Box in Baks

UPS has finally approved the insurance claim, so I felt comfortable disposing of the giant box and all the plastic wrapping that the Bakfiets came in.   And how better to take it all to the recycling center than in the box of the Baks!

The guys at the recycling drop off center were really interested in the bike- it had 3 or 4 admirers by the time I got back from putting everything in the appropriate bin.

First impressions of the Bakfiets

I've ridden the new bakfiets for a couple of weeks now, and I want to start reporting on my experience riding it. I'm sure I'll have more insights as I put more miles on it but I have a few notes already on capacity, handling, security and public reaction.

Capacity:

The first ride I took it on, I went all out on an enormous grocery run.  Because of the snow we had in Feburary, I hadn't been riding much, and we were low on pretty much everything.   This is what my cart looked like:

35 lb bag of dogfood, giant packages of both TP and paper towels, and just a lot of other stuff.  I was a little worried, but everything fit pretty well, although I couldn't keep the cover on because of the size of the big paper goods packages.

 I then headed up over the mid- Cambridge hill to meet the Scientist at Dwell Time for coffee.  I will admit that there was a bit where I was in the lowest gear and had to stand briefly, but I made it.   A full load and a steep hill are a worst case scenario, but now I know I can do it, if only for short distances. 

The view from the cockpit

The next day I did a Home Depot/ Target run to Watertown, and comfortably fit in a 3' roll of hardware cloth, a folding stool and assorted toiletries and cleaning products.  Normally I'd then have to stop home to unload, but I rode on to trader Joe's,  where I picked up a half case of wine among other things.  No problems with the weight or the volume. It's like having an oversized bag it's easy to toss a few more things in it.

Handling.

It's a big bike and it's heavy.  No surprise there! However, it's geared appropriately, and I haven't had any problems going up hills. It actually accelerates surprising well, although the top speed isn't very high. I managed to catch the rider on the Onderwater tandem I posted about last week, but I was really really pushing, and it was a near thing.

In general it's much more stable than you would expect such a long thing to be.   I can actually ride comfortably at surprisingly low speeds.  I'm not going to start trackstanding at lights, but I can definitely inch up to them when I'm waiting for a light to turn but don't want to put a foot down.   Of course, putting a foot down is easy, thanks to the super low bottom bracket.
The tracking is very straight, I rode it comfortably one handed while eating an apple, and it felt very stable and not- twitchy. Turning while riding is not an appreciable issue, although turning it when I'm pushing it on a sidewalk is a bit tricky and I haven't gotten getting it through the front gate completely down yet.  The kickstand, as advertised is easy to operate and incredibly stable.   I'm getting the hang of positioning the bike near a pole so that it's in the right spot for the chain to reach when I pull it back onto the kickstand.

I took it to an advocacy committee meeting and everyone wanted to take a turn riding it, and even riding just 50 foot loops on the sidewalk, everyone was surprised at how stable it was, and seemed to be having a lot of fun.

Security,
One question a lot of people ask is "where do you lock a bakfiets".  In many cases, the answer is "wherever you feel like it,"  as in some ways it's self anchoring. The "cafe" lock or wheel lock feels fine for a short trip, especially when the bike is fully loaded- no one is going to pick it up and walk away with it. I'm getting pretty skilled at locking to a single post rack, but a multiple unit rack is a non-starter for obvious reasons.    I have an Abus city chain which I can use to chain the frame to a stationary object if one is convenient, and I would definitely use that if I were parking for more than 15 minutes, or in a location that didn't feel secure.

Dedicated Bakfietsen parking zone

 I've been using the box cover almost constantly because while it's not technically "secure"  I feel it's less likely that anyone will mess with what I have in the box if it's covered.  Plus it's been rainy/ snowy/ melty, and the cover keeps things dry, and in at least one case kept it bird dropping free!  I wouldn't leave my phone/ wallet keys in there, but with the cover, I'm not worried anyone is going to steal my library books or milk.

Public reaction.
So far public reaction has been overwhelmingly positive and I've had a lot of fun interactions.  It may be that after a year I'm tired of explaining it to everyone, but so far it's been a lot of fun.
On my maiden ride, while I sat in the cafe window drinking my coffee, I could watch a series of admirers stopping to take a long look.  Interestingly they were all 20's ish hipster guys, which I don't think of that being a primary demographic for a bike that's essentially a minivan.  That might have something to do with the Dwell Time demographic though.   At my next stop, the library a mother with two kids was very interested in the handling, having seen them in travels in Europe.  I had a guy at Porter square tell me at great length that he thought that they would be incredibly popular on the Cape and Islands where tourist traffic causes backups, and locals want a way to carry stuff without dealing with traffic jams.  Even the guys at the Cambridge Recycling Station were very interested, although they balked at the price.  The absolute best reaction though was from an adorable little girl in a bike seat, who said "Mom, it's a bakfiets!  I want a bakfiets!"  We just had a second to chat before the light changed, but not surprisingly they were Dutch.
Interestingly, I haven't noticed a big difference in driver behavior around me at all.  Perhaps because from behind, it's not that different from a regular bike.  You really do feel like you are taking up real estate on the road though.

This is just my reaction after a couple of weeks of riding.  Every Friday night I look forward to riding it all weekend, and I'm looking for excuses to ride it during the week.  If I had a better place to lock it at work I'd ride it into work just for the fun of it.  One thing I was realizing the other day is that I haven't had a brand new bike since I was in high school.  Even my "refurbished" bikes like Gilbert are  a hacked together system.   And the new bike does really work well- it's so smooth and nothing rattles or rubs or feels loose.  Even though I try to keep my old bikes maintained and tuned up, it's really nice to ride a brand new bike where everything just works without any fuss.  Here's hoping for many more miles of the same.

For Want of a Nail

Or in this case a bolt!

I had my first crash today in a good long while- years at least.  Evidently I lost the bolt fastening the brake arm to the chainstay, so the brake rotated around the axle,  wrapping  the brake cable around the hub and causing the rear wheel to stop suddenly and with extreme prejudice, depositing me on the road, sideways.

I was very lucky in that I was going slowly, in a bike lane, and I mostly just tipped over sideways.  My knee is scraped (although my tights were hardly snagged)  and I'm sure I'll have a heck of a bruise tomorrow, but otherwise I'm fine.  I disentangled the cable from the hub and rode home without a rear brake.  Will have to order another of the VO braided silver brake cables, because I don't think anyone carries them around here

Just a reminder to check all those bolts and nuts and to be a regular user of Locktite or star washers or both!

Off to soothe my knee and bruised ego with some New York Super Fudge Chunk, my cure-all of choice!

Small World

Yes, I am preparing a blog about m y first couple of rides with the bakfiets, but I have too much to say to do it quickly.  I promise I've been taking lots of pictures, and riding every weekend.  I was making my coffee on Thursday morning and thought to myself- only one more day, and then I can ride my bakfiets all weekend!

Today when I was finishing up my errands, I had a pleasantly surprising encounter.
I was riding along Memorial drive, waiting to cross Western Ave,  when suddenly, I saw a birhgt orange Workcycles Onderwater Tandem riding across my path on  Western Ave.   I rang my bell like crazy,  and the rider looked over at me, recognized that I was riding a bakfiets and smiled.
In the construction and confusion of that intersection I lost her for a moment, but when I was moving again I saw her ahead, and, pushing harder than I ever had on this bike (I may have even gotten out of the saddle) I managed to catch her just before our paths diverged.

We chatted a bit about cargo bikes, kids bikes and self-importing bikes from the Netherlands.  I started to realize that she was the wife of Aaron Naparstek,  who I'd also run into because of bakfietsen.

It was great to see an Onderwater tandem in person- having only seen them online.  She said they had gotten it as their kids (6 and 8 years old) outgrew the bakfiets, and learned to pedal on their own.  In her opinion the bike handles great- better with the two kids on board, although at the time, she just had a double pannier's worth of groceries.
Her only regret was that both kids couldn't pedal at the same time,  as they're both old enough to pedal, but not quite old enough to ride independently on the street.  In many ways this seems like a heavier duty, dutchified version of the Bike Friday tandem I posted about here.  It's nice to have the kid in front though.

It was great to meet another cargo-biker-  I suspect most of us are kindred spirits in some way, and it's nice to have an easy way to identify each other as we travel through the city.

Putting it together

After it taunted me for almost two weeks, sitting in the dining room half assembled, I finally put together the bakfiets this weekend.  There weren't any directions, but the major systems were all pre-assembled, and it was (hopefully) pretty intuitive.  If anyone sees a major mistake, please let me know in the comments.

Firstly, I got together all the tools I thought I'd need:  metric allan wrenches,  ratcheting box wrenches, screwdrivers, giant crescent wrench, utility knife, grease and locktite.

Next, I slid the fork into the headset.  The fork and light and fender were all pre-assmbled.  I'm putting it together even though it's damaged,  I think it will work OK for now, while I wait to hear what UPS will do in terms of replacing/ repainting it.

The top nut had an integrated rubber flange to keep water and dirt out of the headset bearings.  This extra-giant crescent wrench was purchased for a plumbing project, but mostly gets used on bike headsets.

The whole assembly is capped with a nicely-machined stainless steel cap, held on with a set-screw.  This isn't normally an issue with most bikes, since the fork is directly below the handlebars.

Next I attached the linkage from the handlebar assembly to the tab on the fork

This is the part I'm not 100% sure I did right.  I put one washer above and one below the plate, not sure if I should have put both below the plate.  The nut is a "Nylock" lock nut, and I'm not 100% sure I tightened it enough.  It's hard to tighten, because the threaded part can rotate in the ball joint.  I held the neck of the ball-joint with needle-nose pliers and tighened the nut "fairly tight"  but in retrospect I think I should tighten them up until the nut is more snug against the metal plates on both ends.  If anyone out there has assembled one of these,  any advice would be welcome.

At this point I hit a snag.  The bakfiets has front and rear roller brakes.  They look like disk brakes because of the big disks which are cooling fins for the brake drum.  This type of brakes are very weather-proof- unlike any sort of rim mounted brake they are unaffected by wet conditions.  This is the kind of brakes I have on Gilbert's rear wheel,  and I've disassembled and re-assembled them many times.  Generally there's a banjo bolt (bolt with a hole through it)  which is clamped down on the brake cable, and which is bolted through the action arm on the brake.  When you unbolt the cable from the arm,  it's easy "lose" the setting on the cable, and you have to fuss with it when you re-assemble it to keep the tension correct.  Shimano solved this problem by creating a "quick release" plate that you bolt the cable to, and which then fits into the action arm.  

I need item "8" on this axonometric.

And guess what-  the plate is missing!  I went through all the packaging three times,  but  there was a big hole at the back of the box, and if it came un-attached from the bolt, a small part like that could easily have fallen though the hole.  For purposes of just getting the bike on the road, I went ahead and secured the cable out of the way.

I called on Monday, and unfortunately Shimano USA says that this little piece is "obsolete." So I'll need to get one from Workcycles, or will have to improvise another solution.

At this point the "bike" part was all assembled (sans front brake)  and ready to go. The small brown dog did an inspection of my work, and then it was time to take it outside to attach the box.

The box fittings use Torx "security" screws.  Fortunately I have one of those "50 bit" sets that you get at Home Depot for $19.95, which has 3 sizes of torx bits.  I'm so excited to finally get to use one of them!

From this point the assembly was just a matter of a few minutes with a power screwdriver;

 I put the cover on,  just to make sure it all fit OK

I love the red, silver and black color scheme!

And then it was time to wheel it (carefully) out the front gate: 

and go for the inaugural ride!

I immediately took it on an enormous grocery run- but this post has already been too long, so I'll detail the first couple of rides and my observations about it for another post.  But I can summarize my initial impressions with one word-  Yowza!

Thinking inside the Baks

As anyone who's read this blog much knows, I run almost all of the Cycler-Scientist household errands by bicycle.  Groceries, CSA pickups, Household tools,building materials, landscape supplies, boxes to be mailed, library books, compost, exercise equipment, toy wheelbarrows, takeout food, Christmas trees:  there isn't much I haven't at least thought about carrying by bike.  I was talking to my friend Cris, about how I draw the line at the propane tank for the grill.  The consequences of a full tank of propane falling off the rack and bouncing on the street seemed pretty terrifying.

But now, I'll be able to carry the propane tank too!  As those watching my twitter feed may have guessed, I received a two very large boxes last week containing a Workcycles Cargobike Long aka "bakfiets."

The box with the frame and wheels

Photo from http://www.workcycles.com

The bike is a present from the Scientist for a "Birthday of Significance" last fall.   He actually had a plan to buy a Bakfiets.nl bike when he was in Munich right before said birthday,  but when he arrived at the dealer there, they'd sold out.  We test rode one at Adeline Adeline, but shipping it from NYC seemed almost as much trouble as shipping one from Europe.  Plus the Scientist was going to Amsterdam in January, and we thought he could just pick it up while he was there, and self-import it as "luggage."  The German and Dutch postdocs in his lab were so excited and helped him do a lot of research on the subject.

So we started talking to Henry Cutler at Workcycles, and thought we'd basically figured it out, and then sort of forgot about it until mid-December.  Then we got bogged down in the logistics of one person taking a couple of giant boxes on the plane,  and by the time we figured that all out, Henry had sold out of his stock.   Those Bakfietsen, selling like hotcakes!  Unfortunately the Bakfiets.nl factory,  where the Workcycles cargo bikes are built (with slightly tweaked specifications) was going to be closed for the holidays until the day after the Scientist was coming back to the US.   After looking at the logistics, we decided to have it shipped via UPS from Amsterdam.

But why a bakfiets?   I first rode a bakfiets about 6 years ago in Portland OR, at Clever Cycles.  Maybe it's because of my crazy cargo-carrying tendencies (see first paragraph above), but I thought they were so cool, and ever since,  they turn my head like no other bike.   I know that there are a lot of arguments for long tail bikes, and now that step-through long and mid-tails are available, they might work for me.  However, I like the option of carrying really bulky stuff (like said propane tank)  or cargo that I need to keep an eye on in front in a big box.   For example, I'd like to be able to rig a harness that will let me take the small brown dog with me on nice days while I run my errands.  I probably won't ride it much to work (although I may ride on CSA pickup days),  but will probably ride it most weekend days.  My days of organizing my errands in circles to dump things and pick things up at the house may truly be over.

Also, for me, the bakfiets has a romance that I don't feel from the longtails.  I'm suppose I'm kind of drawn to the idea of being a poster-bike for car-free life when I'm riding around.  It's been hypothesized that cargo bikes are the "new indicator species"  in places like Boston where we are starting to have a serious bike culture.  A cargo bike says "I live my life with a bike, not a car, and I need a bike that will make that possible."  And I won't be the only one-I know a couple of families locally that have them, and though I wouldn't say they're common, they're increasingly visible.  For example, just after I met the UPS driver to get the box, just as I stepped out of my door to head to work, a Bakfiets went by, ridden by a young man who looked like a bike messenger,  with a box filled to the top with stuff.

There are two unfortunate things- Firstly, although Workcycles spent a lot of time wrapping each part of the frame in foam, evidently the customs inspector took a lot of those wrappings off (to check for contraband???)  and that, combined with a rather large hole in the box resulted in some gouges in the seat tube paint.

  Further unwrapping revealed that the box had been crushed badly enough to bend the 1/4" steel plate where the steering linkage attaches to the fork,  and the front fender had been badly dented and the paint cracked.  I am waiting to meet with UPS for them to "inspect the packaging" as part of a claim.  Not sure if we can get touchup paint yet, or if we need to replace the fork to properly attach the linkage.

Secondly, and even more upsettingly, I probably won't be able to test ride it for another week or so.  Partly because of the UPS damage claim, we haven't assembled it yet.  The Scientist is going to be out of town later this week,  and I can't assemble it without his help, let alone get it out the door.   Even if I could, it would be terribly rude to enjoy my first ride on his thoughtful present without him there to watch. Maybe by the time it's all together for a test ride the snow will be at least slightly melted!   I'm honestly not sure how we'd get it out the front gate right now, as there's a 4' snowbank about 3' away from the gate.

Gee- I bet you can't guess which part this is!  Sitting on the enormous snowbank.

So in the meantime it's sitting in my dining room taunting me!  The good news is that I absolutely love the color.  I was a tiny bit worried as "matte silver" could cover a lot of ground, but it's a nice dark silver- something J Crew would call "Titanium" The red fenders and black chain-case are a great contrast too.  The frame alone looks enormous sitting in our dining room, and I keep nervously looking at photos of them with people for scale, and trying to assure myself that it will be the right size.

A test ride and more photos will have to wait.  But I'm sure there will be lots and lots of photos of Portage P0rn featuring the new bike in the future- so stay tuned!

Gilbert gets a Heron-ectomy

After a lot of deliberation over the last year or more, I decided to give Gilbert a "Heron-ectomy", and change over to a modern drive-train.  Although the distinctive "heron" pattern of the classic Raleigh chainring is very charming,  I felt that the left crank, or possibly the actual axle was somehow damaged or bent, and something was causing me to wear through pedals on the left side at an unacceptable rate.  Even though Pedalite has been amazingly generous in their replacement policy, there were other reasons to make the switch.  The cotters were a hassle any time I needed to get them off, and given that the theory was to have the chain-ring hidden in the chaincase to properly seal the chain away from the weather, I decided that it was time to upgrade to a "modern" bottom bracket and crankset.  Ultimately I have three other bicycles with exposed Raleigh heron chain-rings, and I thought that for my everyday bicycle function was more important than charm.

The weird Raleigh 26tpi  bottom bracket threading used to be the hard part in updating Raleigh drivetrains.  But now Velo Orange (among others) make replacement shells that friction fit into any threading BB shell, even the notoriously weird Raleigh 26 TPI thread ones.
The really hard part is finding a chainring without a raised "spider"  that will interfere with the chaincase, and which has enough clearance between the crank and the chainring to allow the pie plate part of the chaincase to fit.

This is a pretty complicated procedure, with a lot of twiddly bits and knowing exactly what to order, so I didn't feel comfortable doing it myself.   So I handed the bike over to Emily at Hub bicycles.  It took her a couple of tries to find the right chainring, and after ordering a couple of things, she settled on the Origin-8 Classic Sport Single

Image from the manufacturer's website

And this is how it looks in the chaincase.

The clearances are pretty tight, but adequate

She did a couple of other routine maintenance tasks, but one thing that she couldn't manage to do was to put the chaincase "pie plate" back on.   I can't find an official name for this piece, but it's nothing to do with the "pie plate" spoke shield that keeps a chain from going into the spokes of a rear wheel.  I'm talking about the plate which allows access to the chainring and BB without removing the chaincase.

Somehow the chaincase, which is made of pretty thin metal, had distorted and the plate just wouldn't stay popped in. Typically the plate,  which has a little raised rim kind of like a top hat, is held in by friction with the hole in the chaincase, which has a rolled edge to make it "thicker"  and provide more contact. I had been having problems with it before the overhaul, and had it kind of wedged in with some sticky putty-type adhesive, and knew I was going to have to really solve the problem at some point if I wanted to keep the chaincase really enclosed.

After thinking about magnets, and various semi-permanent adhesives, I finally decided to go with mechanical fasteners. What would have been the easiest thing would be to find something that's called a "bung" which is a little threaded thing with a flange on it, which is designed to bolt things onto thin sheet metal. The flange is glued or welded to the sheet metal with the threaded piece sticking through the hole.  However, I couldn't find a bung online any smaller than 1/4" diameter, which was way too big for the flange.

A bung from my random parts drawer.  Threaded inside, too big for this application.

I ended up using a 2mm bolt and nut.  The tough part was to fasten a nut inside the chain-case so that it would remain fixed and not turn so that I could turn the bolt and snug it up.  This ended up taking several very delicate attempts.   I put glue on the nut, and then eased it in place with a pair of tweezers, and then glommed hot glue on it to keep it in place while the glue dried.  With a tiny nut and an awkward angle it felt a bit like playing "Operation" without actually being able to see the tips of the tweezers, as they disappeared around the edge of the chaincase. I first used "liquid nails"  mostly because it had enough viscosity to hold the nut in place, but it didn't adhere to the painted metal very well.   I ended up using JB weld,  after cleaning the inside of the case well with xylene to degrease it, and coating the threads with grease to make sure that the JB weld didn't muck up the threads of the nut.

Once the adhesive had cured for 24 hours, I liberally coated the screw threads with Locktite,  and carefully screwed the plate in,  and counted myself lucky that the nuts held in place.

Screws through the rim of the pie-plate

So far it's worked pretty well.   I don't know if the adhesive will withstand the torque if I ever have to remove the plate and re-attach it- I felt like it was always a bit tenuous. It will be fine now that it's tightened down though.  I think that if I have to do it again, I will remove the entire chaincase (easier now with the modern set up)  and perhaps try to solder or otherwise fasten the nuts in more permanently.  Hopefully that doesn't arise for a good long time.  I also need to find the little closure plate that slides into the slots and covers the remaining slot.  I know it's around somewhere and will turn up sooner or later.