Reality check

Yesterday we used the car. Despite my vow to cut out driving after a recent trip to see family 100 miles away, which had found me at night on a motorway (6 lane highway) at 75mph facing a car coming head-on the wrong way. Yesterday the cat was very ill so we had to speed off to the vet, so that was that... We used the car all afternoon, went to the beach and a mall, sat in tourist traffic with the A/C on and couldn't find a place to park. Wasted alot of time doing miles and miles on highways that were not economical in their route from A to B... it was the cats fault... but it was still awful.

This morning we were having breakfast and listening to the news about the suffering following the horrific floods in Pakistan, and then the journalists wondering if this disaster might possibly have anything to do with global warming. What followed was pretty eye opening. My 6 year old who had been munching on her cornflakes asked if it was because we had used the car. My 9 year old confirmed that it was, and quoted global warming. I then asked them how we would go food shopping for the familly get-together tonight. My 9 year old said we would take the car (she obviously relished yesterday's aircon cooled effortless transport), and that is when my 6 year old told her,

"Well you say home and get a fat bum, we are going by bike."

My 4 year old broke out in giggles, and I asked my 9 year old why she wanted to go by car if it contributed to such a nasty thing.

" Whats the point ? Everybody else takes the car so it makes no difference..."

Thats when I pointed out that somebody has to start somewhere and that I didn't want to add to a horrible problem if I could avoid it. They munched on a little, thinking it over a bit, then they got up grabbed their helmets and the shopping bags and we headed for the Yuba. Truth from the mouths of babes yet again !

Double vision

We now have got into the swing of things. Saturday morning is when we go down "en famille" to the town centre to the farmer's market to buy the weeks fresh food. Previously we had stopped biking, walked and hauled everything back on foot in the scorching sun. As although with one Yuba Mundo and various other bikes it was possible to go, we just felt in danger in busy angry Saturday morning stop start traffic. Constant shouting instructions at one or two slow distracted children on kiddy bikes over the sound of dozens of car engines, screeching tires, car stereos, and putting up with drivers with little awareness of anything else on the road just didn't make for a fun outing, or good blood pressure. Now with the two Yuba Mundos as a family of 5 we can zip down to the square in a couple of minutes, park up, potter around buying fruit and veg, have a coffee while the kids run around playing and having fun in a car free space. The only problems are the arguments between the children of who gets to ride on the new orange Yuba Mundo !


Often, with the food stowed in the fridge we zoom off to the beach with the beach gear and kid's bikes hanging from or pulled along behind the Yuba Mundos. That way if they want to ride they ride, if they want to be cargo they hook up and ride the Yuba.


The V3 Mundo is noticibly lighter, a great ride, and the lighter MTB wheels are still straight and true.


One of the problems with having two Yuba Mundos is the temptation to load and load with stuff that you don't need.

40 km in the day on her Yuba Mundo. Mrs Yuba is pleased and was not running empty.

Right of way.... and bad manners

We decided to take the mother in law with us to the beach as the sun is out finally. We loaded up the inflatable sharks, beach tent, giant styrofoam tube clubs for play fights in the sea (bought in a flea market second hand), buckets, spades etc etc. Number 1 child was in a sulk and wanted to play on her DS at home and refused to cycle, so she joined Number 3 child on the back of the Yuba Mundo. Quite the load.


We were soon on the cyclepath and after a couple of km we ran into a fleamarket that had run over and where everyone had used the cyclepath as a parking space. Obviously because it was a waste of space... We had to ride around this mess through endless cars attempting to find parking space and found our way on the other side. Then after 500 metres, on a corner, a man jumped out infront of us and shouted "Stop ! Its the marathon you can't ride here." Number 2 child ran into the back of the Yuba Mundo with a crash of handlebars and I looked down the cycle path to see 2 or 3 runners and a couple of huge motorbikes escorting them on the cyclepath. I asked him what I was supposed to do and he told me to watch or go home. The path runs through fields and there are no other road options. I looked around, there were no posters warning of the event, no barriers, and very few runners. I told him to "have a nice day" and carried on down the cyclepath as usual. We came across several other cyclists coming the other way looking very unhappy, one of them wishing us "good luck", and every now and then a sole runner. One or two of the runners insulted us and even changed sides of the cyclepath at the last moment to stop us head on to show that we had no right to be there ( A great way to make a child fall off a bike). After a couple of km I came across a couple of cops who were regulating cars where the cyclepath crossed a road and I asked them why the marathon was not being run on the road, like most marathons. It was a registered marathon route I was told. So I replied that I could see where the priorities lay with townhall. The cop didn't like that, and replied that pedestrians do indeed have priority over cyclists. (But not over cars apparently). Which I thought was a strange thing to say. Are marathon runners pedestrians ? LOL, I suppose a cop always has to have the last say and be in the right, whatever the case. He told me to wait while 3 runners and a huge motorbike went past and told me that I could carry on down the cycle path now that it was free. ( He didn't try and tell me to get off the path though, funny that...) so I told him to "have a nice day" and pushed off down the empty path... A minute later while I was thinking over the strange reply and barely hidden anticyclist sentiment of the cop, a runner swore at me in very strong language infront of my children. Fuming I asked a lone bystander what the route was and discovered that we were going to be abused like this for the next 10 km along our normal route. So we hooked a left as soon as we could and took a 10 km detour on another cyclepath to the east and north to avoid them. The mother in law (worried by the extra distance and the risk of not reaching the beach as a result) wanted to carry on with the runners as there were very few and we could share the path which is very wide. Sure, but I told her it would end in manslaughter by bicycle pump if another goon in lykra tried to push us off the path into the bushes, or swore at me in front of the children. I spent the next half hour calming down, fuming at the organisers of the marathon and the impossibility of people to share living space. Although I am sure I am wrong to catagorise runners as I did at that moment in time (I know some long distance runners and they are great people). This is the same kind selfishness that pushes people to drive cars so that they can be seperated from everyone in a bubble of polluting priviledge and comfort at the expense of others, the kind of people I take the cycle path to avoid...... To me this is another frustrating example of individualism and how cyclists are barely tolerated by "normal" people and how much crap we have to put up with in general.

We managed to have a great time any way and stopped in a beautiful poppy field for a rest.

Parked up at a new beach with a kiddy park, picnic, fruit from the local market, a drop of cool Sangria from a market stall to calm the nerves. The afternoon on the beach and playing in the sea was fantastic. Mrs Yuba joined us after work (Yes on a Sunday...) by car (she had to deliver stuff today, she normally travels by bike), and the mother in law was taken back in a car as she wasn't up to the return journey.

Round trip 44 km loaded up like a truck ! Was not planning on the extra 10 km but hey, was not a big deal for me anyway.

Orange

A man came to the door with a rather large box today. I signed it off and opened it up. The cat jumped straight into the box, strange animal, and wouldn't get out.

Very orange.

I am often frustrated by the lack of photos on posts so here are some shots of what sprang to my eyes as being new on the V3.

Still very orange.

If you look carefully there is a new reinforcement gusset (plate) on the underside of the toptube straight off the head tube. This is a traditional stress point on bikes, nice touch. Not sure what the threaded holes in the top and down tubes are for though...

New arrangement here. Beefed up, nice thick kickstand plate I see.



More threaded holes, loop and I like the way the light mounting plate has been moved back out of harms way.

Two more threaded holes and a loop just below them on the underside of the "load area" tube just behind the seat. There are also two threaded holes for a waterbottle holder on the top of the down tube, which is a nice choice to have.

Disc brake tabs, ooooh.

Can't wait to build this up. I have a set of Rock Shox Tora 289 forks in the shed and I am wondering if they would be up to the job at the front. They are MTB forks, and it will be the missus who will be riding this as a Yuba Lite setup... any comments folks ? I will have to look at the BB7 stuff I have in my parts bucket to see if I can peg them on this. I will check on the blogs of the kind people who have already posted on this subject.

I will keep you posted. Hopefully we will have the makings of a family Yuba Convoy here before soon.

Wind and inflatable sharks

School was out so after a 3 to 1 vote and some bribery involving sweets we headed for the beach. (Superman was on the TV and he is much in favour with my 9 year old at the moment.) The objective was to see if the sea was warm enough to swim. The sun has been back with vengence this week so the odds were looking good from our front garden viewpoint. Chains were lubed, paniers stuffed with swiming gear, including 2 inflatable sharks, beach blanket, spades, buckets picnic etc... Tires were pumped up and we wheeled out into the sunshine.

A nice cooling breeze picked up.

We managed a long picnic break in a park. A coffee & loo break in a village café. The closer we got to the coast however the stronger the headwind got.


When we finally mounted the dune at the end of the cycle path and hit the sand the kids hid behind the bikes or lay flat to avoid being sand blasted to the bone by the lashing wind. I made the executive decision to head back inland towards the windfree park straight away and the inflatable sharks never even made it to the water. Oh well you can't win every time.


What was good was that someone has been busy building links on the cyclepath system so we had chanced a new left turn at one point and hooked up to a new car free path to this new beach a few miles up from where we normally go. There is now the possiblity of cycling to the beach 99% car free which is pretty fantastic. After doing 40 km, half of which was against a headwind in the sun with a fully loaded Yuba Mundo I am frazzled but feeling good. I was surprised by the drop in noise and better gear shifting I noticed after oiling my chain before this ride. Oops must do that more often, but the Yuba Mundo, although being the bike I use the most is also the bike I touch the less mechanically. Almost never infact, apart from pumping up the tires once a week. The moving parts although simple and not particularly lust-worthy are proving to be pretty tough.

Yuba Mundo brakes

I was thinking about my weeks riding this morning over my toast and coffee, and one thing kept standing out - the outstanding performance of the Yuba Mundo brakes. My green V2 Yuba Mundo's brakes work very well, which is just as well. Riding loaded with two little girls zigging and zagging around me on the cycle path, at 14 km an hour, our kiddie cruise speed, I can stop almost instantly. The extra long armed V brakes (tandem ones I suspect) are really powerful. I also had a 5 year old boy randomly wobble into my path head on too and I came to a stop on a dime. At several places I found myself on steep slopes, loaded up, rolling slowly downwards, controlling perfectly and with ease with two fingers on the levers. I have not touched my set up in about a thousand miles too....
I have put in an order for a V3 frame which I will be building up for my wife (Ok, for me too) with lighter parts, and I will be putting Avid BB7 mechanical disc brakes on it. It will be interesting to see who can stop faster. Another positive point I discovered yesterday was when I was being pushed off the cyclepath at a low speed by a car (who shouldn't be there) and jammed the front wheel in a hole by the side of the path, you don't go over the handlebars. The big ballon tires absorb the shock, the rest of the bike is tough enough and heavy at the back enough to stay put. Always a bonus !

GM foods and Yuba Mundo in the sun

Our opinions concur... but who cares.

We went down on the Yuba Mundo to the farmer's market like every Saturday morning and ran into a Greenpeace stand asking for signatures against GM foods. Unlike the majority of the rest of the western world, 85% of the population here has remained deaf to the agro-industry's arguments and the attempts by the government and the media to promote this stuff. Call it self-interest, cultural difference, a respect for nature and people's freedom, whatever you want, GM foods just don't wash here. I listened again to the pros and cons today and reinforced my view that GM foods are a very very bad thing... The thing is though, that my opinion (are those still allowed in the face of big money ?) and the opinion of the other 52 million people here who think the same, is clearly of no importance. Despite widespread active public opposition, GM foods are now omnipresent, are on the shelves and there is no way of knowing what is GM and what is not GM. I have a tendancy to vote with my Eurodollar, and I believe in the power of choice and the free market when the state caves in to business, but how to tell now ? I was informed by Greenpeace (they were giving out samples of GM free French cheeses that my kids ate faster than they could serve) that my favourite AOC Camembert now contains GM products. Great, I would rather eat my socks now (same smell), but what do I know anyway... Obviously I should just bow down to corporate interests and munch on this stuff... and forget what it might do to my health, the environment and poor farmers across the world. If you think GM foods are a good thing, perhaps you should investigate deeper. I did and didn't like what I found...

GM Camembert free we head for the beach.

We managed to have a great time by the sea playing in the sand and summer is getting closer. I have cycled a total of 132 kms (82 miles) this week, have only eaten GM free cheese. Feeling good !

Wow two "Green" blog posts in reaction to events in my neighbourhood in the space of a week...

Green fun down town

Electric /diesel bus & pedal taxis

From a municipality usually not too concerned with the greener side of things came an amazing ecology fest this Easter weekend. We didn't even see all of it, there were stands all over the historical centre. We wandered into town to do some shoping on Saturday to find this mini revolution going on. I wonder if it had anything to do with the "Europe Ecologie" Party surge in the recent nationwide polls, or are the times achanging ? Mind blowing in such a usually conservative town...

Somebody brave at townhall had got their chequebook out !

We saw quite a few confused citizens, sadly alot of people are openley anti-ecology here (like much of Europe 15-20% of the vote is fascist) and will not have liked/understood this... Perhaps minds are evolving and people are realising/seeing that climate change will/is effecting them too, and not just poor people on the other side of the planet ?
A guy from town hall was doing his best with a megaphone to get people intrested and even gave away three new bikes at one point in a free prize draw. (We didn't win... my wife said just as well, with all the bikes we have...) And for once we did not look out of place !

There was a great Dutch guy Marc who has set up a courier business with an alloy box bike that comes in at 22 kg (48 pounds) he said, I wish him the best of luck. The kids climbed on bord and compared it to the Yuba. A very flash bike, capable, comfortable, really high end, and a thing of beauty in itself. Perfect for his activity... but his mouth did drop open when I told him the price of the Yuba...

:°)

There were also 2 electric assisted trike bubble taxi bikes subsidized by a local bank that puts its name on the trikes and supplies free rides around town to shoppers. As far as I can see this is a new form of advertising (for "green" bank loans ?!?) and a fun idea. The guy said they come in at 150 kg ! (330 pounds)

The kids went for a free ride and got some free sweets too !

Bye bye kiddies !

Old faithful !

Fun outing, a refreshing breath of air and quite a surprise. If it can happen here it can happen anywhere ! The kids also had fun on a free pedal car stand too, not easy to tear them away...

The pedal powered ecology theme continues !

The theme of the stand was recycling. There was a race where you had to grab some recyclable packaging (plastic bottle etc) put it in the little straw basket on the side of your pedal car, rush down the track as fast as your little ecowarrior legs can pedal and slam dunk the trash into a recycling bin. Great idea. Obligatory household recycling with truck pickup has not yet made it to our neighbourhood. Although we do haul as a family all our recyclables by Yuba to volontary collection points each week, I think we are a minority example here.

I hope this isn't another one day wonder aimed at pacifying unhappy voters with no follow through, but rather truely a sign that people in power are waking up to green issues.

We will see...

More pics of the day here http://www.bicicolis.com/actualites.html - on Marc's new boxbike courier website.

We hit the beach

A man with a mission.

Sun was out, kids off school on holiday, we had breakfast and then off we went to the beach. The two girls were on their own bikes and my 3 year old had the luxury of the back of the Yuba to himself, and his little blue bike roped down. He managed about 2 km on his own before asking to climb back on board...

They wanted to jump into the waves, but this is february I explained so we played in the sand all afternoon in the sun. I think they realised how cold the water was when they saw a young couple enter and then exit the water rather rapidly at one point.

A sandwich stop and drink top up at a new organic supermarket (no bike rack though !) by the side of the cycle path and off we went back home.

I now have an escort of two little girls up front on the cycle path, talk about VIP transport ! This was also the first time Lucie rode by herself to the beach and back, 36 km... not too long ago she was a pedestrian ! Now the first thing she asks me in the morning is if we can cycle to the beach.

At home in time for tea...

Clamp seat, new bridge, horses and poverty camps..

Schools out ! Time to test the new child seat that clamps with a vice action onto the back of the Yuba Mundo. Initially not a sure bet because the rear rack is 18 cm wide, which is wide, but I measured it all before buying and it fits great. There is also a strap to tie it down to the rack.


The bike is now a three seater, rather than a four previously, but the girls are now increasingly mobile.


Above is a stretch of road that had a cycle path that we use running along side it, which has now been blocked off to cars. This is because they have built a bridge across it and over the river. We are now free to pedal car free where the road was pretty dangerous before, which is really cool. Cyclists have a special tunnel under the start of the bridge to the cycle path on the other side that goes all the way to the sea. There are even cycle lanes on the bridge leading into town.

Brand spanking new, we are spoilt...


Traditional get your fingers bitten stop off...

At two points on our route down by the waterline we came across what I initially thought were dumps put upon closer inspection turned out to be habitations made out of cardboard and garbage. Three families live here.


This is something that I have never seen in my region or country before. Last autumn in the capital I had been shocked to see the same thing but on a grander scale by the side of the highway, way out on the way into the city. I thought it was people picking through a dump, but they were living there...


Here, before, the unemployed, the poor, the old, the sick, hapless immigrants, mental patients and missfits were looked after by the state. We pay the same taxes, but for more and more people in need this is not happening anymore. The priority contrast between the new multimillion bridge (and cycle tunnel) to relieve traffic congestion for business/tourism and the people leaving in cardboard huts with children (we had close to freezing for days last week) is new and to my eyes unacceptable.

Must.... resist.....

The 3rd generation of the Yuba Mundo is out. I don't know how I managed to miss this... probably spending too much time on my bike !

They come with more gears, disc brake tabs, loops for hooking stuff on the frame, and it would appear more accessories... and they are even available as a frame set. Argh.

Must resist.