Idea of the day - Xtracycle Hitchless Bicycle Trailers and Sport Utility Bicycles

Xtracycle Hitchless Bicycle Trailers and Sport Utility Bicycles: "
©2005 www.edwardcaldwell.com


We're handy guys, especially with duct tape and rope. We could rig a milk crate to a little rear rack for groceries or tape some foam to the handlebars to cushion the ride for a passenger. If confronted with a sport utility bicycle the 'old us' would likely say, 'nah, I'll save the cash and improvise.'
And the old us did carry a load by bike now and then, but we didn't ride as often as we do now and we missed a whole bag of magic. Because when it's a hassle, chore, major brain job, or just plain no-fun to use your bike for a trip or errand, it's not bicycle lifestyle; at best it's just making do, and at worst it's suffering for no tangible gain.

When the two of us started this company eight years ago, we didn't think about bicycling as a lifestyle. Biking was just a cheap, fun, appropriate way to get around. But we knew you could ride more if you could easily carry a load, and we knew the world would be a saner, cleaner, cooler place if more people could ride more often. So we designed a bike to carry your stuff.
It worked.

We proudly called it 'the bike that hauls,' to advertise that you could pile it up with groceries or gear and still beat traffic. And yet, both 'amazing load capacity' and 'nimble handling'—while true—failed to get at the essence of how the 'bike that hauls' changed our own lives, and how it could change yours.
And that's why we probably wouldn't have bought one ourselves; we didn't yet understand the difference between the bicycle as tool and the bicycle as enricher of days. It's the deep essence that words and pictures don't easily capture; like falling in love, you know it when you feel it. And in this case, you only feel it when you ride it—for a few hours or months or just one trip to th"


I'd have loved one of these as a teen and might never have gotten away from riding if I'd had it.