New Crop of Austin Craigslist Cargo Bikes - Love ya, ATX Weirdness!

Oy vey, these cargo bikes, they keep drawing me back in, but it doesn't hurt to look, eh? For those of you in the area, there are some good deals and some real diversity this month. Enjoy! 

 

Lots of big-haul choices this month!

Metrofiets:

 

Those cool kids over at Compost Pedallers are liquidating another Metrofiets (handbuilt in Portland, OR!) If you are serious about hauling on a bike, you can't get hardcorer than this, y'all! This one is $200 less expensive, but it does not have the big box.

Oak Cliff Cargo Bikes:

 

 

Handbuilt on the south side of Dallas, Texas - this is an amazing price for any vendor bike and especially amazing for a handcrafted machine like this one. Have you always dreamed of vending by bike, this could be a great start.

Trek/Gary Fisher:

 

 

This one is my absolute fave from the list. It was built by Trek/Gary Fisher as a longtail cargo bike and has lots of nice upgrades and modifications. $800 - not shabby at all! This model has been discontinued but that sure won't affect how it hauls! (Sigh...)

Yuba Boda Boda:

 

 

Still in the box at $699 - it's a Yuba Boda Boda V2 "People for Bikes" edition - somebody is in for a deal!

 

Longtail Bicycle Build Pt. 1

(Somebody, please stop me!)

 

Me, I've been watching plans, talking to a few welder buddies and reading My Solar Electric Cargo Bike.

 

May you find yours and may it haul awesome and eco-friendly, dear reader!

More dogs and cargo bikes!

This is a season where I stress my way through the days.

Kylie the Wundermutt and I were sitting on the couch yesterday afternoon. The TV was off. The house was quiet. She sighed with contentment. Yep, life is better with a good friend by your side. Stress, like butter left out, melted a bit.

This morning I rode the new electric Frankenbike to work. I crossed town on 38th. I did not head down Indiana Avenue. I did not get on the Loop. The bike kept me distant from the racing rats. Stress, like butter left out, melted a bit.

So, if bikes and dogs help melt stress, then...

Cargo bike here. Sharky the Shark Dog here, Eek!

 

As you can tell, I already have my dog and cargo bike inspiration, but I can tell that you are still on the fence about all of this. So, here is a video for you. This video is about Ollie, and it's about Howard's quest to help Ollie acclimate to riding on/in a cargo bike. Besides a dog and a cargo bike, you will get to take a short trip down the Santa Monica Pier. There's also a reference to Craigslist. This video has everything and bike lanes! Enjoy!

 

Ollie (Howard's dog) Riding a Cargo Cycle

 

Next up, let's head to a hotbed of bicycle culture - Copenhagen, Denmark to continue the inspiration. Copenhagen is the home of Nihola, a manufacturer of fine cargo bikes. These people get the whole dog/cargo bike connection. They even build a model especially adapted for dogs - the Nihola Dog. Check it out. While you are there, check out the intro video and the gallery of dog and bike shots. (One dog - the small, black shepherd - looks just like our Matilda.)

 

Nihola Dog!

 

Okay, I can see it in your eyes - you're starting to see how happy you and your Fido would be cruising about town. Yep, life is better with a good friend by your side.

 

May you and your four-legged furball find fun and butter in your quest for green transportation!

Cargo Bikes and Dogs? Yes!

Years ago I had a vision of me in my later years. I had an archetype to live up to. I have known several guys in their 60s-70s who were/are supremely cool characters. They had been around enough to garner some wisdom and patience, even some generosity. If you had a project in mind, they were always helpful with the how portion and occasionally with the why you shouldn't portion. They tended to be wise in matters spiritual, financial, and ethical. They helped to define the MIWB concept for me.

Strangely enough, they all drove older pickups and usually had a very trusty dog nearby. (Small sidebar: dogs were not fashion accessories for these guys - they were trusted and loyal friends. Generally speaking, I like dogs much better than people.) My vision of future me cruised around in an old sweptline Dodge or an Econoline pickup, and my dog rode in the cab - never in the bed.

But times have changed. I am trying my darnedest to give up the gasoline, to have a lighter footprint, and to be healthy enough to actually make it to old-guy-ness. So there goes the cool old truck, and I am going to need a really tiny dog if I keep riding a standard bicycle. (I tend to like my dog friends more in the medium to large range.) I am not ready to cruise around with a teacup poodlehuahua in a papoose, so I am thinking I need a cargo bike.

(See, I did make it around to cargo bikes eventually.)

Dude, Dog, and RadWagon video

I have been subscribing to emails and tweets from many electric bike companies, and the Rad Power people have generously emailed me on a regular basis. This week, they are even speaking my language. They seem to know that I have been jonesing for a RadWagon (drool) and they seem to have picked up on my love of dogs. So they sent me a customer-made video of a guy and his dog who took a camping trip on their new electric cargo bike. (Sigh)

Kylie and I prefer flannel, but we do love a sammich!

 

In reality, it's not the most exciting bike video on youtube, but for a guy who spent his Sunday afternoon installing a new-ish toilet in an old house, the bike-and-dog trip looks like a much better way to live. And Kylie (my velcro wundermutt) has had a faraway look in her eye lately.

See that faraway look?

Yep, the old guy I wanna be definitely needs a cargo bike. (The middle-aged guy I wanna be would like a cargo bike now so that it can look old like me when I do.)

May your vision of future you be a supremely cool character who rides green, has great adventures, and does his/her/its part to save the world for future generations of dogs and people.

Speaking of dogs and people, we really need to come up with the dinero for two RadWagons. My lovely wife and her less-velcro wundermutt Mattie have had that faraway look too. (My wife does not prefer flannel, but a good PB&J usually brings a smile.)

Mattie (and Kylie) enjoying the good life!

Cargo Bikes again?!!

I keep waiting for the jonesing to go away, but this one just keeps hanging on. The cargo bike. Yep, the big honking eco-friendly stuff-and-people hauler with a very high dork factor has me up and dreaming at night. In my continued quest for personal carbon reduction and better role-model-dom, the cargo bike checks a lot of boxes and does it much cheaper than a Nissan Leaf.

I've checked out the used (somewhat out of the price range), the DIY (out of my available time range but close to my money budget), and the new (way out of my price range). So, it looks like I need to wait or e-evaluate. But a mesquite hugger can still dream...

So here is an article and a couple of videos to try to talk you into jonesing with me. We'll start with an article about replacing the family truckster with a cargo bike. Watch for words like "bionic" and "escape pod"!

The Electric Bike - Your Next Family Vehicle (Electric Bike Report)

 

This next delectable little video shows some die-hard East Coasters in a competition to load and transport large and heavy stuff on cargo bikes. It's a cool video featuring some bad mamma-jamma bikers, but my favorite part is the cargo dog.

 

East Coast Cargo Bike Battle (Mashable)

 

(I am starting to realize something about my desire for a cargo bike - I may just be looking for another excuse to haul the dogs around. Hmm. I better look into that.) The next video is a promo video for a a crowd-sourced documentary about the cargo bike movement. Cool stuff!

 

LESS CAR MORE GO (youtube)

 

Sidebar to my beloved wife: Check out the soundtrack to this video - you will love it!

 

Another LESS CAR MORE GO video from the Kickstarter campaign

 

(Image here)

 

Non-sequitur alert: Speaking of Ross Evans at Xtracycle, I received an email last night from Ross that teased Xtracycle Leap (the Free Radical replacement) news in January. Fingers crossed!

 

Inspired yet? Are you ready to pedal the revolution? If so, my work here is done and I can get back to my youtubily driven holiday staycation.

 

May we all find carbon-neutral transport with a really great soundtrack and room for the dog!

A $149 Cargo Cycle? You Bet!

Xtracycle. Radwagon. Yuba Mundo. There have been many cargo bikes around this blog lately. Two or three of you have even clicked on those posts, so I am assuming that somebody else out there has been wanting a cycle that can haul (stuff)! If that somebody else is like me, budget may be an issue. If you're that person, you've probably been thinking that I need to quit showing you all these high-dollar machines. If so, a Nimble Scooter may be for you - if you don't mind really small wheels.

 

 

Yep, here is your chance to kick-n-go your stuff all over the place. And this thing is actually a serious, eco-friendly piece of equipment made of quality materials and built in the USA.

 

Nimble is currently selling two models, the Classis and the XL, and they are gearing up to offer a third model, the Urban.

 

So, will it fit your needs and carry your stuff? Will it fit your budget? Will it fit your size-twelve footprint and help you lower your carbon footprint? If your answer is "yes" and you buy a Nimble, please send us pics and let us know how it works for you.

 

May your scoot be clean and green and more than capable. Happy hauling!

Shopping Cart Cargo Bike Follow-up (Instructables!!!!!)

  Some lucky Austinite got a bargain at $60!

Mesquite Hugger readers tend to be excited whenever we post about various ways to haul things on or in bicycles. I have to admit that one of the harder parts of riding a bike daily is figuring out how to transport stuff. A little while back we posted an article that highlighted a shopping cart bike for sale on the Austin Craigslist that garnered a lot of attention and a bit of inspirational drooling. And why not? When was the last time you pushed a cart around a store? They are amazingly useful for hauling stuff, but they are not really built for distance, speed, or real-world surfaces. Bicycles are normally not built to haul much stuff, but they are well adapted for speed, distance, and rough surface travel. And every mad scientist/maker/tinkerer/wierd-person-with-a-welder-and-a-junky-yard knows that when you hybridize two good things you come up with one truly great monstrosity! If you don't believe me, sit down and watch a movie marathon on the ScFi channel some time.

This town (Lubbock, TX) is severely lacking in mad-scientist hangouts - especially since Rusty moved across town - so I have been hanging out on Instructables a lot more. And Instructables is a great place to be further inspired by other mad-scientist types. There are even a few shopping-cart bikes over there:

Cart Bike by zieak

 

This one has been on Instructables for a long time, but the tiny wheels always scared me away.

Instructables Homemade Cart bike

 

This one is pretty sweet. The builder cites being inspired by the other two that are featured here.

Matte Resist's Cartbike

I have a feeling that this one was the original inspiration for everything else on the page. If you like going off on tangents, do some searching on the author/builder Matte Resist. I hope to read more of his writing soon.

Shopping Cart Furniture!

 

(I threw this in just because this post gave me the tangential excuse to feature another cool Instructable)

May your peanut butter get together with your chocolate and make a great cargobike peanut butter cup!

PS. Some local guy posted an olla Instructable recently. Check it out if you are really bored.

DIY Cargobike inspiration on Austin Craigslist

What can I say? I love the simplicity of this home-built machine. It's on the Austin Craigslist, and it looks like a bargain - if you are into that sort of thing. I am. I see a great vehicle for runs to the recycle center, the hardware store, the water dispensary, and the grocery store. (Keith thought it would be great for runs to and around his favorite liquor store.)

 

Either way, it would be one step closer to living car-free! (And one more reason for my poor wife to wonder about my sanity - Love you, Dear!)

 

Ingredients:

a bike

a shopping cart

two front forks

one more wheel/tire

 

Tools:

hacksaw

a welder

a few wrenches

It looks like the frame was modified to have no rake, which should would make steering easier. Finding a frame with no rake would make the conversion easier. Maybe if you started with a BMX frame, added a hubmotor or a 3-speed hub...

 

Just me speculating on a Friday afternoon.

 

May your brain have a vacation soon too!

Instructables Minipost - Get out your bike and your mad scientist tools!

Any excuse to feature a dog wearing goggles - link below

The weekend is almost upon us and I was thinking that you've had the winter blues lately, that you need to get out and do something, and snagit, you need to work off some of that winter weight! Here is a little inspiration to get you and your weenie dog back out in the garage and eventually back on those not-so-mean streets!

Bike Blinkers!

Bike-Powered Meat Grinder!

Another Hot Rod/Rat Rod Trailer!

Add a wooden bike basket!

A bicycle sidecar!

A bicycle sidecar for your weenie dog!

May you and your dog soon be riding stylishly and cleanly past the mean and evil gas stations of the world!

Bonus post link: The previous rat-rod bike trailer post

Cool things I saw in Lubbock this Weekend: Local Wildlife and a Cargo Bike

My lovely wife and I ran by the shop to pick up a few bikes to take to the swap meet, and this little fella was running around out there. It was my first horny toad sighting this year, and it did my heart a great deal of good!

(Learn more about these West Texas icons here: http://www.hornedlizards.org/ )

A very friendly gentleman named Paul Moore had this diamond-in-the-rough for sale at the swap meet.

Special thanks to Sun Adventure Sports for hosting the bike swap meet, and more special thanks to Brittany for my new Horned Frog t-shirt for father's day!

May you see cool stuff too!

Cargobikes: Maybe it's time for a rethink

 My favorite Instructable photo of all time!

Welding, snagit! Welding is a big holdup for me as a builder of eco-friendly things. I was a pretty decent welder as a kid, but I had access to a big shop and a very nice and expensive welder. But that was a few decades ago. In the time since then, I have occasionally relied on the kindness of friends (or strangers who wanted money) for some of my welding needs. But most of my welding needs have actually driven me to think of ways around welding. When building my electric Vespa, I wanted to weld up a swingarm to suit my needs. I eventually (ahem) adapted a small swingarm from an electric dirt bike to suit my needs. I am (ahem) pretty happy with that solution, but it is quite far off in form and function from what I wanted to build.

Cargo bikes have been popping up a lot on this blog lately. As much as I love bicycles, the standard bicycle is mostly just good for transporting one person with minimal stuff. If you want to truly replace a car or truck, you need to find a way to haul extra people or extra stuff. So cargo cycles make great sense.

But cargo cycles are expensive. For Instance, the NTS bikes start somewhere around $3500 and go up into the mid $4K range. And I do not question their worth or their value. But I sure question my ability to pull $4K out of the family budget for a bicycle, especially after I spent that kind of money a few years ago on a motorcycle that has proven to be extremely unreliable and has literally spent more miles in the back of a pickup on the way to the repair shop than it has on the street. (Sigh)

Or, you can build your own cargobike for a lot less money, but you need to be able to weld.

For me, lack of money and lack of welding skills (and a welder) have kept me away from owning or building a cargo bike.

But there may be hope for me after all. An article appeared yesterday on Treehugger.com that featured an open-source, modular, cargo bike. And it's very ugly. But that may be just skin deep. And I could (I hope) build one pretty easily without putting a big damper on the family budget and without the need for a welder. Now, where did I put that chop saw? I hope you find this thing as fascinating as I do.

Learn more here at Low-Tech Magazine

May we all find better ways to haul our stuff without destroying the atmosphere for everyone and everything else.

One more option for hauling stuff on the bike - Rat Rod Trailer!!!

I really like rat rods. Rat rods come from a tradition of ingenuity and adventurous DIY necessity. I have a photo I need to dig out of my dad and uncle with their purple Model A Ford Coupe. I don't remember all the details, but they painted it with 32 cans of purple spray paint, the motor came out of a '47 model GM -maybe a Pontiac, the fenders came from an old motorcycle...

A Rat Rod VW Swartzy and I saw a few weeks ago - Check out the sky in that photo!

Their little car was phenomenally cool, but it did not come about because they had money. It came about because they worked hard mentally and physically to bring a lot of different elements together. I have realized lately that this concept has dominated my thinking on cool vehicles for most of my life, and becoming the Mesquite Hugger has changed my focus but it definitely has not changed my taste. While I think a Nissan Leaf would be a phenomenal car to own and drive, I would be much more impressed (and envious) if someone rolled up in an old rat rod that had been built as a competent electric vehicle.

(Click here to see the Steam Whistle electric '58 Chevy pickup. It's a little nice for a rat rod, but it's very cool.)

But there is no reason that we have to limit that thinking to cars. An Instructable popped up over the weekend where a builder decided to build a bike trailer using the rat rod ideals. And this thing rocks! It rocks enough that I may have to offer up the sincerest form of flattery - to rip off the idea and build my own. Sure, I could run to one of the local department stores to buy a ready-made bike trailer, but how much cooler would it be to build something like this unholy pairing of a wheelbarrow and a dolly - that just ain't right! And I love it!

Rat Rod Bike Trailer by sKout -Check out the sky in that photo!

May one man's junk become your treasure!

Forget the Cargo Bike, Let's all get Bad Bikes!

My wife has a dream. And she has had this dream for years. This dream essentially has five components: her, our good dog (Condo), a pair of Doggles, a cycle with a sidecar, and any excuse for them to hit the open road together. The only thing she is missing is the sidecar - and maybe Condo's cooperation. He likes the car with air conditioning. He definitely does not like the canoe. I figure the sidecar is a bit of a halfway point, but he really loves a good couch, an air conditioner, and for people not to disturb his sleep.

I have a two dreams that parallel hers a little bit: I want her and Condo to be happy, and I want an electric vehicle that can haul stuff like groceries, hardware, and the occasional passenger.

This morning, I ran across a Jo Borrás article over at Gas2.org that featured a $3300 dream maker: the Bad Bike. [Sigh] And it hits all of the high points for me.

It's electric
It's Italian
It's semi-flat black (My last two electric builds were semi-flat black.)
It has racing stripes
It can haul stuff
It has disc brakes (I lust after disc brakes.)

And it has her missing ingredient - a sidecar.

Honey, we are going to need a bigger garage!

May your good dog know the joy of flying along in a sleek eco-friendly Italian sidecar.

Cargobikes in Lubbock?

Alright, I hate to jinx it, but I am working on a perfect commute week. (Insert knocking on wood sound here.) A perfect commute week for me is one where I burn no gasoline getting to and from work. I know I am only halfway there, but it's looking good so far.

What could mess it up? Two things: needing to haul stuff/people, or weather. (I'd be ecstatic if the perfect week was interrupted by rain.) As for needing to haul stuff or people, I keep wanting a cargo bike.

Snagit, that's cool!

Do we have any cargobikers here in the Hub City? I have not seen any, but I keep watching. Since I have not seen any, let me encourage you, check them out. My favorites are the longtail cargo bikes and cycle trucks. They tend to be narrower than other styles, and I like the added mobility of having a skinny profile. I really like the Yuba Mundo and the Socrates Cargo Bike, but I also think the Xtracycle FreeRadical is cool - I like the idea of adapting the bike you already have. We have featured the NTS Suncycle on MH before - one of the coolest green vehicles on the planet!

If you want to learn more about cargo bikes and the people who ride them, check out the promo video for this Kickstarter  Cargobike Documentary.

If you want to build your own, check out Instructables for ideas or follow the Dorky Thorpy blog to watch a very cool build in progress.

May you have a perfect commute week!

Petroleum-Free Transport - So, you want to build an electric bike...

Buy the swag for this image here

It is spring time. We are getting the rain (pray for more!) and the wind. The trees are budding out. The seasonal birds are arriving. It's a very nice time to be outside. What a great time it would be to have an electric bike to get you around.

My first electric bike was a revelation. It turned my commute to work into a very enjoyable time, a time for creativity and adventure. I had been freed from sitting at lights or racing to fight my way onto the loop. And I found myself taking different paths to work each day. On days when I wanted adventure, I went off-road. On days when I was in a hurry, I would take the faster and straighter roads. I would show up with a smile on my face that would last for hours. And I knew that I could do it all again at the end of the work day. All of this happened on a bike that, by most standards, was a pretty crappy electric bike. It was a 24 volt system with lead-acid batteries, poor brakes, and weak spokes. But it did not matter.

[A sidebar about being middle-aged: (skip this part if it does not apply to you)
The roughest part of being middle-aged is reaching a point where you feel like you are responsible for holding the whole world together. The generations above and below you keep looking to you for guidance and support. Your peers keep going through rough patches. You realize that your physical capabilities are slipping and your mortality becomes a very real thing. It's why we have blood pressure medicine, Prozac, and Viagra. It's why we come to think of golf as a sport. That first electric bike was for me 25 minutes per day when all of that disappeared and all the weight lifted, and I felt free.]

A few days ago, I ran across an article by Spinningmagnets, one of my favorite contributors to the Endless-Sphere electric bike forums. In the article, he outlines some of the more popular and functional kits for converting a standard bike to an electric bike. If you have any interest in owning an electric bike, this article will help you make that transition with a lot less trial and error.

Excellent article about available kits from mild to terrifying
(Now, if I can just figure out how to afford the 750W Bafang crank-drive setup...)

May you know a bit of freedom this spring!

A Self-Powered Pickup on Two Wheels

Not being (financially) rich is a blessing for me. First, it forces me to find cheap and creative solutions to expensive problems. Second, it keeps me from running off and blowing all of our hard-earned money on somebody else's hard work and creativity.

That somebody else for today's blog entry is a guy named Neal Saiki.

Neal, among other things is the co-founder of Zero Motorcycles. At this point in time, Zero is probably your best option if you want to go out and buy yourself a new electric motorcycle, but don't ask for Neal if you drop by the factory. (And it's very hard to drop by the Zero factory - I tried last year.)

You will find him down the road at his new place - NTS Works, where they build some extremely cool and functional electric cargo bikes. Pricewise, they are in the same range as the cool cruisers featured on this blog back on January 8th (link at the bottom). But there are a few major differences. The NTS bikes are not built to be beauty queens or showpieces. They are built to do work and to be two-wheeled trucks. And one of the NTS bikes is built to feed itself. All you have to do is park it in the sun.

If we had the hard earned money just sitting in a pile at home, I'd be throwing that money at Neal as soon as I finished this blog post. If you follow this post through to the NTS website, be sure to check out the very high-powered and compact solar panel and how little the price difference is between the solar and the non-solar models. And check out their interesting and appealing approach to battery warranty. And, just bask in the glory of the functional coolness. (Sigh.)

Now for those of you who sigh like I do and don't have the pile of money to throw at Neal, here are a few Instructables to help you run out and build your own cargo cycle.

And here is the January 8 Mesquite Hugger post.

And here is the original Derek Markham article  from Treehugger that led me to the NTS Works website.

May you be inspired whether you throw money at Neal or not.

upCYCLE- Please take this idea and run, I mean, well, um, PEDAL with it!

reduce, reuse, upCYCLE

 

 

 

Lubbock needs a bicycle exchange.

 

 



A short time after the spring semester ends, if you watch closely, you can see the trailers at Texas Tech that gather up all of the abandoned bicycles that students leave behind. Then you can see the mountain of them parked outside the police station waiting for the annual fall auction.

 

Many of the large bike retailers in town receive a fair number of bicycle returns after each holiday season. These bikes tend to have very small issues, but most are scrapped.

 

The simple advantages of using bicycles for daily transportation are huge: better health, extremely low cost, less traffic, easier parking, phenomenally better for the planet that we would like to pass on to future generations, etc.

 

So here it is - open a bike exchange. Run it as a private business. Run it as a non-profit. Run it as a social club. Run it as a school that teaches repair, restoration, or simple maintenance. Run it as a way to offer a leg up for those who are in rough financial straits. Run it as an outreach to provide bikes and safety training for children. Run it as a place to give retired mechanics a sense of purpose.

 

Feel free to use the name, the logo, the idea, the enthusiasm.

 

Discuss amongst yourselves.

 

May you experience the joy of a fall breeze rustling through your hair, no matter how much you have.