Every Day Adventurers

Providing protection from the sun and rain is easy. Just follow the steps below.

The temperature is beginning to rise in Tucson. Before long, the temperature will regularly top out at over 100 degrees every day.

As a desert rat, you instinctively learn to seek shade because it is significantly cooler and because it keeps your skin from turning the same color as the Redical Red freeloaders.

People often ask, “how can you ride in the heat?” I tell them, “it’s only hot when you stop.” This summer, though, I have to worry about more than just myself.

Because my wife and I sold our second car — you can read about why we decided to sell it on my blog, TucsonVelo.com — there will be times my daughter and I will be out in the heat. On a bike in the Sonoran Desert, shade can be hard to come by.

I wanted something to provide her with shade everywhere we went. I searched the web for a PeaPod LT cover that provided shade and allowed enough air circulation to keep the seat from turning into an oven, but couldn’t find anything that worked. In the Xtracycle spirit, I decided to create my own. This project will also provide the structure to make the PeaPod rain proof. Yes, it does actually rain in Tucson, but not enough.

Here is how to do it:

1) Pick up a Kelty FC Sun Hood ($34.95). It is designed to work with their backpacks, but works great on the PeaPod LT. Our local outdoor store, Summit Hut has them as does REI, nationally.

2) Purchase rubber grommets from a hardware store like ACE Hardware. I don’t recall the specific size, but I just took the cover in and slipped on the grommets until I found one that was tight, but could still slip on and off. I purchased eight, thinking I would put one above and below the points where it slips into the PeaPod. It turns out the way the structure is flexed you really only need one on the bottom so the poles don’t slip out.

3) Drill holes a little bit wider than the plastic poles from the cover so they can slip in tightly. I drilled mine right outside the gray part of the crossbar in front and just outside the raised half circle on the back of the PeaPod LT.

4) Insert the poles into the holes and place a rubber grommet on the bottom of each pole. The grommets prevent the structure from pulling out, or being pulled out by small hands.

To get your child in and out, just remove the front two grommets and take the poles out of the holes you drilled. You can tuck the poles up into the shade structure to get them out of the way while you buckle and unbuckle your child.

The shade screen does a great job keeping the sun off our daughter’s face and neck.

Making the PeaPod LT rain proof is a snap with the shade structure in place. I just bought a rain cover for a running stroller from Babies R’ Us. The cover has two Velcro tabs on the front of the cover which make it easy to loop around a part of the frame to keep the cover pulled down over the PeaPod LT’s foot rests. The back of the cover has other Velcro tabs that allow you to tighten the part that drapes over the back of the seat.

I think the rain cover might also be a great way to help transport kids in the winter by keeping the chilly air from blowing on them.

We had a freak rain storm last week that allowed me to try the rain cover. It worked flawlessly. My daughter was warm and dry when we got to our destination. I, however, was not.

Michael McKisson runs TucsonVelo.com, a website devoted to covering the cycling community in Tucson.

My wife and I live in a small apartment with five of our bicycles living with us. The first moment of zen came when I realized I was tall enough to store my lighter road/mtn bikes horizontally against the ceiling, but my Big Dummy still took up a commanding amount of square footage.

We recently shifted the rooms around and need that precious footprint to be reduced. Problem was, I need to store the Dummy on it’s tail, but maneuvering a wheel-less Big Dummy like that was bound to scratch and damage the rear bridge tube. What I need were some casters to allow me easy positioning and storage of my Xtracycle cargo bike in a vertical position.

I sketched up a design diagram, chatted with Ross about some potential pitfalls, and dove right in. Was a bit hasty about the initial two prototypes, but finally ironed out my issues with the third version.

Now I can easily bring the bike inside, hold the rear brake, lift up the wheel, TailWheels make contact, and then I push on my MagicCarpet with my knee while still holding the handlebars to get it into full, mobile and upright position.

It’s also been a boon for use on BART and elevators. No more scratched paint or dented tubes!

Ride on!

View more detailed comments for TailWheels on flickr.

Bamboo Xtracycle Cargo Bicycle, originally uploaded by xtracycleinc.

This is perhaps the most ingenious homemade Xtracycle I’ve seen. Adam used bamboo, metal, and carbon fiber to bond everything together – such and elegant design and photos suggest it’s super strong too. Gets me thinking about developing world applications for this – there are alternatives to carbon fiber which include hemp rope and epoxy…check out the full set here.

Or go straight to the source, Adam’s blog lives here.

While working on this bike another snowy bike came in with the same problem, and so it went the whole day. Alexis and I pulled and flushed at least 15 cables yesterday. The problem is that Amsterdam bikes live outdoors, rain or shine. Tiny amounts of water drip and condense into the cable housings. On good quality bikes the cables are stainless steel and the housings are lined with polyethelene or another low friction plastic so the water doesn’t make much difference… until the thermometer goes below the freezing point. Then the cable freezes inside the housing. Usually it creates enough friction that pulling hard on the brake lever will overcome the friction, actuating the brake but the brake’s return spring cannot pull it back… thus locked brakes.So here’s what you do to fix or prevent a frozen cable:

• 1. Let it thaw.
• 2. Remove the crimped end cap and make sure the end of the cable isn’t unwound or damaged. If it is either rewind, shorten or replace the cable as necessary.
• 3. Remove any kinks in the cable so that it can easily be pulled and reinserted through the housing.
• 4. Pull the cable out.
• 5. Seal the nozzle of a compressed air pistol against the upper end of the housing and blow everything possible out of the housing.
• 6. Seal the dispenser straw of a suitable light oil against the brake lever end of the housing. It might be necessary to pull the housing cap to do this. We use a generic multipurpose oil with teflon but just about any light oil should work fine. Don’t use “dry” type lubricant because it won’t displace the water for long.
• 7. Spray the oil into the housing until it begins coming out the other end. [Dont't forget to put] a rag at the brake end of the housing to catch the oil coming out at great velocity.
• 8-9-10. Thread the cable back into the housing, readjust the brake and crimp a new end on.

This fix is valid for any brake or gear cable but I’m basically assuming the bike has roller brakes here. Drum brakes can pull their own freezing tricks and rim brakes simply aren’t suitable for storing outdoors and riding in snow country. Now the techies can ask me why I didn’t write anything about disk brakes.

Read the Full Post at Bakfiets en Meer » Blog Archive » Frozen Cable Time Again.

It’s a real pleasure to see families establishing traditions, year after year, using our cargo bicycle platform. Whether it’s an annual bike ride, camping trip or Christmas tree haul, we love seeing families bond outside the car.

The Kings, longtime Xtracyclers, just completed their fourth-annual Xtracycle Tree Haul! But what did they do before their longtail lifestyle started taking a bigger (longer?) space in their lives?

We used to make a huge production out of the annual-tree claiming event. We’d load up the VW camper, grab a $5 (bargain!) Forest Service tree-cutting permit, drive up toward the snow for a while, and tromp around in the (snowy, wet, muddy,etc) woods, until we found a tree we could all agree on. Of course, said tree was always double the size we needed (they look smaller in the forest), so fresh we couldn’t bear to take it down until Valentine’s day, and that five-dollar permit usually involved an oil change, a swap to the snow tires, and at least a tank of gas. So really, $5 plus another eighty or so & change.

Bargain?

So when we seriously started doing the long-bike thing, we thought we’d give our auto-induced tree haulin’ a break for a year so we could support our local, neighborhood tree lot and find out if was really possible to haul (it seems so obvious now) our family tree via bike. I mean, it’s just a year, right? Then we’ll go back to fun way up in the snow.

Except, all of sudden it’s our fourth, haul-by-bike Christmas. It turns out we didn’t miss the old that much at all. In fact, we’d argue the new way is much, much better. Here’s why…

Read Car Free Day’s reasons why hauling the X-mas tree by bicycle is faster, cheaper and fun(ner)!.

Stay safe this hauliday and ride on!

PS Enjoy this little video of another family hauling their X-mas tree home on their Xtracycle!