Riding to Crafers in search of snow / Long ride with the kids

Possible snow was forecast near Mt.Lofty yesterday, so I decided to ride with the kids to see what we could see.

Of course riding a 35kg bakfiets with 40kg of passengers up a 700m+ mountain is not necessarily the sanest thing I have ever planned.

Here are the kids all rugged up ready for me to put the weather shield on over them, ready to depart on our "Big Adventure" as we decided to call it:

There are some fairly steep grades along most of the routes, so I  made the mistake of asking Google Maps to suggest a good cycling route instead of using my experience to pick a reasonable route.

Google's directions turned out to be too hard to follow, even for someone reasonably familiar with the area, and I found my self half-way up Sheoak Road before deciding to just do things my way.

Of course, by then my options were to double back several kilometres and lose perhaps 100m of altitude, or plough on up Sheoak Road.

Sheoak Road has an average grade of just under 5%.  Unfortunately it is not constant.  Apparently the worst part is 23%.

Anyway, through stupidity or otherwise, I decided to continue up Sheoak Road.

After all, how bad could a road climb be with an 80kg bike?

Actually, quite, quite bad.

I managed to ride the first 50m or so, before I had to get off and push.

Some distance up the hill a local out for a walk took pity on me and helped push it up the worst part.

I then alternated between pushing and riding it the rest of the way up the road and its several 10%+ sections.

Needless to say I was pretty stuff after, and combined with the very cold weather (we were chasing snow, after all) it was fairly slow going into Crafers.

Once we got there the benefit of riding a pedal-powered wheel-barrow came to the fore, as we unpacked hot porridge, hot chocolate and other bits and pieces for lunch in the so-very-close-to-freezing.  We didn't see any rain, but the kids did get to see lots of hail.

Here we are at the top, almost 600m higher than home:

While the temperature was probably +2c - +4c, with the windchill up there the apparent temperature was almost certainly below zero.  The first ten minutes at the top consisted of getting the kids suitably rugged up after having spent the last three hours in their little coocoon, warmed by porridge and thermos beneath their seat.

I suspect that this is much higher than 99% of bakfiets ever get.

Then it was time to ride home.

I did have the sense to plan ahead and pack gators to keep my shins from freezing on the descent, as well as polar fleece, gortex jacket, ski-gloves, my usual full-face helmet and some pilot glasses.

With the sunshine on them, it wasn't long before they both fell asleep in the bike:

It was very cute, when Caleb first fell asleep, Isabel was still awake and leaned forward so that Caleb could rest his head on her back.

At about 3.5 hours for the ascent, this is also the longest time I have had the kids in the bike on a single ride. They were quite well behaved and patient, apart from a few "are we nearly there yets?"  We did play eye-spy at one stage, which just shows part of why having a bakfiets is a nice way to travel with little people: we all felt that we were doing something together.

I was worried that they might not want to go in again, but the very next morning Caleb bounced out and asked "big adventure again, Daddy?"

So am I game to go on another similar big adventure?  I think so.  I would still like to get the bakfiets all the way up to Mt.Lofty Summit and surprise the road cyclists who frown on mountain bikes, let alone the pedal-version of a people mover.

A new little cargo bike

I was introduced to the Donky Bicycle today.  Basically it is a 3-speed BMX-style cargo bike.  So it is nice and small, and probably fairly light as cargo bikes go, and of course very easy to park and steer due to the much shorter wheel base.

More at http://donkybike.com/

Full article on bakfiets with six kids

An interesting read for how one American mum carts six kids around by bakfiets, and the reasons why she does it:

http://bikeportland.org/2012/06/28/with-six-kids-and-no-car-this-mom-does-it-all-by-bike-73731

The bottom line: the bakfiets leads to a happier lifestyle, something that I can agree with.

Bike-powered USB Port for Phone Charging

As some of you may know, in my other life I am a humanitarian telecommunications research fellow, and leader of the Serval Project.  This means that I am quite interested in finding interesting ways to charge mobile phones.

Since I got the bakfiets, I have been eyeing off the dynamo hub that produces 2.4W of electrical power at 6V.  I am not the only one who has had the same thoughts.  In fact, there is a commercial product now that provides a powered USB port from the hub dynamo.  

But I wanted to make it myself.  So I had a look around, and found a post with a simple circuit to do the same job. This was a quick weekend hack, so I went to Jaycar Electronics to get the five components and a sacrificial USB cable, with the intention of using some spare breadboard.  I then discovered that I had run out of breadboard. 

But I still wanted to make it, so I used cardboard instead of breadboard, and poked the components through, bent the legs on the components so that I could solder them together the right way, and continuing the stationery substitution theme, used a couple of staples to bridge the distance in a couple of places, soldered it all together, and used the display packet from the USB cable in place of a proper project box.

The pragmatic albiet not photogenic result is below. Apologies for the poor focus, as my E7 phone has trouble focussing on things close up.  But hopefully you get the idea.

I then connected a couple of extra wires into the dynamo connector, and routed and cable tied some old phone cable to connect it all up.  The circuit and USB connector live in one of the pannier bags.

 You can see the routing into the pannier here. When I get enthused at some point, I will replace the highly obvious beige cable with something a little more discrete and black.

Then it was time for a test ride.  The elastics on the top of the cargo rack on the back hold a phone nicely in place.

I then set off to work and back, about a 45 minute return trip.  I knew from other's experience that about 8km/hour is needed to get useful output from the dynamo.  About 15 minutes of this trip was below that speed, as I plodded up the 130m climb to my work with Caleb on board, leaving about 25min - 35min of useful charging time.  I also forgot that the phone I used was set to have it's screen on while charging, which slows the charging time down.  Nonetheless, the phone went from 69% to 85%, proving that my cardboard and staple USB charger works.

Picnics and Australia Day

Just a few shots from picnics and outings around Australia day.

First up, you can pack quite a large picnic (including 7kg of watermelon) into a bakfiets:

The kids love waving their arms around in the breeze at the best of times, but lots more fun with flags to wave.

And even better with spinny things on a windy day:

Oh to be small again

Oh to be so small that you can stretch out in tbe back seat of a bakfiets.  Caleb is possibly even small enough to fit comfortably in an economy seat on a Boeing 747.

Free Parking at the Airport

As I mentioned in the previous post, I flew to Canberra this past week.

The whole airport dropoff/pickup/parking/taxi thing is always an added hassle.  There never seems to be a good solution that doesn't cost a lot.  Taxi's are great, but sometimes you have to wait a long time, and the cost is not insignificant.  Public transport really isn't an option if you are travelling with a big suitcase.  Drop-off and pickup can be tricky if you have small kids and the flights are at odd times (my return flight was scheduled for after 9pm), and parking at the airport for a week requires a second mortgage.  That is, unless you decide to ride your bike to the airport.

I forgot to take a picture of where I actually parked the bike, but it was in a space underneath the Qantas lounge at the Adelaide airport, next to one of the security staff areas.  This is a good place to park a bike for a few days, because there are always airport staff coming and going, and having a smoko.  Nonetheless, for the first time I actually used a 2nd lock on the bike, just to be sure.

I was travelling with a full 23kg 81cm international-size suitcase, a maximum cabin size wheely bag, and a suit bag.

I was surprised that it only took me half an hour to ride the 9km to the airport.  Coming home into a headwind was only marginally slower, at about 40minutes, including a couple of short stops to stretch some post-flight stiff muscles.

Coming home, I decided I would be a bit cheeky, and bring the bike into the terminal and load my suitcases directly in, rather than have to lug them out.  After all, a bakfiets is basically just a trolley with pedals. You can see it here next to the carousel.


No sooner had I parked there than an airport staffer came over, I assumed to tell me that I had to take it back outside (which I would have been happy to do).  Instead, it turned out he was Dutch, and apparently he had posted a picture of the bakfiets parked at the airport the day I flew out, and it was causing much interest among the local Dutch community on Facebook.

A couple of minutes later my enormous Antler case came around the belt, and I was out the door and riding away in no time at all.

Well, nearly no time at all, because to exit the building I had to pass the Qantas Valet Parking desk, which was a photo opportunity that I could not resist.  You can even see that they have a space next to the desk big enough to park the bike.  The desk staff were quite amused to see a heavily laden bakfiets roll past.

If possible, riding a bakfiets full of luggage covered in airport tags attracts even more curiosity than normal.

In any case, the whole episode was successful, convient, and a lot of fun, and I would certainly do it again.