Every Day Adventurers

Xtracycle has graced the pages of Bicycling magazine (think the Newsweek of bike media) not once but twice in 2011.

We’ve cropped the two articles onto one page above, which you can download as a .pdf here.

You can also read the full text of the main article at Bicycling’s website here.

Davis, daughter of Xtracycle COO Nate Byerley and star of the 2009 PeaPod promo video called “Scream with Me” learns to ride her own bike in the video below. Only 4, Davis manages to get why riding a bike is so amazing, on her first ride.

Davis learns to pilot her own bike with the help of a ‘revolutionary’ new product called the Gyrowheel, based here in San Francisco. As much as I didn’t want to love a product that electrified the age-old learning to ride a bike challenge, as you can see from this video, it’s amazing. She literally learned to ride a bike in one ride. My throwback curmudgeon-y-ness is overshadowed by a love for a better solution. Training wheels really are no fun. And must on some level be a little humiliating for our youngest riders.

Davis has since graduated from riding in a PeaPod, but her younger brother, just now one, loves riding in the PeaPod III made by GMG (a dutch kid seat company). The PeaPod III is a step up from the PeaPod LT in so many ways, including a EVA-foam hammock design (think Croc cradle), quick-release capability, 4 colors (soon to be 5), and great reflectors behind. See more photos in our store.

We’ll be here, soaking up the sun and bringing the fun.

Brad Lancaster, author of Harvesting Rainwater, lives in Tucson Arizona, which receives less than 12″ of rainfall a year. Brad has been riding an Xtracycle for nearly a decade, and well, it shows. This post was lifted from his blog, and we encourage you to read the full article there. If you are interested in rain water harvesting, consider Brad god, and his book the bible.

Years ago at a red light I looked into the car beside me and saw the frowning driver’s hair blowing into the back seat as though she were leaning into a mighty storm. But her windows were up. The gale was coming from her air conditioner — on a beautiful day when an open window could just as easily cool and refresh. Then I coughed, and looked back at her tail pipe spewing out toxic exhaust. I was on a bicycle, and loving the day, except for the coughing. And that’s when the simple realization hit me.

Everything we do, every choice we make, has consequences. And no matter how seemingly simple, they can be profound. We can choose to be and live problems — or solutions.

I realized every time I drove (or mechanically cooled myself) I was directly poisoning air, water, soil, and myself. However, every time I rode my bike, my exhaust was never worse than a flatulent. When I drove my car, I fueled it with toxic gasoline from a distant corporation. When I rode my bike, I fueled me, often with a burrito made from locally grown tepary beans and cooked in my backyard solar oven. A burrito I would’ve eaten anyway now tasted even better.

>>read full post here

Xtracycle is featured in the latest Popular Mechanics issue alongside Sam Whittingham’s lust-inducing “Mule” LongTail.

Sam has made at least one other stunning Xtracycle LongTail Standard compliant LongTail called the GreenMachine. Read more about that here.