Cargo Bikes: The New Station Wagon

This article from the Wall Street Journal is behind a paywall, but here is a taste.(link should last another couple days).

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ON A RECENT SUNDAY, Brandon Jones, a 44-year-old fund manager at 9W Capital Management, traveled from his home in downtown Manhattan with his wife and two children to meet friends for brunch in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They were heading to Reynard, the popular restaurant in the neighborhood’s fashionable Wythe Hotel, where Manhattan-bound Town Cars regularly idle on the street outside.
Cargo Bikes by the Numbers

But Mr. Jones did not drive. Nor did he take the subway. Instead, he piloted his two children via the deck of his Yuba Mundo, a so-called “longtail” cargo bike. (His wife rode her own bike.) Picture a mountain bike, but with a stouter frame and smaller wheels, stretched out and lowered in the back. “We actually beat our friends who drove back to TriBeCa,” Mr. Jones said. While Mr. Jones does garage a BMW BMW.XE +2.57% X5 SUV, his car rarely sees daylight within the city limits. Rather, for daily trips like the mile-and-a-half commute from TriBeCa to his children’s school in Greenwich Village, he simply hops on another kind of SUV—one that actually includes a bit of sport.

I have wanted a cargo bike for a while now. For large grocery runs, and getting things like plants and pies from one place to another (don’t laugh, I move a lot of pies around).

I have been seeing a lot of moms and dads with cargo bikes full of kids lately, and while I personally don’t think that is what I would store in my cargo bike, it does make me think we might be witnessing the kind of mode shift to pedal power that so many have been talking about for so long.

I think that if most peopled owned a cargo bike, and a commuter bike this world would be just about perfect (if they rode them of course). Throw in a road bike for a little weekend fun, and you got yourself a two wheeled utopia.

I have been eyeing a couple different cargo models for a while, I am torn between something like a cargo trailer, so I could use an existing bike and for easier storage, or just going for it and getting a extra cycle, or long john. Does anyone have any recommendations?

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This Is Hilarious: Wall Street Journal Losses Its Mind Over Bike Share Program

Want a good belly laugh, or perhaps to have your head explode, check out this WSJ “opinion” video about the new bike share program in NYC.

I honestly don’t know what happened to the WSJ, they used to be right wing, but not like this. Its like they stepped off the cliff and and didn’t notice they are falling though space.

I almost feel bad for this old lady ranting about the totalitarian government and how they are enforcing the bike share on these poor innocent civilians, but then I listen to the actual words coming out of her mouth and I just can’t work up any sympathy for her.

The older generation should be ashamed with what they have done with this planet, and they should count their lucky stars that the young-ins haven’t put them on trial for crimes against the bio-sphere.

A bike share program is just one small step in making this planet just a smidge more livable, and she talks about it like its some sort of fascist death camps. Hyperbole stacked on hyperbole layered in ignorance, with just a dash of crazy. A video well worth watching and laughing at.

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The Stupid: It Burns!

For the record: first cycling isn’t dangerous, getting hit by a car is dangerous. Second, cycling is a lot less wimpy than sitting at your desk and talking out your ass about stuff you don’t know anything about (listen again, both people admit to not knowing anything about what they are talking about multiple times). Third, is there no lengths to which these people will go to harp on the president (don’t get me wrong, there are a millions things to harp on him about, so why these completely insignificant ones?).

The state of current politics, where the WSJ will spend time talking about the “wimpification” of America, instead of, say an in-depth discussion about the use of drones to kill American citizens, or the approaching extinction danger facing the human species due to global warming saddens me. It doesn’t surprise me, but it does sadden me.

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