly. As a result, we celebrated our 400th mile on the Yuba Mundo today, completed in about two months (including a week vacationing without our bicycles and some other out-of-town travel.) Most of those miles included carrying the baby, and were for short, around-town trips. It represents replacing quite a number of car trips. I'm curious now what percentage of trips that we take by car now. Perhaps I'll have the family record our transportation modes for a week and see what happens.

flickr.com/photos/marstos »

Bike Girl

This is my daughter, Úna.

She is eleven years old and she is already an experienced bicycle commuter.

Úna rides all over town with us, in all kinds of places. Unlike many of her peers, she has a "real" bike- A lugged steel Trek Singletrack with fenders, a front basket, a rear rack, dedicated lights... for her birthday we bought her a Timbuk2 pannier bag. It was way too expensive for someone her age, but if she uses it as her book bag for the whole of middle school (which she plans to ride to), it will be a good purchase. We have started her on hauling cargo.

She has conquered the Paradise Loop, about 25 miles with hills,

and we are not sure, but it is possible she rode almost 30 miles on her 40 year old Columbia last Halloween when we brought her along for Critical Mass.

Kids are capable of so much more than we give them credit for. Úna knows her way around town, she knows where the bike routes are, she knows how to signal her turns and how to hold her own. She has no fear of the road and just takes her time.

It also wears them out so they go to bed early.

Stretchy

Sometimes a couple of bungee cords are all you need.

So watcha up to this weekend?!

Here in SF, while riding around doing my saturday thing (no plans, coffee, bikes, and more coffee) I had already encounter a flood of drunk pirates invading the streets. I thought, maybe there was a big game or is school out? um, no - it's Bay to Breakers tomorrow, and people are already nuts and wasting no time to party. Ok, have fun drunkies

In the meantime I leave you all with a much more pleasant, and work-safe photo for what some people do over weekends other than getting hangovers - Moving.
Thanks to Ted for sending the link!

Photo property of/by: eight one seven photography

Which Bike Today?

Over at EcoVelo, Alan has arguably one of the most drool worthy private collections of bicycles of all of the bicycle bloggers out there. He has articles on his Country and Commuter bikes. This has inspired me to share my own, impressive fleet.

First up, My Commuter-

You have all seen my Batavus Socorro. After my old commuter proved to be wrong for me, Hubby the Bike Man presented me with this wonderful bike. When I was still working, I used this to get me to work- 18 miles round trip (without child pick up) with a 20 mile train trip in the middle. I wore professional attire while riding it, and that basket in the front was perfect for carrying my purse, my lunch, my jacket... Where I worked in Richmond, CA , there was no car parking on the facility premises and the surrounding area was rife with crime. There was always space in my clinic to keep my bike, which meant no slashed tires or broken windshields.

Next, My Country Bike

With my heavy duty frame and front suspension, my Bat is great on rough terrain. I can use my bike on just about any road out there (except for maybe Downieville, but that's OK). Fire roads are no issue for me.

Now, we move onto my Kid Hauler.

Pick up at the preschool is easy. I pull up to the school, unfold my Bobike Junior, put Declan on the back and off we go. The seat has a folding rack in the back so I can carry the boy's backpack on it. It will carry him until he is 70 pounds, assuming I have not booted him off to his own bike by then. Because the Bat is so damn stable, I am able to carry my very wriggly boy home without feeling like we will tip over (although I am convinced that he wants to see if he can do the whole Thriller dance back there). I still have the Burley trailer hitch on there if I need to carry more than one kid or a big screen television.

Last, but not least, is my Everything Bike.

While I do not work these days, I am always out running errands, meeting people, working to slow traffic in front of my home.... and usually put at least 10 miles of errand riding on it daily, filling up the front basket as I go. After that comes picking up Declan. His school is a 6 mile ride from my home. We usually need to stop for groceries on the way home and pick up as much as will fit on the back rack (we go through half a gallon of milk a day and about 60 pounds of produce a week).

I would be lying if I let you think I have only the one bike, I do not. But I could. It is telling that this bike has about 5500 of the 6000 miles I have logged in the last year and a half. All it takes is one bike that you love to get you riding- until I was given my Bat I couldn't dream of riding like this because I had the wrong bike (too big, not appropriate).

However, if you are looking for a fleet, I can recommend Alan's as one to wish for!

Will You Be My Neighbor?

This is my neighbor. I don't know his name, but he rides his Madsen through our crazy, hilly neighborhood with his three kids in the bucket! My kids had seen him around, but it wasn't until today that I was able to get a picture. For a few minutes, my street looked the way I wish it always did- a Madsen with kid, Xtracycle with teenager, 10 year old on her own bike, Dutch bike with groceries, trail-a-bike with son behind Dad. A healthy street. I hope the rest of the neighborhood got a good look : )

In other fun news, Mr. Rogers has a song about just getting on with it and trying (featuring a bicycle). I wish I could find a download or something on YouTube, but no luck. Sooo, click here. It should be the theme song for the entire North American bicycle movement.

bicycles as marketing

this weekend, i went into a big chain store to get an umbrella since i lost mine during this week of rain & theirs are cheap and sorta girly cute. when i got there i saw some of this phenomenon of bikes as marketing i believed we've talked about before a bit.

here is a smaller store using the same technique.


i notice that while both seem to be using the "cool" card since "cool" sells things, each store seems to be saying something different. i think the big chain store is saying, hey ride bikes, look cute, get exercise, get fit, get skinny, look good in clothes, buy lots of (our) clothes. the other store seems to be saying, hey, bikes are utilitarian. see, you can put our rugs in a bakfiets and transport it from our store to your store/home/whatever.

anyway, those are some things i've seen in my everyday life of bikes as props. aside from television commercials, i haven't seen it too much around, but i think that's because i don't normally go to stores so much.

also, as an aside, i believe that the display people may have had this display in mind while creating the newer one. ummhmm.