Every Day Adventurers

Worldbike and Xtracycle are inextricably linked; Xtracycle founders Ross Evans and Kipchoge Spencer formed Worldbike to bring heavy-duty, well-made, well-functioning, cargo-hauling longbikes to some of the world’s poorest people to give them both transportation solutions and income-generating potential.  Worldbike is now also partnering with Potenco, a San Francisco-based  company with the goal of providing the world’s poor with clean, efficient, inexpensive, human-powered power.  Potenco has already developed a Pull Cord Generator (PCG), a small, human-powered generator that stores upper-body muscle action as hours of charge for portable electronics.  Potenco intern and Stanford masters student Jonas gleefully demonstrated the PCG for us at Interbike.

Jonas told us that pulling the cord for just one minute would provide about one hour of LED light, or 20 minutes of talk time on a cell phone (much of the world now has good cell phone coverage, but still has spotty electricity availability), which we took advantage of late in the day as our iphones were starting to run out of juice.  The PCG produces about 15-20 watts of power, and has already been field tested in several countries with good results.  Potenco is even partnering with One Laptop Per Child to help power computers with this device.

What does this all have to do with bikes, you ask?  Well, Potenco has also developed, with Worldbike, a bike-powered Mobile Power Station potentially capable of charging cell phones, lighting houses, pumping and purifying water, or doing anything else one could think of that requires electricity.  Potenco and Worldbike came to the Xtracycle booth on the last day of Interbike to demo this system on a Big Dummy.

Although the most efficient use of the generator would be through pedalling at a reasonable, constant rate for about an hour, people who tried out the generator at Interbike decided that this was the electricity-generating stepchild of gold sprints.  The screen detailing the pedaller’s power output added to the competitive nature of the demo.  Jason gave it a go, with some impressive wattage.   

If Jason could continue pedalling at that rate for an hour (Jason, you’re strong, and we have faith in you, but that’s not very likely to happen), he could have pumped 84 gallons of water, powered 1446 minutes of cell phone talk time, or lit a bright LED light for more than five hours.   

Passersby also gave it a try.  This guy brought not only some impressive (short-term) wattage, but also, fittingly, a message for OPEC. 

Just think of what we could power if we all had these devices hooked up to our commuter cycles…

Imagine rolling out of bed each morning, actually excited about the commute to work.  We think riding a Civia could actually lead to such madness.  A young company based in Minnesota, Civia is all about the practical ride - but their version of practicality is far from dry and mundane.  The folks at Civia do nothing but design and sell transportational bikes, and they’ve clearly thought out every inch of your commute to make biking it simple, elegant, adaptable, and truly lovely. 

The Hyland was their first effort, and includes things many of us are now starting to regard as commuter essentials - disc brakes, fenders, chain guards, your choice of  internally-geared hubs.  But they’ve also formed a tunnel in the downtube to keep your cables safe and out of the way, a sliding dropout to allow for easy chain tensioning, and a disc brake mount that allows you to put on a rear rack without interference.  Plus, it looks like a fun, zippy, rather bomb-proof bike. 

And then… and then they did this:

Meet the Loring.  We just…we just wanna ride it.  Now.  Gimme.  Civia tells us that the Loring is meant for short trips of five miles or less, but would you ever really want to limit its use to that?  We think we’d want to use this bike everywhere, all the time.  Though, if you want to carry anything over 50 pounds, or tote around a friend, you might want to look into getting an Xtracycle.  We hear they’re also pretty great. 

Anyhow, the Loring.  The laid-back geometry and sloping top tube look so inviting.  And with their use of sustainably-grown and -harvested bamboo (shellacked with marine-grade varnish to ward off the weather) for the fenders, rear rack, and front pallet rack, Civia has managed to build up a bike that looks both endearingly classic and completely modern.   

Civia has also started an online bike commuting community called Greenlight.  While the number of web bike communities has increased lately, Greenlight seems a bit different than most.  Sure, you can chat with other bike commuters and make bike-related posts, but you also get to log your bike commuter miles and even compete against other bikers.  Greenlight encourages you to form commuting “teams” to compete with other groups of like-minded folks, appealing to the American competitive spirit and helping to turn what might sometimes seem like a solitary slog to work into a race for glory.  Plus, you get to talk smack to your opponents.

Pashley showed up with its usual assortment of lovely commuter, work, and city bikes, all displayed with lush photos of quintessential Brits having a jolly good time biking ’round.  Everyone always loves the Guv’nor and, while we do too, we thought the Princess Sovereign should get her due here instead. 

The Pashley folks we talked to were passionate about their bikes, though when asked if they were seeing an increase in  Pashley sales on this side of the pond given the slow-but-sure ramping up of U.S. practical bike culture, they said that they weren’t actually looking to sell more Pashleys in the States as they have plenty of business in the UK.  One representative actually wondered aloud why Pashely was represented at Interbike, as he said that they weren’t interested in expanding into this market.  To that we say, Pashley, we’d love to have your wonderfully thought-out commuter machines tooling around our bike lanes - you’re so practical, yet beautiful.  But if you’re reluctant, that’s alright - with so many bike companies now getting into the commuter game, we think we just might have our crumpets covered.   

…And again, we welcome them.  Retrovelo brought over some amazingly pretty bikes with which to tempt us.  If you were on the fence about bike commuting or about riding your bike more often around town, just take a look at some Retrovelos and you will want to ride.  Right now.  All the time.

You cannot resist them.

It is futile to try.

And here is a cute baby* to clinch your undying devotion!

*Cute baby not included.

We were lucky to run into the Rawland booth at the last minute, where we perused some beautiful hand-built bikes designed for 650B wheels.  Rawland is a young, family company based in Minnesota, and they’re making two bike models, both with Norwegian names: the Olaf and the Sogn (Minnesota’s got a lot of Scandinavians).  The Sogn looks like it really wants to go on some adventures… or just get you to the store and back (though we think that qualifies as an adventure in Vegas).

Oh, and the people we met from the company (the president, Sean Virnig, his wife, and a couple others) happen to be deaf.  Their interpreter had left for the airport before we sauntered into their booth, but we managed to communicate with a mish mash of written notes, charades, and our mostly-remembered sign language alphabet we learned in grade school.  Knew that would come in handy some day!