Every Day Adventurers

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

Cycling Santas – JSOnline.

The Full Hands family was pumped to learn that it had been chosen by the Xtracycle folks to test out their 2010 Freeloaders on our new orange Yuba Mundo.  For full disclosure, we should share that we are already familiar with Xtracycle products, given that we are the very happy owners and riders of a 2009 Xtra Radish.  The Yuba is our *cough* third cargo bike and we were looking for a bag system that would work well hauling our considerable stuff daily while still allowing passengers’ legs to hang over the sides comfortably.  Yuba has a messenger bag system called the Go Getter, which we do own. However, while these oversized bags would work great for us for a trip to the grocery store sans kids (and really, who actually wants to go to the grocery store with kids?), we found them too bulky for everyday use as we have other cargo competing for space on the bike– namely two sets of legs belonging to one set of eight-year-old twins.

The 2010 Freeloaders were easy to attach to the Yuba. We simply removed our seat pads and unscrewed our Utility Deck, looped the Freeloader straps over our sideloader bars and clipped them.   While the Freeloaders have a d-ring that attach the lower straps to the FreeRadicals, we simply looped the bottom straps to the bottom of our sideloaders and were able to thread them through the d-ring and pull them relatively tightly.  This may not sound like the most secure system,  but the straps have remained threaded in the d-rings for the past three weeks with no problems– and we stuff our Freeloaders daily.

The Freeloaders work well for us because they can either lay flat or expand depending on what stuff one needs to haul.  For our weekly commute, we pack the Freeloaders with my bag, which is big enough for dragging my laptop around, and the boys’ backpacks. On the weekends, the Freeloaders haul all sorts of stuff.  For our crazy Saturday mornings, they carry a 1/2 sized violin, a 1/4 sized cello, reading material, a water bottle, a pair of soccer cleats, shin guards, and a snack.   The ‘open’ sides, really’ the gusseted drawstring flaps’ on the sides, allow us to pack the cello securely with the end hanging out a bit, something we couldn’t do with a fully contained bag.  The Freeloaders live up to their description of “minimal bulk” because even stuffed with our music and sports gear, the boys can still comfortably drape their legs over the sides and off we can ride.

The only issue that we’ve had with the compatibility between the Freeloaders and the Yuba is that Freeloader straps sometimes push our second Yuba seat pad so it extends beyond the longtail frame ever-so-slightly.  The seat pad has remained attached securely with its velcro, but before mounting the bike, we check the seat pad and push it forward if necessary because we don’t like the idea of one of my fella’s ‘tails’ sitting out over the back of the bike’s longtail.

A huge bonus of the Freeloaders on the Yuba is that they also act as wheel skirts, keeping little boy feet from getting caught up in spinning spokes.   And we must also put in a word for the quality of the 2010 Freeloaders.  The upgrade to the material is a huge plus.  The Freeloaders on our Xtra Radish have served us well, but they’re starting to show their age.  It didn’t help that we managed to melt part of the older Freeloaders with a too-hot iron while adhering our very cool Zero Per Gallon patch to the side, but we’ve also managed to rip the mesh drawstring flaps.  The 2010 Freeloader material is definitely sturdier and we predict that it will withstand the everyday adventures our crew finds itself enjoying.

These are Mike Cobb’s words and wisdom from his Xtracycle tour around Europe as part of the Pleasant Revolution. Enjoy!

Wifi is precious and rare for this mechanic… just performed field surgery on my iPhone to replace the battery. Disabled the camera in the process! So- I can only send old pictures + hopefully a few that tourmates e-mail to me. But let’s start this off right!

Had a one week vacation from our working vacation. Ljubljana, Slovania, the city of love, is where it started.

Ljubljana: Soooo full of grafitti. Seems as though civic concerns lie elsewhere. I like it – street level culture staining the walls. Saturation of personality. Sweet, mellow.

The squat in Ljubljana – the 5th squat or so. Always a somewhat creepy adventure. Squats attract creative people, anti-establishment people, rebel-rousers, sick people, poor people, drug adicts. This one had no electricity, lit by candles stolen from the local cemetary. One morning I watched a young man conspicuously trying to act casual outside the main building in the courtyard. It was a tough role to play as he kept puking in the storm drain. You can’t puke quietly. Or casually. After finishing, he quickly stood erect and wiped his whiskers. I just can’t stop assuming he was a junky who’s junk stream dried up – at the squat looking for a solution. William Burroughs has filled my head with diagnosis details…

Spent the night last night on a rugby field inside an Aix de Provence, France sports complex. I slept in my bivi sack on the field’s grass. Woke up to cloud bursts that delivered regular intervals of rain – 15 seconds of hard rain, 50 second break, 15 seconds of hard rain…kinda like a sprinkler…After about 4 or 5 rounds of this onslaught, it dawned on me that it WAS a sprinkler. Moved 30 meters away to the dry zone while Kipchoge first attempted to thwart the rain-makers with heavy rocks, then successfully with cooking pots AND heavy rocks. The tent-testing ended.

I’m finding a lot of “raw sienna, reduced red” (color of my room) all over provincial France. Often the main road through villages is canyon-walled with solid shop/residential walls, buffered by minimalist one meter sidewalks. These walls are often awash in subtle variations of “raw sienna, reduced red”. It’s a faded earthy yellow, familiar like memory from dreams. Truly soothing and pleasant. The feeling of ancestral habitat.

Mike Cobb is a Portland, OR based Xtracycle rider, mechanic and general suave dude touring the European continent as part of the Pleasant Revolution. These are his adventures.

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Speaking of Scotch, a couple days ago, I found a fifth of the stuff, decades old (?), 90% buried in the soil of our roadside hobo camp (Bratislava, Slovakia). Drank it up with water and honey (with abandon).

In Budapest currently, having a devil of a time repairing the (3rd) broken frame. For the first (2), I splinted, then found access to awesome DIY metal shops w/MIG machines in Berlin and Vienna, respectively. Tried campside brazing this morning with insufficient flux and insufficient lots of things. FAIL. Now seeking welding service….

I am more determined than ever to assemble tools and materials for SUCCESSFUL campside brazing in the future. Mark the words…

Vienna just caught on with the fixie craze 5-8 years ago and the tallbike craze just 1-2 years ago. The Bike Kitchen is opperated by a gang of bike punks who wear “colors” in the form of heavily adorned flourescent green safety vests. Aside from the safety vests (which I love), the Vienna bike punks have recreated a big chunk of the Portland bike punk scene. Strangely cozy and familiar.

Cool kid fixie panda

Hofi of Heavy Pedals, Vienna, Austria

My fixie for a day and Hofi's Heavy Pedal Express

My morning with Hofi – delivering high class sandwhiches and bread to business Vienna. We swapped bikes a couple times – a locally made 70′s road frame converted into a cool kid steel toeclip fixie and my favorite iteration of the Long John – Larry vs Harry Bullit. The custom Bullit box folds flat w/o tools (Designed by Hofi).

Dremel + Car Muffler = New Frame Lug

Cutting up a ground-score muffler for frame-repair lugs. Battery-powered Dremel – yeah!