This Friday we will be opening (softly!)

Friday, October 11th! We’ll be open for business from noon to six!

G&O Family Cyclery

8417 Greenwood Ave N!

About a mile North of the zoo, a little bit south of Top Ten Toys, around the corner from Gorditos, next door to Neptune Coffee.

Now, this’ll be a soft opening, as we have many kinks still to work out. We’ll be ready for repairs and sales, but some services and some of our stock may not be quite ready. Bear with us. Your enthusiasm so far has been so appreciated!

But don’t worry! While we’ll still have a little decorating to do by Friday, it’d be great to show you some of our fantastical, magical bicycles.

Gee! and, Oh! The Bikes.

Come by and see the amaaaazing Larry Vs Harry Bullitt! Able to haul your family or your dog or your washing machine and corners like a dream!

Visit the astooounding Xtracycle EdgeRunner! How can something so original feel so familiar? Made for hauling kids in the great Northwest, and it does!

Gaze upon the Tern Cargo Joe! A folding longtail cargo bike? No, it can’t be true!

Take the Surly Big Dummy out for a spin! With newly designed racks and bags, this grand dame of the longtail scene just got herself a new act!

Unpack the stupendous Brompton folding bike! There has never been a better folding bike made. Seriously. This thing is the stuff. Made in London, entirely out of crumpets. (That’s why it is so light.)

For the kids we’ve got Burly MyKick, the most fun on two wheels you can have without pedals!

We’ll be rolling out more bikes as they become available, including custom builds of the Soma ES and Beuna Vista and the Cylefab Billy Goat cycle truck, exclusive to G&O!

Or, just come by and say, “Hi!” We are nice guys and we’d be real happy to see you!

Come out for a test ride! We’ll be in every day but Monday from now until everyone has all the bikes they want. Check in at familycyclery.com for news.

Davey Oil here with a quick update on how the end of our summer went. So much happened this Summer! The Oil clan grew by one with the arrival of Baby Oil. He’s lovely, but not too into bikes at this point, so I’m leaving him out of this here update. I’m also going to leave G&O Family Cyclery news out of this one. There is very big news, but for now I wanna focus on the things that Little Oil and I encounter thanks to our bikes.

This is what GoGo, our Electric Xtracycle Edgerunner looked like all summer. I love that bike.

Speaking of Xtracycle. Here is their new headbadge! “The Happy Porter” Cute, right?

And here is Xtracycle’s touring van. It needs to be so big because the bikes are big. And Robert has a bed in there!

Little Oil and the Family Ride kids took part in a Pedalheads camp open house day. Little was the only one on a ballance bike and even though she’d been practicing for almost a year at that point, she wasn’t so much scooting her bike as she was dragging it beneath her. We hoped for some fun and some improvement in her technique.

Here’s Madi FamilyRide. Showing her dedication to good blogging and her faith in her Rolling Jackass Centerstand.

Little went from timid and frustrated with her balance bike to…

An urban hipster. A U-Locking cool kid!

Teleporter Pad Ahead.

Cool DIY trailer spotted at Bicycle Sunday.

Seattle Critical Mass has been lovely in recent months. Still small, like a couple dozen folks, but intimate and fun.

Greenwood family bikes. The Bike Friday Tandem! Cool bike.

And parked here next to it is this Yuba Boda Boda! Looking good!

A non-traditional Greenwood family out for a ride.

Brompton in the shoe rack. Longtime dream realized. WIthout a doubt my first big purchase from G&O Family Cyclery will be a Brompton. They are so much fun to ride, and just look at it there! I haul this demo bike around on an Xtracycle all the time and it couldn’t be simpler.

Spotted this Capital Bike Share bike all the way from DC. Wrong Washington, dood!

Family biking has made it to billboards? Okay, sure!

And here’s the big Little Oil. Bigger every day.

She reps for G&O. And eats fruit from the market.

—–

Bonus! We’ve been riding with the Hooptie installed on GoGo the EdgeRunner. To say Little Oil loves it is an understatement. Sometimes when we walk down the street she just shouts at people, “I have a Hooptie!” Which they don’t comprehend. I think she really feels like a big kid, sitting straight on the deck. Anyhoo, here’s how it looks on GoGo:

She usually sits down for the ride.

And sometimes, she falls right to sleep! I was fairly concerned about this part. Since Little tends to pass out easily on the bike I worried that the Hooptie might not keep her contained enough. I am happy to report that she was well contained this time.

And COMPLETELY adorable! But was she really sleeping?

Psst! Little Oil? You awake?

Yeah, she was out.

Okay, be well, Pedal People! I’ll be back really soon with some news about G&O Family Cyclery.

Car manufacturers killed transit in the US.

And so, we kill one another with cars. In Seattle, it looks like this.

Around the world, it looks like this.

So let’s do this.

And this.

Heck, I’ve been letting drivers know how I feel about their performance since long before I became a Dad. I think it’s just one of the special roles that cyclists tend to take on. I mean, is it just me or are most bicycle riders also a:

• Super-Navigator: Everybody wants to ask the bikers for directions, especially directions to the highway… where they are not allowed to ride.
• Minor-League Urban Planner: Have you ever noticed how much planning jargon some cyclers use? I love talking about the shape of roads and criticizing the design of our urban space, but I am a no more qualified planner than I am an architect! I don’t know how they make that shit, I just use it!
• Ombudsman of the Road: Bicyclers just love to point out others’ mistakes in driving. I suppose drivers do this, too.

I am not an experienced driver. Actually, I have somewhere between 20 and 25 minutes clocked behind the wheel. I have very little business evaluating the driving of others when it doesn’t affect me. But I am a smart-ass and I am defensive and I am a person on our roads and our roads are pretty hostile places sometimes and, and, and…

And unfortunatley for everybody else I’ve had a few experiences that have reinforced my delusion that shouting something at a driver might lead to something like progress. I can’t remember if I’ve told you all this before, so if I have, bear with me.

Positive Reinforcement for Being Negative

Once, heading over the Jose Rizal Bridge I was overtaken by the driver of a pickup and almost struck by the lumber or plumbing or something that was overhanging his truck’s bed. I gestured and yelled, he started to slow. I gestured again, this time that he should pull over. He did. I freaked. We yelled at each other on the side of the busy bridge but never came to blows and before long we actually shook hands, exchanged names and agreed that we’d both learned something. That really happened! And that never happens!

More recently, Little Oil and I were crossing 15th on Capitol Hill on a cargo bike when I made eye contact from across the intersection with a driver who was talking on his cell. I stopped in my tracks and made a big, ostentatious “Hang up your phone!” gesture at him, smug as can be. Then, as we were pulling into the parking lot of the drug store we ran into someone we knew and stopped to chat. It was only when I heard the honks of the other cars that he was holding up that I realized that Cell Phone Guy was waiting patiently for us to clear the lot entrance so that he could pull in and he had probably been there in the middle of the street for several seconds. Whoops. There I was criticizing HIM. On my way out of the store I spotted Cell Phone Guy. I approached him to apologize and at the same moment he shushed me,

Thank you so much for pointing out how unsafe I was being, talking on my phone while I was driving. Thank you, really.

I don’t need that! I don’t need to be encouraged to yell at or correct people who’s behavior I might find irresponsible, but who are not actually affecting me! Remember, this guy was across the intersection from us when I waved my mighty hand of disapproval at him! He had not endangered Little Oil or myself, or anyone, as far as I know. And that’s one of the criteria that Little and I established, to define and begin to work on my problem with scolding.

Don’t Scold Strangers, Unless You Must Scold Strangers

Not too long ago, Little Oil started pointing out my Ombudsmanly behavior.

Why you yellin’ at everybody, Papa?

I was bothering her, I think I could have been scaring her and I wasn’t proud of that. So, I decided to cool it. Little and I had a series of conversations and we set some limits on my shouting in impatience or anger while she is on the bike.

In some circumstances, some scolding is okay-ish:

• Hey, Look Out! If someone does something crazy-mean or crazy-dumb or crazy-scary and I just react verbally, that’s okay but I need to explain it later.
• Going Mama Bear If someone does something that we think was aggressive and put Little Oil at risk, I can say something to them if the opportunity arises. Basically, if we park near one another or are stopped at a light together.
• That’s It There are no other circumstances that we could agree merited yelling at people during a bike ride.

There are many circumstances where scolding is not, repeat, not approved by my daughter and will get me scolded right back.

• You Remind Me of Something That Makes Me Mad! Bringing my own baggage onto the bike.
• I wasn’t Paying Attention, So maybe You Just Came Out of Nowhere But I am Not Sure! That.
• The Long Distance Mama Bear It is not approved of for Papa Oil to chase, pursue, run down or bring to justice any Road Using Wrongdoer, even if they are driving a postal van in Ballard and even if they scared the hell out of both of us and even if my Hey, Look Out! in the form of a tossed apple core had no effect. Let ‘em go. This isn’t the Searchers, and what are you going to do anyway?

The Ombudsman’s Ombudsman

It is not healthy to let the road make you rageful. I am lucky to have a partner that helps me see the importance of keeping calm and letting things roll off my back. I still scold, and she still points it out when I do. The funny thing is that right around the same time that we started talking about my scolding, Little Oil developed super-powers! She added some lightning bolt reflective stickers to her helmet and gained the ability to “Thunder” others. This “Thundering” entails Little Oil pointing her fingers at a target and muttering, “thunder.” She mostly Thunders on the bike. She always thunders drivers when they are using their phones. Tonight she told me,

I thunder bad cars and they break into pieces and then I take the pieces together and magic them into a flower.

Maybe she’s taken up the slack a little for the scolding? It doesn’t seem to mean the same thing to her but in her own, three-year old’s Theater of the Oppressed kinda way, she spots the Dastardly Doers of the road and deals with them appropriately.

Thunder!

I challenge you, can your test ride be this cute?

Holy Smokes!

Xtracycle is coming to G&O Family Cyclery and we are hosting an EdgeRunner test ride party!

Okay, Davey Oil. Breathe.

Wow!

Details.

EdgeRunner Test Ride Sidewalk Jam

Sunday, July 14th at 6pm

Porch Party at G&O Family Cyclery’s In-Progress Storefront

8417 Greenwood Ave, N. In Seattle.

Come join us this Sunday! We’ll be hanging out with our buds from Xtracycle and showing off the new, improved EdgeRunner. This is a special opportunity to see this sought-after bike in the flesh. It’ll still be a couple of months before these babies are available for sale anywhere!

Tyler and I will be taking pre-orders and talking about the shop and showing pictures of our kids when we aren’t out on our own test rides or grinning like idiots at how cool this all is.

I hear that E-Bikes NW is having a party on Sunday, too! Make a day of it! Bring the kids!

In case you miss us this Sunday, don’t forget that we’ve always got GoGo, my e-assisted version 1 EdgeRunner available for test rides by appointment and we are always happy to take pre-orders or answer any questions about Xtracycles, cargo bikes, science-fiction or anything else, really. In case I never mentioned it, the email is: familycyclery@gmail.com

Oh, and here’s that cool new shop logo again, this time in color:

yeeeeah!

Anyhoo, this one is nice and short. The other day Tyler and I were bringing a couple of Raleigh 2o frames to Equinox Studios, home of frequent collaborator, Haulin’ Colin and his partners in custom metalwork, CycleFab. (Psst! CycleFab is producing exclusive Seattle cycle trucks in the style of my bike Ruby for G&O Family Cyclery!)

While we were there we spotted something very intriguing. This 20 inch wheeled cargo bike, still in progress, but obviously rideable! 

It looks like that big mast down the middle of the bike will serve as a support for cargo platforms or racks. The design reminds me of this bike from David Wilson, but with a tough-but-fun overall geometry which probably comes from frame builder Garth L’Esperance’s experience making custom frames for bike polo.

Also note the tandem crankset, with chainrings on the bike’s non-drive, or left side. Will this bike be fitted with a mid-drive e-assist? An Urban Commuter or a Stokemonkey, perhaps? Spill the beans, Garth! That’s a pretty cool bike!

Until next time… What? Oh, okay! You want some G&O Family Cyclery updates?

Here’s some news:

• opening a shop is taking longer than expected, as expected. still on track to open this summer, but it’ll be a few weeks yet,
• we are building a sweet website,
• we started a tumblr blog, stuffing it mostly with pics and videos of stuff that inspires us as we prepare the cutest darn bike shop imaginable,
• we are the exclusive Seattle area dealers for the Larry Vs Harry Bullitt, and are available for test rides pretty much all the time! email me,
• we are now Xtracycle dealers! EdgeRunners now available for pre-order! and test rides, too,
• thanks to talented designers and craftspeople like Lacey, Michelle and Kenna, we are almost done with our space remodel! it is gonna be really cute,
• working with gifted graphic designer and cartoonist Dalton Webb, we finalized the black & white version of our logo, this:

Cool, right?

Okay, nice talking with you! What was that again? My kids? Okay, real quick before we say, “Goodbye!”

Little Oil, not so little any more.

Baby Oil, still very little!

Okay, now I mean it, Goodbye!

When a rider really wants to get the most utility out of a bicycle they often need to look beyond what is available commercially. Maybe their needs are unique, and nobody has yet attempted to produce, say…

a satisfying way to haul your kids 1000s of miles in style…

a bike that is also a beer bar…

or a pedal powered mobile home…

or a bike to haul all your stuff around town that you can conceivably build for yourself exclusively out of scavenged materials.

I’m sure I am not alone in noticing that many of the most innovative cargo bikes in town are ridden by apparently homeless folks. Some of my  family biking friends have a joke, “Is it cargo or is it homeless?” I think about this joke a lot. I haven’t asked my friends about it, but it brings up some interesting stuff:

• the assumption, thankfully fading into the past, that an adult on a bike must be poor, DUI-convicted, loosing at capitalism, basically,
• the gap between being, “Car-Free” or “Car-Lite” as an ethical consumption choice and not driving as a sometimes unhappy economic necessity,
• and how that gap makes cross-class transportation advocacy so fraught with misunderstanding and, well, classism,
• and how that misunderstanding and classism is ironic, since low-income folks are so incredibly disproportionately impacted by car-dependance (anyone got some data I can sight for that assertion?),
• and how our cargo bike movement loves to take selfies whenever we haul a lawn chair,
• and every third new cargo bike on the road in the US means a new cargo bike blog,
• and how every day around the third-world, working folks and parents are doing it right, hauling epic loads and epic families by bike, presumably because bikes and trikes are really good tools for the jobs at hand and because cars and trucks are too expensive for them anyway,
• and how DIY and crafting culture often involve us folks with relative economic mobility teaching ourselves skills and trades that, to us, feel like they are being recovered from the past, when in reality, lower-income folks have been making useful things from trash, growing food, raising livestock and mending and making-do since before the industrial revolution,
• and how none of that makes DIY culture, the growing cargo bike culture or the, I dunno, urban homesteading culture at all something to be embarrassed about, just something that benefits from a more more global and more multi-cultural context,
• and how I often fail to apply that context and I wanna change that,
• and how I am just so darn impressed with DIY bike-stuff makers!

I get it that some people are very concerned about the perceived safety of some of the rigs I have highlighted here. That’s fine. If I was hired as this rider’s mechanic, I bet I’d have some safety feedback to offer to them. Here on this blog, I am most interested in sharing what I’ve seen or learned about cargo and passenger-hauling bikes. Let’s assume that other riders are doing the best they can with what they’ve got and celebrate them for their ingenuity, creativity, or cargo-hauling bad-assery!

Sooooo, with that said, I think I am going to try to take more pictures of the bikes I see in parks and on the streets that are without a doubt cargo bikes and look to me to be ridden by homeless or street-involved folks. If I can, I’ll introduce myself to the creative bikers who use these rigs and I’ll get their permission to use their photos on the blog. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Unfortunately, I don’t know anything about the rider or the builder of this bike and trailer. I looked around Pike Market, where Little and I spotted it, but could not find her or him.

We spotted this bike on the same day as the last DIY woodworking bike. There are two 2x4s running the length of the top tube from the head tube, just below the handlebar stem, and extending about 14 inches behind the rear of the frame. This creates a long boom to support the shopping baskets used for rear cargo and the trailer’s hitch. It also makes a nice spot for the rider to stash their umbrella.

A milk crate tied to the front of the handlebars with clothesline twine. In fact, the 2x4s appear to be held together entirely with twine and duct tape!

Trailer appears to be a repurposed luggage handtruck. I didn’t notice the flat tire when I took these pictures. Too bad! I have a spare patch-kit I could have left in return for these pics.

Rope is used to creative ends again, here as a trailer hitch.

Cool bike, cool biker!

Meet Kyle, Miles and Evan. They were kind enough to pull over on the Fremont Bridge when a shouting weirdo with a blog and a camera phone flagged them down.

 Hi! They were real nice folks.

Three on a ‘bent! They were coming from Kyle’s work. Mom often drops the boys off at the end of the day so that they can all ride home together. Awwww!

Kyle used to work for Advanced Transportation Products, the company responsible for the Vision line of recumbent bikes. They were made in the USA!

Now Kyle’s a carpenter. You can see his woodworking skills on display here. They’ve used this DIY kids seat mounted to a sturdy bike touring rack for a while now. Sounds like it has worked really well for them. Evan seems to like it!

Kyle says they’ve had as many as five people on this beast! Kyle piloting up front, Mom in the stoker seat with a baby in a carrier and the Evan and Miles on the DIY seat! Wow! That’s  some serious Pedal Parenting right there.

Stay tuned for more bikes recently Spotted in the Wild, as well as updates on G&O Family Cyclery, our brand new Baby Oil and other news, personal, professional and Pedal Parental!

Always lots of fun bikes parked in front of Black Coffee, but this day we had to stop and take some pictures.

Check it out!

A DIY bamboo and plywood and inner tube Xtracycle!

And up front, is that a Hill Topper hub motor from local company Clean Republic?

And do you see how the seat stays cross the seat tube of the GT mountain bike frame this cool ride is built from? How that creates a little triangle of tubes? This is called “triple triangle” design and GT is the only company that can use it. It is intended to reduce side to side flexyness and that’s probably a good thing for an Xtracycle donor bike. This has been a “the more you know!” moment.

Cool bike! I’d love to learn more about it. Anybody out there know anything?

May was a month that saw the blooming of so many things! So many, many, many, manymanymany things! All at once! In less than one week:

Tyler and I signed a lease for the future home of our new bike shop,

G & O Family Cyclery!

Wahooo!

The lamp which hangs over our entrance. It is in Greenwood. 

Aaaand! This kid was born!

Awww!

Cute, right? We’ll call him “Baby Oil,” here on the blog. I wonder if he’s thinking about cargo bikes yet? 

The Oil Family, today.

So, now we have two small Oils! Little Oil is delighted to have him, as are Lady Oil and myself. Obviously, blogging may be light for a while. I do have a lot of things I’d like to talk to you about:

• how it feels to become a Pedal Parent of two,
• when we imagine we’ll be getting him on a bike,
• why I’ve started scolding drivers again, and what Little Oil has to say about that,
• how things are going with the new shop,
• and all the other posts I had in progress before this momentous week.

We’ll just have to see how much time I can find for blogging. I miss you! Meantime, here are a bunch of photos from the last month. Enjoy!

When Little Oil was born, our friend L-Train presented her with this fantastic quilt. Some eagle-eyed readers spotted it in the background of the post on naps and asked that I share a better pic. Nice, right? When Little is ready for her first fixie I am going to paint it to look just like this one.

Now that the shop and my growing family demand all my time, I finally concluded my many years at Bike Works. This is sad. And also joyous!

One thing I noticed over my last few months in the Bike Works shop was a massive increase in cargo-biking Pedal Families in South Seattle. This cool Pedal Papa with his G1 Kona E-Ute, for example. It was a little busted in the electrical side of things. I hope he’s gotten it fixed, cause his family deserves a sweet ride!

This adorable father-daughter team in a lovely Bullitt were nice enough to pause for pictures.

Pedal Papa with Chariot on Lake Washington Blvd.

Another neato bike, spotted at Bike Works. It’s an electric assist Huffy! A Hill Topper, installed by LionTail.

Cool DIY dad carries his young teenage daughter onboard this custom modified rack. We talked Xtracycles, but they are pretty happy with the $15 solution they came up with themselves.

Speaking of DIY Dads. The original came back to Bike Works on one of my last days. He’s revamped his erector set seat and mounted it on a very robust looking Schwinn frame with an integrated, heavy-duty rack that I failed to photograph. Trust me, it looks boss. And DIY as frak.

This Pedal Papa and Passenger are rocking a front seat I’ve never seen in action before! It looks great for littler passengers. I cannot, for the life of me remember the brand. Anyone recognize this?

The same blue Bullitt as before, this time ridden by my friend, Shirley! She is awesome, writes a blog that you should read. She wrote about her impressions of the bike here.

Here’s Tyler putting together our first bike sold! A fantastic cherry-red Larry Vs Harry Bullitt, equipped with BionX E-assist and a cushy seat for the passengers. The family who got this bike are super-cool. I’ll do a post on them and their bike as soon as I am able.

Tyler, with Little Oil and his oldest, Frances out on our shop Bullitt. It is green, fast and has amazing hydraulic disk brakes. It is the nicest bicycle I have ever ridden.

Here’s Tyler again, with Wheelio, my Xtracycle. I include this because they both look so damn good!

Speaking of Wheelio; I just innovated this simple solution for carrying coffee without installing a permanent cup holder. A toe strap and my basket! It works pretty well. Drink still sploshes out a bit.

Better than the alternative. Little always finishes my coffee! Here she is pointing out these nasty grips. She really wanted to share this picture with you.

The brassiest brass bell I ever did see.

I think I was given eyes by my creator simply so that I could spot and celebrate odd cockpits on strangers’ bikes. I live for this.

Another occasion for bike repair innovation! A fancy cork handlebar plug broke off as I was installing it in my new solo bike and I reached for the most logical tool for the job.

Family bikes on Capitol Hill! I see this sweet ride on Broadway most every day. Yepp seats are quality.

So are BoBike seats. This one was parked in front of Central Coop.

This gorgeous WorkCycles Omafiets! I just met it’s rider online, she seems like a pretty fierce Pedal Mama! 

The cousin of that last Dutch bike. I think this one is a Secret Service. This guy was hauling ass up 10th Ave to Capitol Hill. He says he goes a little slower when his kid is riding on the back.

May was Bike-To-Work Month, which in Seattle means that you can eat free bagels and ride with the Mayor at least once a week, if you want to. Mayor McGinn is a really nice guy, and great with kids.

It is hard to believe that May Day was only one month ago. Cargo bikes are great for taking kids to marches and protests. Some can be a little unwieldy when you are traveling at a walking pace, but the EdgeRunner is very stable. And the ability to contain the kid and to split whenever you want is really a boon.

May was a big month.

Many changes.

More to come!