Excited for EdgeRunner

As someone who happily rides an Xtracycle everyday AND who also happily owned a Madsen bucket bike for a few years, you better believe that I was floored when I saw the new Xtracycle bike, the EdgeRunner.

It's a one-piece longtail frame with a 26" front wheel and a 20" rear wheel that is compatible with all of the cool Xtracycle racks and doodads. You can even run it with an electric-assist hub motor.  It's as if my baby blue Madsen and my Xtracycle Monkey Bus went off behind the shade tree and, several design revisions later, popped out the most perfect cargobike for me ever. I am officially on the waiting list for a frameset and plan on being one of the first to tell you all about it in "6-8 weeks."

Until then, watch these happy Bay Area urbanites blissfully enjoying their EdgeRunners and pretend they're really riding around beautiful Tacoma, Washington.

Where are we going?

As I was riding home the other day, I saw a bunch of folks on bikes up ahead. I sped up to see where they were going.

"Excuse me, but, where are we going?" I asked the lady in the flowered helmet.

"To the garden," she replied. "It's a community garden bicycle tour."

So I followed them there. And we talked about the garden, and the neighborhood, and history, and Tacoma. And it made me glad that I'd asked.

"Where are we going?"

Care Packages: Mailing a Folding Bike to a Military APO with USPS!

My mom is a member of the Air Force Nurse Corps. She was recently deployed on short notice to an undisclosed location, where she will be stationed for six to nine months. It's the Military, so who really knows, right?

Once she had arrived and settled at her undisclosed location, Mom quickly realized that she wanted a bike for getting around the base.  While she could purchase a larger men's frame bike from her small base exchange, she doesn't feel comfortable mounting and dismounting with a high horizontal top tube. The base exchange could not order her the step-through women's model of the same bike due to some import restrictions. These same restrictions also prevented her from purchasing a bike online and having it shipped directly to her APO address. Plus there are other restrictions specific to certain APO zip codes, so most retailers won't (can't?) do it.

But I can mail her care packages! And what better treat to receive than a bike? Mom thought a folding bike would be well sized to her stature and small living quarters, so I found the best deal I could on a single speed folder, which at the time was this Dahon Boardwalk from Performance. It was on sale and I saved roughly the cost of having it delivered to my house. The local Performance store may have had one in stock, but I also wanted the box and the packing materials. These folding bikes are shipped with some plastic covers for the hinges that were nice to have considering the distance this box would ultimately be traveling.

The bike arrived at my house in a matter of days. I removed the bike from the box, taking pictures of how it was packed so that I could repack it easily later. I adjusted the front brake and took it for a test ride to assess the bike mechanically. A bike shop should do this for you if you want to keep the warranty valid.

I then went to my local bike shop and assembled a basic tool and accessory kit for Mom's new bike: spare tube, patch kit, hand pump, lock, head light, multitool, tire levers and chain lube. I threw in a handful of cable ties and some clean rags, too. I reinforced the box and repacked the bike with the accessories. I biked it to the Post Office on my Xtracycle. Bike, bike, bike.

This is where the folding part becomes important. The box is oversized by USPS standards, but still much smaller than a standard bike box. USPS limits the length+girth measurement of a parcel to no more than 108 inches. This box measured 106 inches.  The postal employee said, "Phew! Sir, this is your lucky day!!"  He added that there is a HUGE surcharge for boxes over 108 inches, but the USPS website indicates that they just won't ship parcels that size.

Sending a folding bike with 20" wheels (or even 16" wheels) becomes critical if you are trying to do this on a budget, or at all. The total cost for the bike, accessories, and Priority APO shipping was about $500. Mom was more than willing to pay this price for the convenience of having her own reliable transportation.

Mom is now happily bike commuting to work at the hospital and running errands around the base, which apparently is far better than walking or taking the shuttle bus.

Have you needed to ship a bike to your deployed service member? How did it go? I'm hoping that this will help someone in a similar situation. Mom says one of her co-workers rode her folder and already plans on getting one, too!

Roald Dahl Rode Bikes

I'm currently reading 'Boy' by Roald Dahl, a collection of memories and stories from his childhood. I couldn't help but smile at this particular passage, one of only two memories that Dahl had of his few years at Llandaff Cathedral preparatory school. If only we could all be so ambitious at the age of eight.

Bike Jump The Fourth: A Stunt for a Cause

Tacoma's fourth annual Bike Jump is happening this Saturday, August 4th. It's a benefit of sorts for 2nd Cycle, Tacoma's community bicycle center in the Hilltop neighborhood. Buy a shirt, buy a poster, watch the shenanigans, and support a great cause. Here are the details, lifted from the 2nd Cycle facebook event invitation:

(poster art by Noah Struthers)

Bike Jump the forth will commence at 9ish pm at the alley of 6th and I. Be there be rectangular.  

In collaboration with Second Cycle, Galen Turner will perform an act of life defining awesomeness by jumping a 24 inch cruiser bmx bike through 90,000 volts of rare stimulated gasses and 200 feet of neon. 

Like a Tibetan monk making a sand painting only for it to be blown away, this to is a statement of impermanence and a celebration of futility and the acceptance of it all. We shall thrive. We will not fail. This day. Today. August the fourth 9 pm.  

This is a benefit for second cycle so please bring some cash to buy some bike jump posters and merch. Shit cost money.