Every Day Adventurers

As most Xtracycle owners know, doing more with your bicycle and less with your car instills a feeling of independence like no other.

Your ability to tackle the day’s requests of errands, tasks and trips by using your bicycle and your own power instead of pollution causing, money draining automobiles builds a self-reliance that only grows with time.

So, I totally relate to Michael’s enthusiasm about his wife stating, “I think I’d like to get an Xtracycle.”

While I’m happy to hear that another American is thinking about using our cargo bikes, I’m more excited because I know what a positive impact owning one will have on her life.

Irene, Michael’s wife, I’m sure already knows about the benenfits of cargo bicycle ownership, her husband rocks out on a Big Dummy already. But, just as my wife knew of the benefits and utility of my cargo bike, she didn’t quite ‘get it’ until I built up her first Xtracycle this past fall.

Normally I’m the one who hauls her, our groceries, our laundry and other tasks of substantial size because my Xtracycle is easier to access and it’s what we’re used to. However, recently I went away for a trip to see my grandparents and Alicia, my wife, was stuck with laundry duty. Instead of lugging it piecemeal to the laundromat by short bike, she utilized her FreeRadical and finished the task without hassle or inconvenience.

On our nightly reconnect by cellular, she proudly informed me that she tackled the laundry using her Xtracycle. I asked how it went and she said, “Piece of cake!” :) She’s using her Xtracycle more and feeling empowered by the capability of her steed, and I’m excited to see her sharing the same sentiments that I felt in my first months of Xtracycle ridership.

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Read Michael’s full post on why they’re going car-light and upgrading their family to a two-Xtracycle family.

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!

Ben Sollee, Marty, Katie and Jordon kicked off their tour across the United States, playing shows, seeing fans, friends and family and “re-humanizing” the musical experience. Ride on!

This tour is not about going “green,” even though it will have a smaller over all carbon footprint than a more traditional tour by van. Instead, its about re-humanizing the pace of the road. The bicycles provide the limitation on a local level. However, we have to be real. I have a family and we all have bills to pay so we can’t afford for this tour to be a musical vacation by bicycle. And, it’s important to us to demonstrate that biking to our business can be financially sustainable. We want biking to be a compelling choice to other businesses and artists. So, through some trial and error we’ve discovered a few things.

Discover some of the few things the crew has discovered at Ditch the Van Bike Tour Blog.

An electrified Xtracycle is joining a fleet of utility bicycles in Portland at the Metro agency. Noting that “13% of all vehicular trips” are bicycles over four bicycle-friendly bridges, the agency wants to encourage the bicycle’s place as a healthy and clean means of transport.

Metro greens up with special bikes | Full Article.

Video detailing upgrade and transportation shift.