Every Day Adventurers

Longtailers in Japan love their Xtracycles!

Thanx to Johnny Katayama / New Name Plate!

Funny bike references that would make any Portlander blush.

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!

A big catch in the pursuit of reviving bicycle use in the United States* is teaching and training cyclists how to use and repair their bicycles properly and efficiently.

Thankfully, students at Berkeley are taking the initiative to offer maintenance lessons and free mechanical checks for interested riders as part of BicyCAL. To make their offer mobile and flexible, they use an Xtracycle converted bicycle to haul their work stand and tools around to various locations around Berkeley campus.

We applaud and cheer BicyCAL for volunteering their time and energy to building a safer, happier cycling community.

*Historical note, cycling enjoyed the “national past time” prestige, long before baseball took the crown.