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!
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…
Talk about DIY. Larry, of BikeForth.org, details his Xtracycle canopy, Conastoga-style solar panel roof and future micro-car project. Very fun, inspiring design and tinkering. :D
Peter’s truck had some mechanical hiccups on the way to HQ recently and needed to get it the last mile or so to park it ’til he got it workin’. The Xtra’ crew rolled out with three longtails and managed to lose neither life nor limb in another every day adventure.
Editor Update: This is a semi-permanent solution for getting Footsies to work with KickBack. If you want to use WideLoaders, you’ll have to remove the bolts holding the Footsies on, so only do this mod if a) you’re fine voiding your warranty and b) don’t use WideLoaders.
KickBack is all the rage these days regarding our DIT tutorials. Our most recent tutorial focused on extending the peg platform of KickBack by using the handles off a Razor scooter. You can read up on that post here.
Taking passenger appeasement a step further, I wanted to explore a fast, simple solution to get your Footsies to play nice with KickBack. This mod will void your Footsie warranty, so proceed with caution (and if not installed properly, may void your KickBack warranty, too). Let’s begin!
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