The Speeding Bullitt of Somerville

Sometimes Somerville really is a village. On my way home last Friday, I discovered the Co-Habitant, Somervillain and Brian P. engaged in what appeared to be an impromptu bike-testing party, after having crossed paths on their way home from work. The many other cyclists who rode by craned their necks with interest, because of course none of these were "normal" bicycles. Somervillain had his Bike Friday tandem, which he was riding alone. The Co-Habitant had his Pashley. And Brian P. had his Bullitt cargo bike. My own arrival on the swan-frame Pilen complemented the scene nicely. The sun was setting over the Peter Forg Manufacturing Co., bathing the street in that magical golden light. I had wanted to try Brian's cargo bike, and now was my chance.

The bike is a Bullitt "Milk Plus" model, made by Larry vs Harry. It is a Danish cargo bike, based on a traditional "long john" design - similar to a Dutch bakfiets, but with a longer and narrower cargo platform. Larry vs Harry market the Bullit as being fast and sporty in comparison to other cargo bikes. The bike is 245cm (96.5") long, 45cm (18.5") wide, and it weighs 24kg (53lb) unloaded.  It has a 20" front wheel and a 26" rear wheel. Detailed geometry specs and blueprints are available here.

The frame is heavy-duty welded aluminum.

The frame is described by Bullitt owners as extremely stiff. I like the part where the main tube branches out to form the platform - there is something visually appealing about this junction.

The (optional) cargo box is plywood. It can be used to carry cargo or passengers and comes with a water-resistant cover.

The bike is equipped with disc brakes.

And an 8-speed IGH drivetrain. See here for complete specs.

The wide double kickstand keeps the bike unquestionably sturdy and is easy to activate.

Brian bought this bicycle from Splendid Cycles in Portland, OR, and they installed a dynamo hub with the Supernova E3 headlight and tail light.

He also replaced the stock racing-style saddle with a Brook Flyer, and he says that that the sprung saddle works well with the stiffness of the frame.

He replaced the stock mountain bike-style handlebars with North Roads,

and added a modified Civia rack from Calhoun Cycle with a set of Dutch panniers.

I found the overall look of the modified Milk Plus Bullittt extremely attractive and was looking forward to trying it. It felt well-balanced as I was walking it, which gave me hope.

The saddle is quick release and smooth to operate; I was able to adjust the saddle height myself.

The stem is also quick release, making it possible for different riders to adjust handlebar height to their tastes.

I was able to step over the Bullitt's top tube while wearing a skirt without having to swing my leg around the back; the standover height is similar to that of a large mixte. I was comfortable and ready to ride the bike... which, unfortunately, was not so easy! The main problem is that the Bullitt needs to gain momentum in order to become stable. When just starting or going slowly, the long front end fishtails wildly and the bike is difficult to control.

After a few shaky starts, I did manage to ride the Bullitt down the street and pick up some speed, only to falter when attempting to come to a stop. Luckily, the bike was easy to hold up once it started to fall over to the side, so I did not outright crash it into the ground. Not wanting to damage somebody else's shiny bicycle, I did not make further attempts. Not pictured here, but Somervillain tried the Bullitt as well with similar results- false starts, then finally getting it going, then dumping it when attempting to stop at the end of the street. There is a learning curve.

I understand the concept of having to get the bike up to speed in order to achieve stability. But unless I am missing something, this seems at odds with using it in stop-and-go traffic - which is what I thought cargo bikes are designed for... In any case, some riders may find operating the Bullitt more intuitive than others.

The Co-Habitant pretty much was able to ride it, though he described the same fishtailing sensation and said that he'd need a lot of practice to feel comfortable with it in traffic.

Brian handles the bike like a pro, making it look extremely easy. He reports having been able to ride it pretty much on the day it was assembled - sticking to local streets initially, then venturing into heavier traffic.

Looking at these pictures, it occurs to me that perhaps people with beards take to the Bullitt faster than people without. Based on our very scientific sample size of n=4 at least, that seems to be the case.

At this point, Brian has had the Bullitt for just over 2 months and enjoys it tremendously. It is indeed supposed to be faster and more maneuverable than other cargo bikes, once you get the hang of the handling. Brian lives atop of an insane hill that I would hate to tackle every day even on a roadbike. He finds the Bullitt manageable when cycling up it. Typical commuting speed is about 10mph, or faster with no cargo. Normally, Brian uses the Bullit to pick up his son from daycare and for groceries. He has also done a camping trip on it once, which he will soon describe on his website. When I asked Brian for critical feedback, he replied that the size made the bike unwieldy to walk - for example, when strolling with someone else on the sidewalk. There is also no good way to secure valuable items on the bike, making multi-trip shopping difficult. These issues are of course common to all cargo bikes.

The Bullitt Milk Plus with Brian's modifications is dashingly handsome, and just the right size for the kind of cargo we'd need to carry. If I could ride it, I'd be seriously fantasising about it. But while I can see myself quickly getting used to the Christiania trike I tried earlier, realistically speaking I cannot imagine feeling comfortable enough with the Bullitt to ride it in traffic. The slow-speed handling is just too quirky for me. Reactions to the Bullitt seem to greatly depend on individual bike handling skills and preferences. For those who can handle it, the Bullitt is a unique cargo bike option in the combination of speed, agility and load capacity it offers. But I would strongly recommend test riding this bike before buying.

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3 Wheels and a Box: the Christiania Cargo Trike

If you've been hoping for a change of pace from the recurring roadcycling theme, your wish is granted. Yesterday I had a visit from Will of BoxCycles - an importer of European utility bicycles whose warehouse is not far from Boston. The purpose of the visit was to drop off one of these - but more on that later! In the meantime, he was also delivering this Christiania cargo trike to someone local, and I had the opportunity to try it. 

Christiania Bikes have been around since 1976, initially as a small workshop in the Freetown Christiania neighbourhood of Copenhagen, Denmark. If you do not already know the history of this unusual neighbourhood, it's worth looking into - very interesting stuff. In addition to Christiania bikes, the modern incarnation of Pedersen began there as well. Having over time expanded, Christiania now has a factory on Bornholm Island. Their cycles remain manufactured, finished and assembled by hand - the most popular model being the cargo trike shown here.

Though I occasionally see cargo trikes both in Europe and in the US, this is the first time I've examined one so closely. The Christiania is a heavy-duty welded aluminum frame with three 24" wheels: two in front and one in rear. The cargo box is positioned between the front wheels and the cyclist steers with it when turning.  The box is plywood, and there are several models available in different widths and lengths. This trike is 82" long and 34" wide, weighing 75lb when empty. It accommodates 100kg (220.5lb) of weight can can be used for anything from hauling cargo to transporting children.

Inside the box is a bench with padded seat cushions and two sets of seatbelts. Given the weight capacity, this trike can easily fit several children, or even an adult or two.

Seatbelt attachment points on the back of the box.

The handlebars are not really handlebars at all, but more like a pram or shopping cart handle.

The lefthand side is set up with a front brake lever, parking brake and bell. A parking brake is necessary with a cargo trike; without one it will roll down even the tiniest inclines.

The righthand side is set up with a gear shifter. The trikes are available as either 7 or 8 speeds.

Shimano coaster brake hub, clear chainguard, massive cranks and non-slip pedals.

The chainguard provides good coverage, though it is not a full chaincase.

The front wheels are set up with disk brakes, which are activated by the hand lever. Tires are Schwalbe Big Apple.

Rear reflectors are affixed to the fenders of each wheel. A dynamo lighting package is available with his model, using a bottle generator on the rear wheel (you can see the attachment arm for it here).

The stock saddle is a plushy vinyl Selle San Remo.

I rode the trike briefly and clumsily, so I better use the pictures I took of Will to show you how it works. To operate the trike, you basically need to point the box, using that one long handle, in the direction you need to go. This sounds simple enough, but if you've never ridden this kind of trike before it is completely counter-intuitive. The other thing that takes getting used to is that when turning, the box pivots on its axel and becomes parallel to the cyclist - not unlike a swing bike!

Watch this: Here is the trike going straight.

And here is what happens when turning. Crazy!

Those who own one of these trikes say it takes about a day to get the hang of the steering, but that once you do it becomes second nature. While I have no experience with other trikes, there is a nice test ride report on Suburban Bike Mama where she compares the Christiania to her own Sorte Jernhest. I've also seen a couple of Christianias around Boston at this point, and the owners seem pretty adept at steering. 

If we continue to live without a car (which at this point seems likely), it is possible that I may want to get some massive cargo hauling contraption in the future, which is why I was curious to test ride one of these. One thing that surprised me about the unloaded Christiania is how light it felt. I expected the trike itself to be heavy and clunky, but it has an almost airy feel to it without cargo. It rolls easily, including up the mild incline of my street. Once it is filled with 100lbs of stuff I am sure the handling will be different, but it is nice to know how the trike behaves on its own as well. Making turns felt wild and tippy, but also a lot of fun. Since others are able to grasp it in a day, I am sure I would as well. My one source of ambivalence toward the Christiania, is that it seems designed specifically to transport children, which is not what I would need a cargo bike for. It's not only the benches (which I am sure are optional), but also that long handle and something about the general look that, to me at least, makes it resemble a giant pram. I can just imagine using this trike to carry equipment and being constantly asked how many kids I have. Having said that, I think that most people considering a cargo trike like this do in fact plan to transport children, which would make what I am describing a good thing. If drivers see you on the road and think "baby carriage!" they will probably be more careful and will give you more room.

Front loaded box cycles - be they two wheeled bakfiets or cargo trikes - are a radically different experience than riding a standard bicycle, but they also offer a radically different degree of utility. As more people are looking at transportation cycling as a normal and viable option, cargo bikes of all sorts are becoming more popular and I love seeing them on the streets. Maybe a couple of years from now, I will be riding one to the hardware store and writing about it here.

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Over the Rainbow: Transatlantic Smugness

(Via a reader, the time-traveling t-shirt-wearing retro-Fred from the planet Tridork demonstrates some on-the-bike yoga.)

For many Americans (look it up on a map, it's the place that keeps Canada and Mexico from dry-humping) the weather has been awful. Ice storms in New York, "epic" snowfalls in Chicago, and machete-wielding locust swarms in Milwaukee have all but brought everyday life to a grinding (or, in the case of Milwaukee, screaming "Why, God, why?!?" and bleeding) halt--and that's to say nothing of cycling, which in some places has been rendered virtually impossible. That's why, now more than ever, we need videos that will lift our spirits and "portage" them though the blizzard and into the spring. The following is emphatically not such a video:

robo-rainbow from mudlevel on Vimeo.

Good for you, paint boy. Go stuff your rainbow machine down your "coin slot."

Speaking of smugness and unwieldy bicycles, the two go together like Canada and Mexico would if America wasn't such a cockblocker, and I noticed with interest recently that Cyclingnews technical editor and beefy bottom bracket enthusiast James Huang has been living la vida smugness by spending an entire month using a longtail cargo bike instead of his car:

Carrying lots of stuff by bicycle and then bragging about it on the Internet is almost exactly like making a treacly video of yourself painting a pretty rainbow on the wall in that it makes most people want to punch you in the nose. At the same time, though, like most things that make people want to punch other people in the nose it's also immensely satisfying when you're the person doing it, which is why I do it too. Also, as Huang notes:

If nothing else, these few days have shattered personal perspectives on when a car is needed – and when it isn't. And looking back at my Garmin data, there's been a lot more time spent on a bike than there otherwise might have been, all while usually only adding negligible minutes to my errands when factoring in traffic and parking time. And of course, there's the small but not insignificant amount of money saved in fuel and occasional parking meters.

This has been my experience too, apart from the fact that I don't have a Garmin and I avoid any sort of "data" at all costs. (Plus, obviously driving isn't always the easy choice in New York City that it is elsewhere.) Sure, I'm riding a Surly Big Dummy, and he's riding an Xtracycle ripoff from the Great Trek Bicycle Making Company's "Gary Fisher Collection" (the Gary Fisher Collection is a line of bicycles and not a limited edition series of designer bongs as you might assume), but that doesn't mean we can't be Siblings In Smugness (or, if you prefer, "SISsies"). James Huang also makes another good point, which is that some cities are simply more conducive to smugness:

Having a bike purpose built for the task certainly helps but an even bigger factor to this project's success has been the bicycle-friendly infrastructure built into my local city planning, not to mention the generally friendly and curious – not hostile – attitudes of the drivers around me, many of whom are likely cyclists themselves. Local mountain bikers may sometimes say otherwise but Boulder is an insanely easy place to do business on a bicycle as compared to the US national standard.

Oddly, and to my great surprise, even in New York I've had a similar experience in that non-cycling people generally seem to be more curious than hostile--though I suppose that's due to the novelty factor, and once more people start carrying bulky items by bike they'll get back to the business of trying to run us over. Also, while some cyclists debate whether the new protected bike lanes in New York City are in fact an improvement, when you're actually hauling crap by bike they are nothing less than a Lobsend. There is one other crucial difference between my experience and James Huang's, which is that his smugmobile is electrically-assisted:

Woosie.

I have a feeling that, in the not-too-distant future, some researcher in Portland is going to devise a rear hub that is powered by vegan flatulence, and the world of "portaging" will be completely revolutionized.

Speaking of driver hostility, the BBC recently profiled a London cyclist who wears a helmet cam so he can catch motorists in the act of being complete douchebags:

I hate to generalize people based on nationality, but nobody--and I mean nobody--flashes a "They won't get away with this!" expression like an Englishman.

By the way, in the feature film, Ben Porter the helmet-cammed commuter will be played by Griffin Dunne:

("They won't get away with this!")

Oh, I'm sure they won't.

Anyway, I was expecting the helmet cam footage to reveal some shocking incidences of bad driving, but the worst thing they showed was this van getting a little too close to him:

I was definitely frightened by the driver, though, who practically exploded from the vehicle in a burst of anglo-belligerence:

Here in the United Cockblockers of America, we're terrified by belligerent English people, for the simple reason that we don't have much exposure to them. Everybody in the world knows Americans are crazy, since when we're not actually invading other countries we're attacking them with our entertainment. Honestly, would anybody on the planet be surprised to see video of an American driver murdering 17 people with an automatic weapon because a cyclist touched his van? Of course not--this is the land of Martin Erzinger! Indeed, people expect us to be crazy, since we've exported all of our regional insanity in entertainment form:

However, due to this imbalance in cultural trade, we Americans know very little about English craziness--in our naive worldview, the only people who are supposed to be as crazy as us are Arabs. English people are supposed to be dashing like James Bond, or charmingly befuddled like Hugh Grant, or lovable mop-tops like the Beatles or Bradley Wiggins. This is why our students lag behind children in the rest of the world--when we learn about things like the American Revolution, we can't even wrap our minds around the concept. "Really? We fought them?!?" So you can only imagine what would happen to one of us if we were to go to England and get in a tussle with a van driver--we'd probably just stand there waiting for Guy Ritchie to yell "cut!"

Clearly, though, all English-speaking countries share the same skewed bicycle/car relationship, as evidenced by this "heated debate" between a cyclist and a "motoring journalist." Guess which one is which:


"I think a big chunk of the problem is actually the cyclists and their attitudes themselves," says motoring journalist Adam Rayner:

Ha, ha. He said, "Big chunk."

Meanwhile, here's "journalist and keen cyclist" Zoe Williams trying desperately to keep her composure:

That is one angry cycling advocate. An American almost certainly would have shot somebody by now.

"The road is such a serious place," concludes Adam Rayner in an attempt to make Williams's trembling upper lip leap off of her face entirely. "If I'm burning petrol or diesel the legislation I'm surrounded by while you guys are diving in and out of traffic like swallows--"

"It's only a serious place if you're not watching people and trying not to kill them," counters Williams, failing to add that the only kind of swallowing Rayner is capable of doing is the kind that involves enormous quantities of food.

Anyway, just as it does here, the whole registering and insuring bicycles thing comes up, and when Williams denounces it the host says, "Then you're saying you want to be recognized but you don't want the accountability."

I don't know why some people think that drivers will suddenly respect cyclists if they need to register their bikes. Motorcycles require license plates, and insurance, and all the rest of it, but in my experience motorcyclists get about as much respect as cyclists do. Maybe next time someone tries to run me off the road I'll hold a driver's license and motor vehicle registration up to their window. I'm sure they'll apologize profusely and back off.

Of course, there's no better way to get respect on a bicycle than by demonstrating your awesome trackstanding skills, and a link left by a reader in the comments on yesterday's post shows just how seductive a well-executed trackstand can be:



track stand on alcatraz - m4w - 30 (oakland rockridge / claremont)
Date: 2011-02-01, 5:13PM PST

I was pretty impressed by your biking skills at the intersection of alcatraz and telegraph this morning. You held a track stand for a long time and then took off up telegraph like a pro. You were riding a tiny black fixed gear with red rims, you were wearing all black and had long hair and you were just ridiculously beautiful.

I was stopped with my bike on the other side of the intersection, transfixed. I was wearing a military coat and riding an old blue motobecane.

I work in a bike shop, I'd love to give you a tune-up.

It was almost charming until that smarmy "Hot Karl" of a closing line.

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