For the past few weeks I’ve been ill and super busy. This included a rather long weekend trip to buy a new used efficient gas car. The Mercedes Benz 240D finally died. Well it blew a gasket making it too expensive for me to repair. I’m pretty sad about it. Especially sad about the end of my biodiesel mission to stop buying gasoline. It really sucks how expensive it is to be environmentally responsible in a culture that requires you to drive for work.
After I finally finished the antibiotics and had my son for a weekend we got on our cargo bike named Wilson. Our rather short trip was to a park playdate with his friends from daycare. It was fun. We’re fortunate to live in a City with a grid. So we could take one road east up and down some good hills to get to our park destination and return home for lunch.
Again we received many compliments and questions about the Xtracycle Edgerunner. I discussed the pros and cons of other solutions with another dad. I find the enclosed little trailers for kids really cool. Other travelers on the road can see them. But as this dad pointed out these kid trailers are just nylon and a bit of aluminum. To some extent I feel safer having my son right behind me on the same frame. The Xtracycle certainly does handle really well. Especially with a little extra weight. I give credit to the wheel length. As the boy says, “This is a LONG bicycle.”
Brian C. Russell 