Every Day Adventurers

Xtracycle is gearing up to print another round of stickers. Since we buy printing, and cutting dies, and print tens of thousands of stickers at a time, we like to be clear that we’re printing the right product.

Historically, a lot of our stickers pushed the limits of ‘family friendly’ language. Scanning our sticker sheet included with every FreeRadical and Radish, you will find words like Sissy, Wuss, Booty, Ass, etc.

Skip down to take the poll.

Xtracycle's Old School Sticker Sheet

Many of you like the spirit of these stickers, like Rick Logue, as he describes on his My Two Mile Challenge Blog.

Some of you may find these stickers inappropriate, or just plain immature, but haven’t had a safe environment to say that.

We’re downright curious – do stickers with borderline offensive words help spread the message of bikes as a solution? Or does the message get lost in the medium?

Should Xtracycle Continue to Print Stickers with the Words Sissy, Ass, and Wuss?

• Yes! These words are critical in making the point that bikes will change the world.
• No, these words are offensive, particularly to children, and only alienate people you might want to reach.

View Results

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Tis the season for rowdy, messy, muddy cyclocross. If you’re not racing, you probably wish you were. And if you are racing, you might just wish you were sitting around drinking a beer.

Xtracycle has you covered. Why? Because we put the Sport in Sport Utility Bicycle.

Exhibit A: Kill Two Birds With One Bike

Check out this great video from an outfit called More Badasser – highlighting the the solution to the ‘grass is always greener dilemma’ mentioned above. Xtracycle allows you to enjoy the race and the beer, at the same time. Go ahead, pop one open and enjoy the ride.

Exhibit B: Seriously Now, People Do This.

This just found on our popular users forum. For serious enthusiasts only.

observations from racing a mtb longtail conversion
Posted by: “A” andyboote@yahoo.com.au
Mon Dec 19, 2011 7:08 pm (PST)

Not sure how many of you are interested but the other night decided to
race the ‘ute’ at one of our shortcourse twilight mtb meets.
It was one sprint lap of a very technical, rocky and sometimes steep 7
km course. It mainly singletrack with a few switchback sections. The
bike is an alloy mtb frame, salsa chromoly fork and xtracycle unit. I
swapped the big apples for a 2.1 maxxis ignitor on the rear and a 2.35
specialized all mountain knobby on the front. I rode to the race for a
good solid warmup also took the freeloaders and racks out to lighten it
up (a touch).
Anyway hear a few of my observations / tips

* run air pressures pretty low to increase grip
* run big bag tyres for better compliance and a little suspension
* get up the front of the pack because its a sluggish start
* on rocky sections the longer chain can start oscillating and throw
the chain off the ring
* (also high cadence pedalling on the trail and sudden coast can do
the same thing)
* be tactical with gear selections, as there is a slightly longer
delay in shifting and you might be battling extreme chain flap
* the beast seems to climb ok but grip is diminished because of less
weight over rear wheel
* caution rolling over rocky mounds as longer wheel base can lower
bottom bracket height / bash rings
* longer wheel base seems to handle roll off ledge sections a bit
better – like normally i have to hang over the back wheel (altho note
above caution about pedal and chainring clearance)
* corner entry / apex needs adjustment, wide entry on switch back and
hover on seat / hold higher gear to keep grip on uphill versions
* deore level v brakes are ok but need applying a bit sooner
* the long tail will do spectacular sliding skids into flat open
corners
* caution of chain slap when running knobbies – the chain (especially
when running high on the cluster / chainline closer to the rear wheel)
can catch on the tyre and inadvertantly get lifted / thrown
* try and be smoother in general (as a result of above factors seems
to be more put pressure/ leverage on the chain)

Anyway i made it 4/5 off the way round before snapping the chain and
running the bike to the finish.
regardless of the result it got lots of attention and questions from all
the other spectators and competitors, so I guess its a win for the
awareness of the versatility of the longtail. All in all a very
interesting experience.
(PS Will let you know how it compares when i finish building full xt /
disc equipped surly BD ?!?!)
Andy

Exhibit C: LongBikes Soar Further

Certainly one of the top 10 Xtracycle photos of all time. Hardcore Xtracycle rider/racer/evangelist, Max Cooper stuns the field with a flying LongTail leap past the short bike competition. Do that on your Bakfiets folks!

Shane from Eugene re-imagines the Zipcar ad mentioned in our previous post, c/o this post at bikeportland.org:

If you want to take a stab at your own re-imagination, here’s a version ready for your photoshop cleverness:

And one from Russ Roca, world traveler and amazing photographer. 

Some great written follow on: http://goo.gl/OHNoK.

夕陽ヶ丘のロングテールバイク, originally uploaded by nobby_mana.

happy trails, Xtracycle fans!
photo © nobby mana

Good Morning. Nothing goes better together than fall and Xtracycles. I suppose beer fits in there somewhere, but even without the beer, fall on a bike yields an incredible buzz.

We put out a challenge a few weeks back on Facebook to find the best fall Xtracycle photo from our Facebook friends. There were four awesome and diverse submissions which are shown below. Click on each image for a larger view.

The caption BELOW EACH IMAGE is the name of the submitter, please vote on your favorite photo at the end of this post. Winner will receive a gift certificate to our store. Thanks to all who submitted, and thanks for voting. Next up…winter Xtracycling!

Jason Crane

Kirk Stock

Nickolas Stevens

Ryan McMahan

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