The seed for bikes as cargo transport planted upon seeing cargo bike photos from China in the early 1980’s sprouted in 1992 when my daughter was born. As an excuse for both of us to get outside I installed a child seat on the rack of the mountain bike. My first cargo, talked to trees and birds and everything along the trail. She proved more fun than a sack of potatoes. When she out grew the seat Ezra got a scooter then a bike of her own.
I revisited road bikes; long days in the saddle, centuries. In time my riding partners either went racing, took on grown up jobs, or moved away. Work intruded. Although I never let go of the handlebars, I changed course. I set up a bike for around town; fenders, rack, basket, fatish tires.
A bricklayer by trade, my tool kit is housed in a serious canvas bag: big brick trowel, chisels, tuck pointers, jointers, sundry trowels, measuring tape, brick hammer, most everything wrought in steel, awkward and hard edged. All told, including the two levels, I’m carrying about fifty pounds plus my fifteen pound backpack. There was a problem. Strapped to the rack my tools flexed the commuter frame in a wholly unsettling manner; wobbling up and down San Francisco streets I considered frame failure and survival.
Momentum magazine hinted then featured a radical idea blowing across the Atlantic; utility bikes, Dutch box bike or bakfiets, versions of the old Schwinn cycle trucks and the rear load xtracycle and it’s descendants; Big Dummy, Ute, Transport and the Yuba Mundo. As far as the over loaded commuter bike was concerned, I’d had enough.
Intrigued, I tested a cycle truck, nice, but only rated for fifty pounds, though the guys at the shop claimed to have carted one of their own in the front load platform. I checked out the Bullet real cool but pricy, I researched the xtracycle but I didn’t have a proper base frame. Then I read about the Yuba Mundo’s four hundred pound capacity, reasonable price, and the fact that it would fit in my small garage crammed with, yes, another bike, a car, and masonry tools. I bought the demo bike sitting in front of Roaring Mouse. I towed my commuter bike home from Roaring Mouse with the Yuba eliciting double takes and grins. The next day after delivering four, nine foot long pine scaffold plank weighing around 160 pounds to the Hayes Valley Farm, I noted that the bike could carry things impossible for my car.
Yuba lifts, my tool kit, a shovel, hoe, levels, a grinder, fifty feet of extension cord, brick tongs maybe a mortar board and stand, backpack and my spirit over this city’s hills. Not bad for a bike. “How much does it weigh,” a CAT 3 racer friend recently asked. “I don’t know,” I laughed, “but it’s fun to ride.”
