It's no secret that I enjoy riding my bike (any bike really, and enjoy might be a little light an adjective). I'll ride pretty much to everything I can, including to work or client sites in the pouring rain like I did this week.
We live close to the city and have small kids and I'd love to be able to take them shopping/parks etc by bike. When we had one child a seat on the back of the bike worked really well. Now there are two a trailer was the natural evolution but I've been a little uneasy every time I've taken it out.
The kids sit low to the road so they aren't immediately visible to traffic. They are also behind you (a lot further than a seat) so they are harder to keep an eye on or chat to, as a result I've been looking for an alternative.
I spotted someone at southbank riding a Dutch Cargo bike and thought it was a perfect solution. The biggest issue is cost. For a trike style box bike with a canopy it's basically $4k and while I'm really looking at it as a second car alternative it's hard to justify (at this point I'm expecting a lot of comments about the ridiculous price I payed for wheels for my road bike yesterday). There are some cheaper alternatives (at $1.5k) but no one in Brisbane stocks them and it's hard to judge if they'd be suitable (not sure I want to trust my 200kg load of children to a rear coaster brake on any half decent hill)
Where does that leave me? Well considering the cost of the reasonable bikes I've started investigating custom options. There are a couple of custom bike makers who make amazing machines (http://www.jubecustoms.com.au/ have some especially nice bikes) and I've started asking them how they'd feel about making one.
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