bakfiets rental weekend - day one, trip two

My mom arrived while we were putting in the newly acquired sod in the backyard, and when finished with that we were all hungry...we considered biking to a late lunch at a Thai place maybe half a mile away, but ended up walking instead as it seemed less complicated than helmeting up and strapping the baby into the bakfiets. Lunch was good, and feeling refreshed and enjoying the crisp clear unusually beautiful Portland spring day, we set out for the high-end portion of our regular grocery shopping.

Whole Foods is something like four to five miles straight down Fremont from our house. For those who don't know Portland, Fremont is a very straight two way two lane street with a few trendy-ish pretty nice little shopping areas, lots of nice houses, and a fair amount of both vehicle and pedestrian traffic. If I were riding my bike alone, I'd feel fine riding down Fremont, but there are places where it gets pretty narrow and crowded and I didn't want to ride the cargobike down it while also having to pay attention to the rest of our group. We opted for this route instead and added a little bit of distance to our trip, but overall I think it was much more enjoyable that way.

The ride to the store was pretty mellow and relaxed - sun was shining, not that many folks out driving the neighborhoods as it was mid-afternoon on a Friday - and the way home was alright too though it was near dusk and there was a lot more traffic (oh, yeah - and, for me, my bike was a lot heavier as someone had filled it with groceries when I wasn't looking).

One nice thing about having your non-bike-riding mom along on a trip is that after you make her ride about eight miles, she gets a little tired and slows way down on hills...and then you have a good excuse to circle around on the flats between rises and wait for her. Aside from a few breaks to do that, really just one I guess, and a few sections where my wife rode the cargo bike to see what it was like with a pretty good load, I managed to pedal all but one bit on the way home. There's a rather steep block - just to the west of the golf course/park if you're looking at the map - that I opted to walk the bike up (and by opted I mean decided to walk the bike up instead of abandoning it at the base because I certainly wasn't strong enough to ride it up loaded). I must say, it was not an easy push even; my wife took over for the last bit to see what it was like, and she struggled quite a bit. 

All in all though it was really an enjoyable trip to the store - even my mom who was quite tired when we got back said so - but then it was an almost perfect day for; I wonder how much we'd like it in muggy summer weather or riding headlong into a wind driven rain on the way home.

bakfiets rental weekend - day one, trip one

Early Friday morning we loaded up our son and headed down to his pediatrician's office - for his four month check-up. So, yes, he was in a car seat, and, yes, he was wearing a helmet - though I honestly have to say as his head is still an inch smaller than the smallest helmet we could find, I don't think it offered much protection other than satisfying the legal requirement here in Portland. Instead of just tossing his seat onto the floor, which even in the long box would have taken up almost all the cargo space, I used some straps I made as motorcycle tiedowns to strap his seat, atop a thick squishy foam pad, to the bench - worked great for stability for him, and if hunkered down a bit I could see his face under the rain cover (not raining, but we figured an added margin of safety from...I don't know...bird attacks maybe, and a bit warmer). After about two seconds of riding, he was fast asleep, and I think I only jostled him enough to stir from that sleep once on the trip down, though not all the streets we took were in the best of shape. 

The trip was just about 2.5 miles and pretty much downhill from our place - you can see the map here. It was a great morning and pleasant trip - the only stumble was in parking the bike; our pediatrician's office has a nice off street bike rack, but it's in a sort of open corridor that's also the wheelchair entrance and the bakfiets was either going to take up the entire bike rack or stick out and block access for wheelchairs. In the end we parked on a curbside bike rack at a bit of angle so as not to get in anyone's way. 

The way home was also quite pleasant despite being mostly uphill. We had a choice of several blocks of gradual uphill or one block of really steep - we rode down the steep and up the gradual and it worked quite well. 

Returning home from that first outing we were definitely in favor of cargo bike ownership.

as the weather turns

It Saturday morning - our second full day with the bike and the last day of my weekend - and the amazingly gorgeous clear sunny cool weather we had almost all week and turned back into typical Portland spring: still cool, but with much less sun and much more drizzle, and even a bit of wind thrown in for good measure. The reports at the start of the week put the niceness coming Friday and Saturday, but it got here early and left early as well. The upside is that this will give us a chance to see how well the rain cover really works.

Anyway - I've been on the computer longer than I'd like already doing the previous post, so for now I will just say what we did with the bike yesterday and leave the how we felt about it part until later. We had two main trips: to the pediatrician for our son's checkup, and then to the farther of the two grocery stores we frequent. My mom, in her very early sixties, showed up in between the two while we were laying a little craiglisted sod in the backyard (no - didn't use the cargobike to get the sod, though I certainly could have and I consider it; in the end I decided it would be much like time my wife I had to move 19 sled dogs {and two house dogs}, one by one in a plastic sled like you'd pull behind a snowmachine/mobile, across a hundred yards or so of flooded creek bed: certainly doable, and in the end a great story, but exhausting and not exactly how I wanted to spend the rest of the day)
.

So, here's what we did:
To the pediatrician - our route home was a little different as this has one very steep block of downhill, but on the way home we opted to make a more gradual but still direct (that is we looked for streets that went up, and avoided any down hills that we would just need to make up for later) route - I think it was about this.
To the grocery store - this trip was with my mom on her bought a few years ago and literally ridden twice prior up to now very cute Pepto pink wicker-basket bedecked bike (she was tired on the way back but declared it a great adventure upon our return home), and we pretty much followed the same track back - the difference of course being that we had about seven bags of groceries in the box along with our son and a bit extra gear/clothing/water.

All in all, this morning my legs are a little sore, but more in the good I had a nice workout yesterday sort of way and not the oh my god why did I do that to my body I don't think I'll ever be able to move again sort of way - more than anything I feel dehydrated which I suppose is not he bike's fault (though, while riding yesterday, I was considering places to attach water bottle/beverage holders) - no one else has gotten up yet, so not sure how they feel. Oh - for the most part, I rode the cargo bike, but my wife and I did switch on and off on both legs of the grocery run - she things blogs are silly waste of time, but maybe I'll get her to share her thoughts when I get around to sharing my own in the next few days.

test ride

We picked up the bike Thursday night just after what was supposed to be closing time forClever Cycles (we called en-route to say we would be late and the reply was something along the lines of, we never get out of here at six anyway); they were still friendly and I didn't feel too bad as there was another customer who appeared to have just begun looking for a travel case for a Brompton.

After just a few minutes, it helped that I had brought along a copy of the deposit receipt from when we'd booked the rental, I was out the door with the same Bakfiets we'd test rode - good old number five. After a few to replace my sweater from work with a thermal and fleece, and to put on my helmet and gloves, I was off. 

Here is the route I took (well, mostly - we don't actually live in the park, but it seemed like a better idea than giving the world directions to our door). I'm not going to say how long it took me to make the trip, but I will say I was quite surprised to find it within just a few minutes of how long the same had taken me on my mt bike the previous Friday morning. The weather was perfect, clear sunny and about 54 degrees, and traffic, for six thirty, was pretty minimal (I tried to pick the most vertically-direct route I could find that generally coincided with Portland's prescribed bike routes or at least bike friendly streets), and I had a really good time. 

This is me halfway-ish and pretty much at the top of the gradual but persistent incline away from the river.

There was only one section I didn't ride up and I sort of planned for that in that I picked a rather steep but rather short hill in one case instead of choosing a longer bit of more gradual slope (I figured if I was going to have to push it anywhere, it might as well be getting the most out of it) - if you're looking at the map/know the area, me feet left the pedals going up the ridge on the north side of the Rose City Golf Course.

First impressions of the bike were much the same as my short test ride: lots of fun to ride, very easy in the flats, a bit of work in gradual hills (and I'm well away from being able to ride it loaded up steep hills and maybe even extended gradual hills - or at least it wouldn't be much fun), gets a fair number of looks for passersby (interestingly, or maybe not, interest seemed to increase in direct proportion to my distance from downtown Portland - perhaps those living close-in are just too cool to stare, or perhaps they see more Bakfiets - personally, I think I've seen less than half a dozen cargo bikes in operation since we moved to Portland in 2007, though I have seen a few more parked here and there).

Problems so far - most are probably due to wear and tear related to being a rental bike: I'm not smart enough to get the headlight to work - I got the bottle jack to engage, the wiring is hooked up (it seems, though I was futzing with it in the dark), and there seems to only be one switch of any kind, but no light - the rear light works just fine; the bike will often drop down a gear from 5th (sometimes 4th and 6th as well - the rest of the range holds well) if you are pushing hard - this happened when we did our mini-test too but we were told it would be adjusted/fixed before the rental - not sure if they didn't get to it, or there's something amiss; I managed to have my finger in just the wrong place when releasing the frame lock and got a bit of smashed up cuticle as a result - lots of blood but surprisingly not much discomfort (and a clear lesson to remember that you DO NOT need to touch the red lever to disengage the lock - it springs back quite readily on its own).

...almost...

Well, almost time to try one out properly anyway - still several steps away from owning a cargo bike...but I'm pretty excited. In the course of my workday yesterday I happened to be driving near Clever Cycles and made a bit of detour to drive by the shop, and then another detour to check out the route we'll likely use tomorrow morning to see the pediatrician. 

Anyway - the important thing is that tonight after work we'll be picking up our Bakfiets rental to test out over the next few days. Hopefully we'll get some good picks and I'll post those here with our impressions - assuming I survive the six ish mile mostly uphill ride from the shop to our house. Fun stuff - I love new toys.

what we've done so far

Apart from online research, not much. On Monday of this week I stopped by Clever Cycles between appointments, spoke with Dean (very friendly, very helpful) and looked at assembled Bakfiets as well as a small number of frames waiting in the basement to be built up. They also have, I think, the first completed CETMA bike there on the floor (with a basket of seat cushions for the Bakfiets sitting on its platform rack), though my understanding is they aren't retailing them or anything like that. I was offered the chance to ride on the spot, but I didn't have time and wanted to do that when we could both try it out. I left planning to make a family trip on the upcoming Friday, but it turned out I had the middle of Wednesday free instead...

The weather was beautiful around lunchtime and we each took one of the rental/demo Bakfiets out for a short spin - I even tried to test uphill capability (more of my legs than of the bike really) by riding up from their location at 9th and Hawthorne up towards 26th and Division (made it most of the way before I rationalized that I needed to turn back so I wouldn't sweat up my work clothes too much...). Though it feels heavy going uphill, the weight really isn't noticeable in the flats. The gearing is set up so you can change while stopped which makes it easier to move away from stops, especially if you stop quickly and don't downshift. The steering is odd - very light - and of course even though I was clearly told I would probably steer too much, I promptly got on the bike, turned a little too much towards the street, and severely overcorrected right back towards the loading dock. Ha ha. I was able to stop without totally looking like an idiot (well, I didn't crash or fall over or anything at least), and managed to steer in a much more dignified manner through the rest of my test (even made a couple of low speed u-turns on narrow streets/between parked cards). My wife, of course, rode away flawlessly, prior to my ride, on her test ride. Showoff. 

Clever Cycles, currently, rents out Bakfiets either for fun or for extended tests for $45 a day or $95 for three days with the option to put rental fees towards a purchase (I think there's a time limit on that), and we put down a deposit/booked a rental for next weekend. As the shop is 6.5 miles from our house, 6.5 miles downhill really, and as I'm planning to ride the bike home after a full day of work, it should be a good test of both the bike and my out of shape body. To help a little with the latter, I rode down to the shop (very relaxing) and back (not quite as relaxing, but not as bad as I was expecting) yesterday morning on my old and very seldom ridden in recent years mt bike - surprisingly my legs feel fine today though my, ahem, posterior is a little tender (but hey, that super hard leather racing saddle sure looks cool).

Anyway, that's it for now - not sure if there will be any posts before (probably not) but definitely I will try to keep up with our testing of the Bakfiets next weekend. I think, after we return that, I might ask if they'll let me try out the CETMA bike there. If not, we'll probably take a trip down to Eugene on a subsequent weekend, as I'm strongly drawn to the modular aspect (I like to fiddle with things). To that end as well, one thing I'm very interested in from our rental is taking a close look at how the box is attached and whether it will be feasible to make it easily removable to be replaced with other things like a cargo platform or something. 

where we're (maybe) going

Looking at the various iterations of cargo bikes (two or three wheel box bikes, long tails, those with platform racks over the front wheel, heavily-built large-racked regular bikes, etc.) we're pretty set on a two-wheeled, front loading, box-type bike. Why? Well, we want the load low and up front for handling and so we can keep an eye on it (especially in the case of kids and dogs), and we, or I at least, want to keep the bi aspect of a bike in the equation.

Options we've found are the Bakfiets produced in the Netherlands (I believe they're still actually made there) which are sold here by Clever Cycles, and a Chinese version of the same basic design sold in Portland by Joe Bike. There are also a couple few local options here in Oregon; CETMA and CAT Oregon (bikes are branded as Human Powered Machines) are both made down in Eugene, and then there is also Metrofiets right here in Portland. Wow - that's actually a lot of choices compared to what was around not so long ago, and it's really great if you live, you know, where we live - how lucky we are.

But which to choose? A locally produced bike would be great and sort of further the whole eco aspect as, on the surface anyway, it would seem to decrease energy use compared to transporting a bulky object here from Europe (of course, this is one of those questions that would require careful scrutiny of all aspects of materials sourcing and production efficiencies to have a true comparative value, and, frankly, I'm a combination of not smart enough and too lazy to do that), and even failing that we do like to support local industry (we work here too, you know, and money helps to pay bills and such).

All of the bikes above are pretty similar in overall design. With the exception of the CETMA bike, they all run a single boom section of frame under the cargo area up to the front. The Joe-Bike and the Human Powered Machines Long Haul have shorter cargo boxes (the Bakfiets comes in short or long, but only the long is currently sold by Clever Cycles), and that sort of puts them out of the running for us as we absolutely want room for a cart's worth of groceries and a kid. I really like the CETMA concept; it's local, it's produced by a super-small business (at this time), which I think is great, I like the platform-tubing-as-structural-frame idea (big fan of form following function), and the modular and "bi-partable" aspects of the frame. Prices for most of those are right around $3k (as this is written 3/09) with the Joe-Bike coming in at a very close to wow-that's-only-half-as-much (and that's for the optioned-out Portland edition) $1599. Components vary, as do assertions as to which type of systems are best, from bike to bike though.

As much as I want to go local, we are currently leaning towards the Bakfiets. Why? Well, it's got the long box, it seems to come pretty much set up to ride just off the showroom floor (there really aren't many options other than rain-covers and seat cushions for the box - locks, lights, fenders, etc, are all standard) without having to add any accessories to the bike/bill, and most everything about it is set up to be weather hardy (theoretically built to live outside year round in wet/damp conditions with very little maintenance) and ready to ride with very little up-keep. Another consideration is that, well, we're just not very patient people and we could pretty much have a Bakfiets tomorrow where as Metrofiets and HPM both list three month lead times on their websites.

So, yeah - Bakfiets is at the top right now followed closely by the CETMA bike.

where we're coming from

To start, as the description might lead you to believe, we're looking at buying a cargo bike. We moved back to the northwest/to Portland in 2007 after a number of years in a Alaska (most of which were spent in a Yupik village), and specifically selected a house with what realtors call amenities within walking distance. Currently we walk for groceries, movies, and the occasional dinner out. We're also close enough to walk to the Max (light rail) (or take one of the two buses that stop within a block of house if it's raining hard or we're feeling lazy) to get downtown or out to the wilds of Beaverton/Hillsboro/Gresham should the need or desire arise. We still own the faithful truck we put many many miles on camping during the summers between school years up north, and have also added a more city friendly SUV; as it is, the truck has been driven less than a thousand miles in the last year and a half, and the SUV sees only slightly more use.

Currently, the plan is to sell both of those vehicles and replace them with a cargo bike and something that gets better mileage but still has room for at least three people and three dogs when/if we ever have the time to go on some extended camping trips.

The idea is that the cargo bike will make it easier for one of us to do grocery runs (room for the kid and the food and theoretically easier than pushing a stroller and pulling a cart) and allow us to get a little farther/faster as a family than we can get walking. Hopefully, while this is going on, it will also help us to get back into a little bit better shape.

We'd seen "modern" cargo bikes in use in the Netherlands, and in other parts of Europe to a much lesser extent, in the summer of 2005 and were intrigued by the idea, but a cargo bike would have been impractical where we lived then (no roads, and one could easily walk all the way around the village in about ten minutes anyway). After getting settled in Portland, and especially after the birth of our son, I started doing some internet research, but most blogs and reviews were either from people living in flat places (often in Europe) or from people that I would describe as avid cyclists. So what we're wondering is, can a sort of typical American couple, though one with decided eco-leanings, really put a cargo bike to good use?

Though we own bikes and enjoy riding, we are not by any means avid cyclists or bike commuters; we own both an SUV and a full size pickup, but we walk to the grocery store and most other places within a couple miles and use public transportation often; we cook mostly from scratch, eat organic and local when we can, but still enjoy occasional fast food and out of season fruits. With work, school, and our new hobby of baby care, we've noticed a definite decline in our play-related exercise and physical energy, and a marked increase in our, uh, squishy-ness.