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Packed!

7/30/2015

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Bike+extra gear comes to a total of 46 pounds

Tent, sleeping bag, pad, clothes, pannier, flip flops flit perfectly in my little suitcase

Everything ready to go with children as scale

After a day of stress and fretting over packing, I think I'm ready to go! Flight leaves tonight just before midnight. Sadly, I learned the mistake of booking Spirit Airline. Thankfully, it's my return flight so I don't have to worry too much for another week. However, due to its strict regulations, my carry-on doesn't fit and I had to purchase a checked bag and my bike doesn't fit as checked luggage so I booked a separate flight home for it via Shipbikes.com. This "cheap" flight has become anything but. Live and learn!

Please send all you happy, bike-protecting thoughts to sweet little Bluebell as we start our journey late tonight. Wish us both luck for a safe trip.

Things I've forgotten already:

A book

My shipping label

Headphones that work

Earplugs

A strap to hold the suitcase closed

More chocolate

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Prepping for Adventure Cycling

7/29/2015

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It's been quiet on the blog lately, and anything but at our house. We've been hosting a Spanish course leader while I've been helping to run an exchange student program for the past month. I know I said that I had retired from that last year, but old habits die hard and it ended up being a wonderful (but busy) way to spend July. Probably my favorite part of the summer was watching our Spanish friend take to biking and claim the Linus as his own. On his free afternoons, he'd hop on the bike and cruise over to a quiet beach area along the American River Parkway. He's now back home and has decided he wants to get a bike just like ours to travel around Seville when he lives and works. Amazingly, Sevilla is an upcoming biking Mecca, making great strides to improve their bike infrastructure and encouraging cycling.

I also made sure to teach him how to properly lock up a bike!

Much better! Can you spot the difference?

Now, with the students having just left on Monday, life should be calmng down, instead, I'm in the middle of a frantic three-day preparation to fly across the country to help lead an Adventure Cycling family fun tour in Minnesota! I was able to get in contact with one of the main organizers for the family fun trips and they amazingly had an opening for a staff member on the Paul Bunyan tour and the dates just barely worked for my schedule. It was an opportunity I just couldn't pass up. So, I bought someast minute plane tickets, a Bike Friday New World Tourist (although that's part of a larger story I need to tell soon), and decided I'd figure it all out once the exchange student program was over.

Which leads me to today. I leave the day after tomorrow and I've never flown with a bike, let alone crunching one up into a checkable suitcase. Luckily, I had some great advice and a straightforward YouTube video to guide me.

Here went nothing (and a touch of my patience)...

This bike in that box...sure...

Packing supplies

Hardest part so far was keeping the bike from tipping over constantly.

It's getting smaller!

Kitties are helpful

Removing the dérailleur for protection. Fingers crossed...

Looks about right...

I did it!!!!!!

Oops...I didn't do it...

Wait! Now, I've done it for sure! It's a very snug fit and I'm nervous about opening it back up. Everything is quite well padded and secure, I think. With everything inside and a few extra bits and pieces, it came to about 45 pounds, under the 50 pound weight limit for checked bags. Whew!

A few hopeful notes to my TSA friends to help them open the case up carefully (if they have to...)

So now the hard part of the packing is over but there's still the carry-on suitcase that will be holding my camping gear, other stuff, and clothing. This is a supported tour so I don't have to worry too much about weight during the trip but I can see how having the trailer conversion kit could really come in handy for self-contained adventures. Hopefully, this will be the first of many great Adventure Cycling and other multimodal bike tours!

The baby bike! I think I'll call her Bluebell. So tiny!

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Guest Post: Gernot's Hauladay part 2

7/10/2015

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I'm excited to welcome back Gernot to our blog with some more detailed information about how he chose to set up his family's HaulaDay. I love learning about how people use their bikes and seeing the very individual ways they make their vehicle fit their unique needs. Gernot and his family live in Thailand and have been car-free since 2008. They have two young boys to shuttle around and recently purchased a Bike Friday HaulaDay to fit their family's transportation needs.

Here you go:

I promised Elle I would write up a run down of our equipment choices for our Hauladay, so here it is. Our objective for the bike was as a daily commuter for my wife, rain or shine, and a kindergarten delivery vehicle for our two sons (3 and 5 years old).

Secondary considerations were bringing home larger purchases, and delivering sometimes large packages to the post office (one of my wife’s side gigs is fulfillment for a friend’s museum store’s mail-order business).

The third consideration was for me to be able to ride the bike occasionally on longer family rides with the kids on the back and my wife on her Rivendell Betty Foy, as I am the stronger rider, usually.

Cargo accessories:

We got the bike “fully loaded” with all the carrying accessories that Bike Friday offers (passenger handrail, deck cushion, running boards, cargo bags, front rack, front basket, kickstand). Because of sometimes torrential rains here in Thailand, I also ordered a pair of Ortlieb BackRoller panniers which mount easily to the rear portion of the cargo deck to swallow the boys’ school backpacks. Installed as far back as possible they still allow the boys’ legs to hang comfortably in front of the panniers.

Drivetrain and cockpit:

We opted for the 24 speed option and disk brakes. I am not a huge fan of disk brakes, but on this bike it seemed like a good option. For a while we thought we’d get the 8 speed setup with the large range rear cassette, because my wife likes to have a European style full length chain guard, which Americans believe is incompatible with a triple chain ring and front derailer. However, we were in Germany when we finalized the order, and I noticed numerous local city bikes with full chain guards AND front detailers. So I sought out the bike store shown on a sticker of one of the bikes I saw parked on the street, and purchased one of these nifty chain guards hoping I could make it work. It was 20 Euros, so if not, it wasn’t much of a gamble. So we went with the triple chainring, but forgot to swap the super wide range cassette for the normal one. No big deal, though I don’t think we’ll ever use the lowest gear. :) I haven’t installed the full chain guard yet because I have to remove the bottom bracket mounting ring, and don’t have my bottom bracket tool with me here in Thailand, so I’ll have to supply an update on that later.

I already had a pair of handlebars very similar to the BF cargo bars, so I used those. I also hate grip shifters (and rapid fire shifters), so I decided to install one of my pairs of Suntour XC Pro thumb shifters from the early 90s. We stuck with the basic derailer, but rear shifting has been not as positive as on our other bikes outfitted with friction thumb shifters. Our other bikes all have 9 speed cassettes, so in theory at least the 8 speed cassette on the HaD should work better with the friction thumb shifters, but in practice this is not so. The main differences seems to be that the HaD has continuous cable housing, which introduces additional friction into the system, and a much cheaper rear derailer than on our other bikes. I may try a more expensive derailer, but am suspecting that the housing is the more likely culprit. It’s been a couple of weeks now, and the shifting seems to have improved, so I’ll leave it alone for the time being. I got locking mtn bike grips which stop the annoying tendency of plain rubber grips to creep, especially in hot weather.

Another upgrade I ordered separately was 2.0” Schwalbe Big Apple tires. With the small wheels, having a bit more cush seemed like a good idea for passenger comfort, and I am a fan of relatively supple big tires in general. Note that the fit under the stock fenders is a bit tight, but can be made to work with a bit of fiddling.

Lastly, I mounted a Brooks Finesse ladies’ saddle with a shorter nose (easier to ride on in a skirt) and cheap plastic platform pedals patterned on grippy BMX pedals, but with the advantage of front and rear reflectors. I may swap in the MKS Grip King pedals from my wife’s other bike, but so far she likes these just fine.

Lights and safety:

I ordered a generator front hub, but purchased and installed the generator headlight (the amazing B+M Eyc) myself. I managed to attach the light to the fork crown, modifying the mounting bracket so the light could clear the front basket. See my separate post on detailed installation instructions: http://www.tinyhelmetsbigbikes.com/blog-we-ride/guest-post-gernots-hauladay-generator-light-installation

The tail light I installed is a fender-mounted LED light powered by 2 AAA batteries, because running cables to the rear light seemed like a bad idea given the telescoping frame. The best of these is probably the Spanninga Pixeo XB (or Xba, with auto on/off), but I had another one lying around and used that. The nice thing is that it is fully protected inside the “roll cage” of the rear rack, while most cargo will not block the view of the light from the rear. The not so nice thing is that the cargo bags do block the view from the side. I may install a second battery powered taillight on the seat post just for side visibility. Using a zip-tie, I also installed a second red reflector under the cargo deck. This reflector sways gently as the bike moves, which may increase visibility further. I wish I had ordered a flag from BF, which is very reasonably priced, but didn’t see that that was an ordering option.

I also installed, at my wife’s request, two rearview mirrors. (She argues, quite sensibly, that one needs to merge left and right, and that all motorcycles therefore have two, so why not bikes?) My preferred mirror is a German one that Rivendell sells: http://www.rivbike.com/product-p/m5.htm. I tried installing them below the handlebars so that one’s arms don’t block the view, and really liked that placement, but it didn’t work for my wife, so I placed them above the bars.

Rain protection:

Because of the tropical rains, I also installed a mud flap on the front fender. I’ll have to add one to the front of the rear fender as well, but haven’t done that yet (BF installs the rear fender backwards, so the front portion doesn’t extend far enough down for full coverage). I also purchased a pair of Ortlieb Backroller Classic panniers to put the kids’ backpacks in during the rainy season. clamped onto the rear half of the load deck, they still allow both kids to sit comfortably and to climb up by themselves.

Here you can see the Ortlieb panniers, the fender mounted tail light, and the extra reflector under the deck.

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Packed!

Prepping for Adventure Cycling

Guest Post: Gernot's Hauladay part 2

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