A Very Bikey December

by Julie Medero

Things have been a bit quite here at Wheelha.us. I assure you, we’ve got lots going on on our end — we’re just trying to catch up with it all long enough to share! We will have lots of good, bikey fun to share with you in the months to come. In the mean time, here’s a round-up of some of the bike fun we’ve had recently that’s been patiently waiting for its turn to be shared:

Our youngest discovered that the Big Dummy + Hooptie gives him the perfect perch to be able to mail a letter all by himself. Hooray for independence!

mailbox

Later that night, our kids found that our covered Madsen was the perfect place to watch the Argosy Christmas ships while hiding from the cold, wet December weather.

christmasShipWatching

In preparation for Christmas, we encouraged the kids to clear out some of the toys they weren’t playing with anymore. And I got to pull up to the Goodwill donation truck on my bike!

goodwillDonation

Shawn was named the Ride in the Rain-coming King, and got a fancy tiara at the reception lunch. Huge thanks to the folks at Hub and Bespoke for the prize pack!

rideRainKing

After months of trying, we finally made it down to Columbia City for a South Seattle Kidical Mass ride. Our youngest got a friend for the first leg of the ride down to Seward Park, where they had warm beverages and crafty fun waiting for us.

kmSouthRide kmSouthCrafts

The next day was my birthday. I guess the gifts my awesome family got me hint at how important our bikes have been to our lives lately: a bike necklace, a new coffee mug holder for the Madsen front rack (mine was destroyed in an unfortunate car-in-crosswalk incident a while back), a waterproof, bluetooth speaker that lets me blast tunes as loud as Shawn, and the complete in-print works of Elly Blue at Taking the Lane! I admit that I jumped straight to reading all of my awesome family biking friends in Childhood, but I’m enjoying immersing myself in the bike-tastic backlog as well.Bikey Birthday

We finished the month in Florida, where we were visiting family. We missed our cargo bikes desperately, but were able to get in at least a short ride with a Piccolo + iBert setup.

flBiking

Installing an Xtracycle Hooptie on a 2012 Surly Big Dummy

by Shawn Medero

I pre-ordered a 1st generation Xtracycle Hooptie months ago that I found happily waiting for me when I arrived at home last week. I installed it that night so it would be ready to go in the morning — the kids have been waiting for the Hooptie for a long time.

Installation of the Hooptie on the Big Dummy was generally straightforward but I thought I’d walk through the process and point out a few things. I’ll point out where getting the Hooptie from the “wide” to the “narrow” setting was a complete pain in the ass. (My sample size of two suggests that this may not be a unique experience.)

Most importantly let’s hold up a second before digging into the nuts & bolts — the Hooptie is super cool and my kids love it. We’ve outgrown our iBert and while my cheaply rigged stoker bar setup on the Big Dummy worked for one five-to-six-year old kid without having additional support it is hard to offer to help other less-cargo-friendly kids (school, playdates, etc.) The Hooptie allows me to carry up to three kids on my Xtracycle Flight Deck, provides some nice visibility around the kids, and should give most parents some peace of mind about their safety.

What comes in the box

Just like it says: 2 steel brackets, 2 U-Tubes, Screws, Nuts. You’ll need a 4mm hex wrench and, as you’ll see later, something to use on the nuts for tighten them down to the FlightDeck. I used an adjustable wrench; I’m sure someone who uses tools more regularly than me would have a better idea.

Xtracycle doesn’t ship any paper instructions but they do provide a Hooptie Installation video on YouTube that seems sufficient for most purposes.

Installation

Install the two steel brackets. There’s no suggested order in the instructions. I started with the one closest to the saddle. At least on the Big Dummy this ended up being a decent approach as it was easy to tighten down the screws & nuts and there’s plenty of clearance underneath the FlightDeck in this area.

When I started on the bracket for the rear of the deck I realized I wouldn’t be able to tighten the screws & nuts the same way as I had for the front bracket. I needed to unmount the FlightDeck from the Xtracycle frame. It is quite possible I should’ve unmounted the FlightDeck entirely and installed the Hooptie to it and then remounted the FlightDeck. The instructions don’t suggest doing this but it probably makes it easier to work on. Either way, you now have two brackets installed and ready for the U-Tubes.

Now install the U-Tubes. This requires a lot of patience as the fittings are extremely tight. I scratched up the U-Tubes installing them into the brackets. I had another bike shop tell me the Hooptie’s U-Tubes were difficult to adjust as well. I assume this is just a production issue.

Generally getting the U-Tubes to the “Wide” setting was more or less straight-forward so long as you installed them into the front and rear brackets equally — That is, don’t shove the U-Tube into the rear bracket all the way and then the front. No, instead you want to insert them into the brackets equally, sliding them in a bit at a time on each side.

Getting the U-Tubes from the “Wide” setting to the “Narrow” setting required applying insane amounts of force, flipping the U-Tubes around, switching which side they were on and a magic Xtracycle dance in-order to get them into the “Narrow” holes. Julie and I both dug in our heals and managed to force the U-Tubes into the brackets’ narrow setting. I’m really not sure they’ll ever come out to the “Wide” setting again.

Now what?

Well, as the box says, it is a party on wheels once you add kids:

Julie was a bit more cautious than I was with our littlest kid and suggested we add a seatbelt to prevent him from sliding underneath the Hooptie’s U-Tubes and on to the street. This seemed reasonable. For the moment we’ve borrowed a seatbelt from our Madsen but just about any buckle would do:

I also added some reflective tape around the rear of Hooptie mostly because I could and I thought it might prevent some folks from banging into it (though all-in-all the tubes seem very sturdy):

Picture courtesy of @familyride.

And that’s how I installed a Hooptie on my Big Dummy. My youngest kid has let me know that the Hooptie is “his best” and there’s a huge smile all over his face when riding in it. I don’t think much has changed for my older kid but I do look forward to carting some of his friends around now. It is a bit weird to be riding a bike around without a front-mounted kids seat after 5 years of an iBert being a permanent fixture in our daily commute. I’ll miss talking to the kid in the front but I know my boys will enjoy hanging out with each other on the back.

Christmas Tree by Madsen

by Julie Medero

We usually travel for the holidays; it’s hard to pass up two weeks out of school as a chance to make the cross-country trek to visit family. Most years, that’s been reason enough not to get a Christmas tree of our own. But this year, Thanksgiving was really early. And, well, I really wanted to try hauling a tree in my Madsen!

We were lucky enough to get to ride along with the third of three family bike group rides on Saturday morning, this one going from Gasworks Park to South Lake Union Park and hosted by Madi of . Julian of Totcycle was there, too, which meant I got to take his fancy new BionX BULLIT for a spin. It was fun, even though there was an adjustment factor to the linkage steering. I’ve grown partial to my upright position on the Madsen, though, so the racier BULLIT felt weird. And I can’t imagine my kids sitting that close together for any length of time. I’ll definitely have to find time to give one a longer ride, though.

After a brief stop to sail boats from the Center for Wooden Boats, we were off to the SASG (Formerly Dunshee House) Christmas Tree lot on Capital Hill. We loaded up our 6-foot tree in the Madsen bucket and secured it with a cargo net and a couple of bungee cords. I actually felt sorry for the poor souls trying to lift their tree up on top of a car!

Then we made our way back downhill and toward home, and experienced one of the most pleasant, fun rides I can remember. Cars slowed down and gave us thumbs up (well, their drivers did…), people cheered, and we bopped along to Shawn’s speaker blasting Christmas music. I don’t think we’ve ever had so much fun picking up a Christmas tree before!

Xtracycle’s Edgerunner: Initial Thoughts

by Shawn Medero

On Saturday Julie and I visited what I believe to be the best commuter & cargo focused bike shop on the west coast: Portland’s Clever Cycles. The in-store inventory of Clever Cycles is impressive as they have plenty of components1 and bikes for you to ogle at.

Besides soaking in cargo-biking Mecca, we were mostly there to check out the Edgerunner (well and I desperately wanted to see the Xtravois 2 in person):

What follows is my assessment of the EdgeRunner. Julie also gave it a spin, as did Davey Oil, and I’m interested in reading their own thoughts. The model I tried was the unassisted variant and a pre-production model. I rode the bike for about 6 blocks on a flat, urban stretch near the Clever Cycles shop. This at least gave me a chance to test out the disc-brakes and a few stop-starts with my chosen cargo: our six and two-year olds. The bike had the new Hooptie mounted on it and what I believe was a Yepp Maxi seat. My oldest kid, who now hangs on to my Big Dummy’s Xtracycle board, absolutely loved the Hooptie. Lifting kids in and out of the Hooptie is a breeze because of the lower geometry (20″ rear wheel) on the Edgerunner.

I have high expectations for the Edgerunner and while my opinion of the bike after riding it is largely positive my high hopes were not fully met. The steel frame feels a lot lighter than the Big Dummy or any other long-tail frame I’ve ridden. This is great for a lot of reasons but during my test-ride the bike exhibited a lot of wobble, vibration, and shimmy that I never feel on the Big Dummy. The bike does have a better turning radius than the Big Dummy. The disc-brakes are high quality Avid BB7s and the braking performs as one would expect which such great equipment. The shifting wasn’t to my liking mostly because of the Microshift index shifters. For index shifters they felt more like friction shifters as switching between gears was not as instantaneous as I’m used to with my Shimano Deore shifters. The saddle and handlebars were comfortable & ideal for commuting with cargo.

Given the brief ride it is hard to comment too much on any of these details in a serious way. I’d prefer to ride the bike for a month with the typical grind of our daily commute and then reflect back on the bike’s performance.

There’s a lot to like about the Edgerunner though (including the option to buy an electric assist model) and I suspect it’ll perform well. If nothing else, Xtracycle’s commitment to family biking will give Surly’s Big Dummy a run for their money. Surly has made it pretty clear that Family Biking is an after-thought for them and not their target market. (I’m ignoring the other popular long-tails here because they don’t ship with disc brakes as a standard option. That’s my barrier to entry but it doesn’t have to be yours.)

Update

If you’d like some more fully-formed thoughts on the Edgerunner you can checkout the following two reviews:

I still contend the Edgerunner frame has some flex/wobble in the ride but Todd @ Clever Cycles tells me that Xtracycle put a design premium on ensuring the Edgerunner rode just like a regular bike. Fair enough. It is a great bike, you won’t go wrong.

  1. I wish Clever Cycles stocked more components than bikes. The bike selection borders on way too many choices while the component selection feels a bit like Apple’s exactly one option at your desired price point. That said, I don’t run a bike store and given their successful business I’m sure there’s quite a bit of reasoning behind these choices. ↩

Join Us for Ride in the Rain!

by Julie Medero

November is Ride in the Rain month at the University of Washington, and this year Wheelha.us is organizing a team for all the UW pedal parents out there. Students (like me!), staff (like Shawn!) and faculty are all welcome to join us; all you need is a UW email address.

UW will only let you join our team if we send you an invitation directly, so let us know in the comments or on twitter (@wheelha_us) if you want to join the fun! We’ve got a page set up for the event. Over the course of November, we’re hoping to profile our various team members, share pictures of our commute loads, and show everyone else on campus that there are a lot of us who are both parents and peddlers!

How Do You Keep Your Kids Dry?

by Shawn Medero

Over on Facebook’s “I love my Surly Big Dummy” group yesterday a gentleman said “Now that the winter rains are beginning in earnest here in the Pacific Northwest, I want to know how to keep my cargo dry.” (Facebook login required to view the group and discussion.)

As Seattleites having just incurred the sheer torture of weeks and weeks without rain it is possible we’ve forgotten how to properly keep our precious cargo dry. There are all sorts of rain accessories and clothing for you, your bike and many are highly dependent on which bike, which seat, what type of kids, etc.

A young girl strands outside wearing yellow rain-proof overalls.

Credit: Tuffo.com

For our kids we’ve (and they!) have been very happy with the Tuffo Muddy Buddy. It starts in sizes as small as 12 months and goes all the way up to 5T. We purchased a 3T and 5T version for our kids and they’ve gotten more than a year of use of them. They are pretty baggy and you can fit as a little or as much clothing underneath as you like. We’ve made good use of them through the fall and winter as both rain and snow gear. There’s elastic around the arms and legs making it easy to stretch them over shoes, rain boats, jackets and sweaters. They zip up and down easily and the kids don’t fuss about having to put them on, in fact they get really excited when it rains because they get to wear them.

Two smiling kids sit at a table eating donuts.

After getting caught in a snow-storm, I took our Muddy Buddied kids to our local donut shop for some hot cocoa and treats.

For the Madsen there’s always the mythical Rain Cover from Madsen itself. It has been in development for a long time but when it comes it’ll fit all the Madsen Cycle buckets produced to date. Madsen’s own website shows an availability date of “early 2011″ that has come and gone but they did post some shots of a prototype rain cover to their Twitter account back in February of 2012. Needless to say, the long delay in an official rain cover has led to many building their own custom solutions. Local favorite Matt of Tacoma Bike Ranch has a great post on their custom Madsen orange rain cover which also happens to add a nice bit of visibility to your Madsen if the conditions aren’t that great. (Be sure to check out their awesome recent post on kid bike fenders). Julie is currently talking to Matt about having him make a frame for our Madsen and we’ll supply the fabric ourselves. We’ll keep you updated.

Final Product Big Dummy owners tend to be a highly DIY minded group. It seems doubtful Surly will ever release a rain cover for the Big Dummy’s passengers: it isn’t their market nor would it work with their brand image. Personally I haven’t tried any covers on my Dummy as the kids have been very happy in their Muddy Buddies and Seattle’s record drought hasn’t given me much of a chance. Still there’s some amazing stuff out there:

Given our biking setup, with a Madsen and a Big Dummy, I’ve chosen to focus on the bits relevant to our family but how do you keep your kids dry in the rainy season?

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Getting Halloween Costume

by Martin Medero

I biked on my bike to Joann’s. And I got brown fabric. And I got tan fabric, too. My mom sewed them so it looked like a Jedi robe. The tan fabric my mom sewed into a tunic. And I ran around playing with it with my toy lightsaber.

I fell a bunch. I felt proud because I biked all the way to Joann’s. On Halloween I will feel proud of my mom because she sewed it and I sewed it. And I felt proud of myself.

It’s Electric!

by Julie Medero

Ever since trying one out at the Seattle Cargo Bike Roll Call hosted by Family Ride, I was determined to add a BionX assist to my Madsen. I’d gone back and forth on whether to upgrade to a bike that was lighter and faster for carrying my growing kids or to add more zip to the bike I had, and finally made the decision to go ahead and turbo-charge the bucket.

My first task was to get the bike up to Seattle Electric Bike, while still being able to make it back to work for a meeting later in the morning. Fortunately, the Madsen proved itself a worthy tow-truck, and was able to pull my “zippy” bike along for daycare drop-off and then up to drop off the cargo bike.

It took a couple of weeks for the custom mounting work to be completed. During that time, I was back to my old mountain bike with the iBert on it for transporting James. Shawn and I traded off on the Big Dummy any time one of us needed to transport Martin somewhere. And on one trip to the store, after Martin wiped out, I finally got over my fear of riding the Big Dummy with the front kid carrier. It turns out my fear was warranted, since it was hard to ride a slightly-too-big-for-me bike with the iBert in place, but we made it work.

All in all, the time apart made me happy to see my beloved bike again, and reminded me why we made the leap to a two cargo bike family several months ago. Welcome home, robo-Madsen!

Bainbridge Camping Adventure

by Julie Medero

We took advantage of the long weekend to load up our bikes and head out to Fay Bainbridge Park. It was our first time camping with both kids, and the first time our tent had seen the world beyond our backyard.

Getting Ready

Friday afternoon, Martin and I made a trip to Fred Meyer to gather food and camping supplies. Saturday morning, Shawn took the kids to soccer by bus while I got packed. We headed out from our place around 12:30 pm.

Seattle to Bainbridge

From the Seattle Ferry Terminal, where we caught a ferry boat to Bainbridge Island. We’d been on the ferry as walk-on passengers, but we’d never seen the lower level, where the cars and bicycles live. The 35 minute ride gave us just enough time to load up on energy bars, refill our water bottles, and give everyone a chance to use the boat potty, which amused the two-year-old to no end.

Once on Bainbridge, we had two route options. The first involved a state highway, but was (relatively) flat. The second was on quiet roads and stayed closer to the coast, but looked like it had some fairly serious hills. I don’t normally like big roads, but my load was big enough that I was worried I wouldn’t make it up the hills. It turns out that Bainbridge is pretty bike-friendly. There are lots of “share the road” signs, and the wide shoulder of WA-305 is used by lots of bikes. There were even dedicated bike lanes at major intersections, so it didn’t feel like we were in a place we didn’t belong. We cruised along, enjoying the sun and the occasional downhills, until we were finally able to turn off onto quieter roads. I made the mistake of getting overly confident, and about half a mile from the park we finally hit a hill that I couldn’t handle. Martin had to get out and help push from behind while I walked our loaded-down bike up the hill.

We cruised into the park about 3.5 hours after we left home, found the walk-in sites, and set about putting our site together. We’d been torn between staying for one or two nights on this first adventure, but decided to commit to two nights after Shawn make the ~5 mile round-trip excursion to a convenience store to get cash ($30) to pay for the site at the pay box.

Camping Fun

A great thing about our massive bike is that we were basically able to get away with the bike camping equivalent of loading down an SUV. We brought our tent, sleeping bags for everyone, Martin’s camping chair, a propane grill, food for two days, fresh coffee, clothes for all of us, and a couple of toys (frisbee, ball) to boot. We’re working on paring down our packing list for our next time out, but it was nice bring everything we thought we might need.

Staying two nights gave the kids a full day to run around, explore, and play. James loved the playground, and Martin had a lot of fun building a “spaceship” out of driftwood on the beach and playing an epic, beach-long game of “don’t touch the ground.” They explored the tide pools, gathered kindling, and chased the frisbee. And the second night, all of the other walk-in campers left and we got the area to ourselves.

One advantage to bringing the grill in our massive collection of stuff was that we didn’t have to worry about being able to start a fire on this trip — we figured we had enough things we were doing for the first time for one weekend! When the sun decided not to come out for most of the day on Sunday, though, we broke down and bought a bundle of wood. James and I set to work while Shawn and Martin played on the beach, and soon we had a fire to keep us warm (and to heat up our second pot of coffee for the day!) while we waited for the afternoon sun to arrive.

All in all, we weren’t too far from home (Martin is pointing the way below!) but Bainbridge felt like another world. Martin thought it was so cool that we were “in the woods!” We saw a deer wander into the park, and caught a glimpse of what we think was an otter running off the beach into the bushes with a fish in its mouth. We were also awakened by a crowing rooster each morning, and James was intrigued by the “hidden choochoo” beyond the bushes, which we later discovered was in the yard of a neighboring house.

Heading Home

Monday we planned to start home after breakfast. As it turned out, the only rain of our trip appeared out of nowhere as we were finishing our food, so we hid out in the tent for a bit until it died down. James laughed his head off and declared that it was “awesome!” that the rain was falling on the tent but we were staying dry. We ended up heading out around 11:30, just as the sky was turning blue again. The ride back still had a lot of hills, but was decidedly more down-hill than up. We just missed a ferry, and took the long, winding, flat route back along trails on the Seattle side. We made a quick pit stop to fill one more bag with groceries so that we would have dinner when we got home, and the return trip took us closer to 4 hours. Upon arriving home, we all unpacked and enjoyed a hot shower/bath, then started thinking about our next adventure!

Lessons Learned

Packing: No extra clothes for kids; they can wear swim suits if it’s warm enough for shorts. Sweats are better than footed pajamas, since they work for sleeping and early morning playground-ing.

Food: What we brought (tofu scramble and toast for breakfast; bean burritos for dinner on Friday; parboiled brown rice and packets of Indian curries for dinner on Saturday; chocolate peanut butter and banana sandwiches for lunch; pouches of babyfood fruit/veggie mixes for snacks for the kids) all worked out well, but Martin thought that instant oatmeal packs would have been a nice breakfast treat.

Bike: My front rack will, in fact, make the bike feel squirrelly if it is too heavy and not bungeed down tightly enough, so I need to be careful on the trip out when we’re loaded down with food on top of everything else.

Campground: The walk-in sites are the “upper” campground at Fay Bainbridge. We could have saved ourselves a trip back up hill pushing our giant bike.

Bainbridge Routing: On the way there, we took the route on 305, which was flat, and which had a walking bridge over a ravine at the scariest part of the road. On the way back, though, google routed us through town on much quieter roads for the southern-most part of the trip, and I’d be inclined to try that on the way north as well. The nasty hill on Lafayette Ave. would be really nice to avoid going up, but I’m not sure there’s a better option.