There are few things more fun than cycling with your kids, especially when they’re in front of you so you can talk as you ride. A baby giggles, gurgles and squeals at all of the sights and probably the dynamics of cycling as well. With a toddler the communication is obviously more intellectually stimulating. P1 (2.5 yrs old): “Papa, papa… Taxi, blue Land Rover jeep winch, two motorcycle! Thaaaat’s funny. No helmet racing bicycle! Playground! Slide. Go to plaaaayyyyy ground!!! Plaaaaaayyyyy ground!!!!” Still, nowhere is P1 more motivated to articulate complete concepts than on the bike. I expect the same will be true for P2, except probably with girl topics instead of our current mini gearhead talk.
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Workcycles bikes demonstrating that they’re not spring flowers. They’re built to live like this.

This is a slightly updated repost: Winter is upon us somewhat early this year and this is highly relevant info for anybody who cycles through the winter, especially if your bike is stored outdoors.

By far the most common problem that the cyclist encounters with winter cycling is the brake or gear cables freezing. This is generally the result of water condensing or dripping into the cable housing and then freezing, effectively bonding the inner cable to the housing. It only takes a tiny bit of water to do this but we fortunately have a solution. Read below for an explanation.
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We arrived at work yesterday figuring that the sub-zero cold, wind and snow would keep most of the customers away, leaving us with time to work on some projects. The highest priority is reconfiguring our workshop after building a massive, floor-anchored, steel frame to hang our electric bike lifts from. It’s a great improvement but not entirely our own initiative. The lifts, you see, were bolted into the 150 or 200 year old wooden beams of our ceiling… and thus the floor of the neighbors upstairs. Though the lifts are nearly new and operate very quietly they do make some vibration. Standing on the concrete (over sand) floor we never noticed this vibration but it drove the lady upstairs crazy. Actually she’s complained very vocally and angrily about a lot of things, apparently calling and writing every possible authority on a regular basis. Most of her complaints have nothing to do with our activities (there’s another bike workshop next door and several apartments have been renovated), but the vibration was a legitimate issue according to the various city inspectors who visited to investigate.
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A Workcycles customer in Frankfurt, Germany sent this photo along; one more handy advantage of a bakfiets.

See also:
Slapen in de bak
Sleeping on het bakfietsbankje

We arrived at work yesterday figuring that the sub-zero cold, wind and snow would keep most of the customers away, leaving us with time to work on some projects. The highest priority is reconfiguring our workshop after building a massive, floor-anchored, steel frame to hang our electric bike lifts from. It’s a great improvement but not entirely our own initiative. The lifts, you see, were bolted into the 150 or 200 year old wooden beams of our ceiling… and thus the floor of the neighbors upstairs. Though the lifts are nearly new and operate very quietly they do make some vibration. Standing on the concrete (over sand) floor we never noticed this vibration but it drove the lady upstairs crazy. Actually she’s complained very vocally and angrily about a lot of things, apparently calling and writing every possible authority on a regular basis. Most of her complaints have nothing to do with our activities (there’s another bike workshop next door and several apartments have been renovated), but the vibration was a legitimate issue according to the various city inspectors who visited to investigate.

So the city ordered the building owner (a social housing corporation that manages tens of thousands of properties) to fix the vibration problem. It was decided that the only solution was to totally isolate the lifts from the floor beams, and the only practical way to do that was to build a steel frame all the way to the floor. We’re very fortunate and thankful that they took care of the job and paid for it. But it still requires an investment of several days of our labor to refit the lifts and lights. We took the opportunity to make them fully adjustable on both X and Y axis as well as angle, and now we’re adding more lights. I don’t think a workshop can ever have enough light.

Anyhow, this is all we were thinking about yesterday morning so I got busy with the scaffold, drills, plugs, screws and wiring to hang the fluorescent boxes on our ancient ceiling. And then the first snowy Cargobike and customer came in:

Customer: “My bike is almost impossible to ride. It’s really slow, and I think the brake lever might be broken.”

Mechanic: “I’m pretty sure your cables are frozen.”

Customer: “But I think there’s also something wrong with the brake.”

Mechanic: “The brakes are probably fine but they’re being locked by the frozen cables.”

Customer: “Oh wait, now it seems to be fine.”

Mechanic: “Sure, your bike is indoors so the cable just thawed, releasing the brake. It’ll freeze again a few moments after going outside. If you can wait 15 minutes I’ll fix it.
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Jimmy sleeping in the Cargobike box

Some time ago I posted a photo of a child sleeping on the bench of a Bakfiets Cargobike. Here customer Jimmy de Bruyn in Amsterdam naps in the Cargobike box amongst the day’s picnic gear. Yeah, there’s a lot of space in there.

That’s me in New York in 1967. It looks like I’m about a year old here. I’m certainly not much older since I’m not wearing shoes, thus not walking yet.

My earliest memories are actually of riding around behind mom like this, pulling her underwear up, pointing things out and I assume babbling unintelligible things about them. Millions of these Raleigh Sports three-speed bikes were sold there in this period but few actually got ridden much. My mom was an exception; this bike got ridden quite a bit.

In high school my friend Tom and I used to collect these old English bikes. Every garage seemed to have a matching his and hers set collecting dust and we found more at church rummage sales, temple bazaars, police auctions etc etc. We had dozens of them in various states of completion. We did restorations and repairs for others, but also built some great hot-rods from these bikes: stripped of accessories with handlebars upside down we spent countless days violently racing through parks, woods and around golf courses in what we called “death rides”… We weren’t done until either one of the bikes couldn’t be bent back into rideable shape or somebody was in too much pain to continue. This sometimes resulted in 6 hour marathons but also a couple times in 5 minute sprints.

Check out the child seat on my mom’s Raleigh: It’s just bent steel with flat pads and no harness, head or foot protection whatsoever. I recall from much later that it folded up. What innocent times eh?

This is called a “tweelingfiets”. It’s a special Dutch bike for carrying multiple kids and this example seems to date from the 1970′s. At first glance it looks like a modified tandem but it’s not. It’s a “longtail” city bike produced in series around when most of the designers of current longtails and xtracycles were just a glint in their dad’s eye. That doesn’t detract from the Xtracycle and the growing crop of modern longtails, but does show that many ideas come around a few times… especially when it comes to bikes.

I know of at least 4 firms that have produced a tweelingfiets but this type is the oldest. I’m actually not exactly sure who built these but I’m guessing Van Raam who builds or has built frames for a number of firms including: Gazelle, Grimminck, ‘t Mannetje and Utopia Velo.

This particular bike, parked around the corner from my house, has a particularly nice arrangement of child seats. It’s very social for the kids in back. Quite ironically I saw it later today, but with a child facing forward on the rear facing seat.

Here’s another classic Amsterdam bicycle child seat, this time true to the Dutch minimalist spirit. Two chunks of wood and a small piece of an old backpacker’s sleeping pad… almost certainly all found in the trash.

The bike’s also worth a look: A well-worn "opafiets" (grandpa bike) at least 50 years old with the front carrier from a baker’s bike.

Note that the handlebar is long gone. In its place the owner has attached a piece of steel tubing to brackets bolted to the front rack. This was quite solidly, if not attractively, performed and judging from the patina it’s been this way for decades.

There are lots of other nice Amsterdam touches:

A few weeks ago I showed off another creative Amsterdam child seat.

swing seat on kronan bike 1, originally uploaded by henry in a’dam.

This is just a bright green bike child seat, right? Look again. It’s a cheap and broken swing tied to a Kronan bike with the rope normally used to hang it from a a tree. I don’t think this baby seat is approved by any official bodies.

It is a good example of the relaxed attitudes about child transport and cycling in general in the Netherlands, particularly Amsterdam. Cycling is simply not regarded as a dangerous activity and for good reason: the statistics demonstrate that it isn’t.

Nonetheless, I’ll be taking somewhat more care than this with my own kids, thank you.

Note the use of an old mouse pad as a cushion.

Here’s a better view of the old swing rope used to “secure” the seat to the Kronan’s (flimsy, sheet metal) rear carrier.

I can’t remember where this adorable photo of a child sleeping on the bench of a Bakfiets Cargobike Short from WorkCycles came from but its just too nice not to share. I hope nobody minds.