I have this love-hate relationship with the bus. I love the idea of mass transit but hate Metro‘s implementation. I get impatient with all the stops. Why can’t we make people walk just a little farther, cut out half the stops and and speed the whole route up? Continue reading
Posted in alternative transportation, bikes, extravehicular activities, mass transit, seattle
Tagged , bikes, bus, mass transit, metro, seattle, xtracycle
Today was my 29th (wink wink) birthday. I had a great day. Our babysitter was out of town so we rolled with it as parents often do – dinner and a movie with the kids. I’m not big on fancy, in fact I’m a pretty cheap date, so it was perfectly fine with me. We rode to Dick’s for some nutritious burgers and shakes before the movie. Parked the bikes right up front and ate our grub like the rest of them – in our carsbikes. After our nutritious meal, we were on to the movie theatre for an early showing of Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. Good flick for kids and adults – Natalie Portman is so cute and the movie was about a magical toystore, how could you not like it. After the movie, we went outside and bundled up for the ride home. Lots of amused looks from the folks waiting in line to pay for parking – ha.
Good times.
– Anne
Posted in alternative transportation, bikes, dates, extravehicular activities, kids, seattle
Tagged bikes, burger joints, datenight, seattle, xtracycle
It’s a beautiful fall day in Seattle. The perfect opportunity to ride off all that Thanksgiving eatin’. We’ll be there with the whole family – Grab your lunch, your bike, and meet us as we join the shopping hordes and NOT shop.
-Anne and Tim
Posted in alternative transportation, bikes, consumerism, Human Powered Politics, kids, seattle, weather, xtracycle
Tagged , bikes, Black Friday, Buy Nothing Day, buynothingday, pike place market, rides, seattle, xtracycle
I covered stoker bars a while ago. That was a cop-out because the bar is the easy part. Almost anything will work (chopped off mountain bike bar, old BMX bars, Albatross, whatever). The hard part is mounting the bar in such a way that the passenger’s nose is not stuffed into the rider’s butt.
Posted in buildin' the xtracycle, longbikes, shopping, wrenchin', xtracycle
Tagged bikes, building, cheap-ass-parts, components, ebay, parts, shopping, stoker, xtracycle
For the past few years, Tim and I have silently observed Buy Nothing Day. I was very excited to read of an event (via Bike Hugger) encouraging active participation. Aarons Bicycle Repair, Seattle’s leading Xtracycle dealer, is leading a HOT STUFF Cargo Bike Ride to remind us all to get out of stores and onto our bikes.
I know we won’t be seeing Tim’s shopaholic sister there, but how about you? Does your city have an event? Tell us about it!
– Anne
After date night, I attended an amazing lecture by Lawrence Lessig at Kane Hall. On the way home, when I should have been thinking about things like hybrid companies, government regulation, and our broken intellectual property system, I found myself moved to conduct an impromptu bike-basket photoshoot. As much as I wanted concentrate on Supercapitalism, etc, I was smitten by the beauty and function embodied in my Wald #585! Continue reading
Posted in alternative transportation, bikes, buildin' the xtracycle, consumerism, shopping, wrenchin', xtracycle
Tagged basket, bikes, cargo, cargobikes, crush, gear, love, shopping, utility, wald, xtracycle
It was a lovely Friday night for some Xtracycle errands followed by drinks and dinner at Flowers on the Ave. The combination of my captive subject, our bikelights, and the camera’s second-curtain flash settings were hard to resist.
-Tim
Posted in dates, extravehicular activities, seattle, xtracycle
Tagged car-free, carfreedates, date night, dates, seattle, U-district, xtracycle
Little Red Riding Hood (the six-year old) needed a ride to her Halloween party after school today. Xtracycles to the rescue. Here she is joined in the carbikepool by a ferocious dinosaur (our four-year old), and a friendly cowgirl from the bikepool.
This is part of an ongoing series of posts (ok, it’s the first–we’ll see how it goes) on the building of our Xtracycles. We get lots of questions about putting them together so I thought I better start documenting. Normal people would do it in order, starting with the actual kit, but me, I gotta start with the stoker bars. Maybe I just like saying Stoker….
Interested in the build? Read on, then see the blurb at the bottom and watch the “Buildin’…” category.
For our stoker bar setups we used some cheap ebay tandem stems and beer-can shims to mount bars for our passengers. I’ll get to the stems in another post but for now, here’s the scoop on these sylish Nitto “Swept-Back” bars.
…contrary to our cashier’s expectations, we got the whole mammoth cart on the bikes with room to spare. The first time we did this we spent as much time packing the bikes as we did shopping. But as the weeks go by, we’re getting faster and finding we have room for more. Once the sideloaders reach a certain “fullness” I can’t resist stuffing them to make it all worthwhile (twice I’ve sent Anne back for more beer). We’re learning some tricks on that front. (A bakfiets would would be the ultimate in easy packing, but talking to Todd at Clever Cycles it’s probably too darn hilly here.)
And who would have thought the Wald basket, while cool in an old-fashioned-paperboy way, would represent a packing revelation? This little 14x9x9 beauty holds cameras, beer, wine, coffee cups, sweaters, gloves, hats, lunch, stuffed pink piggies, American Girl dolls, and the occasional U-lock. Once again, those guys at Rivendell are onto something simple that works fantastically. When Anne gets the rigid fork on her Xtra, she’s getting a Wald, too.
Check the the thumbnail image for some packing details.
-Tim
Posted in alternative transportation, BIG Loads, bikes, extravehicular activities, seattle, xtracycle
Tagged baskets, bigloads, bikes, groceries, packing, seattle, shopping, trader joes, xtracycle
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Anne & Tim
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