Break the bad news bubble (Part 2) | Angus Hervey
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It's time for our periodic update of good news from Angus Hervey, founder
of Fix the News, an independent publication that reports stories of global
progre...
This is the last week of the semester's teaching - and the pace of life has slowed enough for me to spend time on some more personal interests, including this blog. Maybe the most exciting news is that we bought the Christiania bike!
We hesitated a little, because well... they're not cheap, and certainly much too expensive for us to justify as a 'weekend toy'. Too big for a toy as well; you certainly can't hang them up in the hall the way you can with a regular bike.
But as it's turned out; it's become the family work horse. I've driven the car twice in last three months, and the pram almost as rarely. We use the trike for multiple trips each day - to drop the little one off at childcare & pick her up, shopping, cafe trips and the commute to work.
In fact we're thinking about selling our second car (which is an old bomb anyway), if we do maybe we can join flexicar so that we have a car available when we need it; they have a car located just around the corner from our house.
We saved a bit of money by buying the heavier steel framed version, and by just getting the frame without the box. We made our own box, and for the time being we're just strapping our daughters car seat in to carry her around, when she's a little bigger we'll make a bench and seat belts.
Steel frame with no box
The box in progress
The finished bike, our friends used it as their 'wedding car', here they are on route from their wedding to the reception. Crossing Punt Road was hilarious - honking and cheers.
Our daughter has become very possessive of the bike, and has been known to defend it vigorously against any other poor child who gets too close.
We did the Colac to Beech Forest rail trail. Beautiful, but bloody hard work. And the Christiania bike is really not designed for off-road riding.
We looked at getting a cheaper knockoff. And they really do look very similar to the Christiania bike, they've even used the same font in their marketing graphics. Bit cheeky really.
These bikes are much much cheaper than the Christiania (30-50% of the price), but I really don't know if they could stand up to the workout a cargo bike gets. The Christiania can carry 100kg whereas the knockoff can carry 80kg, but besides the frame, the main difference to me seems to be that the Christiania has Shimano disk brakes, and internal gears whereas the other has external gears and drum brakes. Having internal gears means you can change gears immediately, which makes a massive difference when you're trying to go up a hill with a load, or even over a small bump from a stop. And of course, when you're scooting down a hill with 190kgs on board (including rider), disk brakes provide a certain comfort.
In fact when I think about the trouble I have with the external gears of my two wheeler, I think buying the cheaper bike would have been an very expensive mistake. Yes we do love you Christiania.
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And Hs/poppets - you do get more confident - or at least I did. Once I worked out how the bike balanced I was much more confident on the Christiania than on a 2 wheeler, especially one with a baby seat on the back.
We still avoid the main roads as much as possible, and stick to backstreets and off-road bike paths because traffic can be a problem. I'm with you - can't wait until we go the way of Copenhagen.
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