Kids on bikes

A hint of sunshine, no gloves required, 3 months until the longest day! Time then to get out on your bike; and having one two or more ‘wee ones’ shouldn’t stop you having fun on two or even 3 wheels.

A new bike, sorry trike, has arrived at Practical Cycles. But it’s hard to describe this machine as ‘just a trike’.

You see, the Zigo is actually all things to all men,… mums,…er parents!

At its simplest the Zigo Leader (to give it the proper name) is a 7 speed Nexus, hub drive bicycle. This is no concession in design or afterthought – the Zigo bike is a really nice bike to ride and actually looks pretty cool too. 20″ wheels give it the look of a folding bike but without the fold! The only giveaway that this is more than a bike is the hinged clamp nestling just behind the headtube – this is one of the connection points for the Zigo Child Pod.

Child Pod? Yes – this is effectively a child stroller – for two children. It has two 20″ spoked wheels and two folding casters to the front (more on them below).

The main frame of the Zigo Child Pod connects to the Zigo Bike at two critical points – one with the hinged clamp behind the headtube (as mentioned above) and also by slotting a metal prong into the bottom end of the fork steerer tube of the bike (once the front wheel is removed). The prong is then secured by a hand tightened tap which keeps it in place but also engages the brake levers of the bike to work with the drum brakes  (yes drum brakes – amazing!) of the Zigo Child Pod. The Bike and Child Pod linked together in this way becomes a very rideable, fun and Practical Child Transport Trike.

But the versatility of the Zigo doesn’t end there. The Zigo Child Pod has two more modes in which it can operate (if fairly inexpensive accessories are purchased). It can operate as a Jogger – ie a Stroller which you can run fast with. This is achieved using the Jogger Kit from Zigo – the two front casters of the stroller flip-up out-of-the-way and these two casters are replaced by one single 20″ spoked wheel that connects to the front ‘port’ on the Child Pod.

The final flourish of amazing Practicality that the Zigo offers is again with the Child Pod. This can be adapted using the Zigo Towing Hitch, to function as a regular child trailer. This offers families a great deal of flexibility. For example, mum could drop the children off at playschool – here she would quickly detach the Child Pod and leave that at the nursery – she would then ride off to work on her Zigo Bike (panniers on the rear rack with all her important meeting notes). At 3pm dad would tear himself away from his housewifery duties and trundle down to the nursery on his achingly cool fixie. Upon arrival at the nursery he’d find the trailer hitch that mum left stowed in the Child Pod, he’d hook it up and then off he’d go with it in tow. (He’d return 5 minutes later to pick the kids up that he forgot).

And not a car wheel would need turning to safely transport 2 children and 2 adults in the dry with minimum fuss and maximum fun.

If you’d like a test ride, you know where to contact us – www.practicalcycles.com

Nihola!

We are the Cargo Bike dealers that like to say Nih (ola)!

These beautiful trikes will be landing at Practical Cycles very soon – all the way from Denmark.

More information soon!

Nihola Child Transport Trike

Lets improve it and make it worse

We took delivery of the ‘new’ GMG Unimontage Brackets this week. We didn’t know they were going to be new – we were quite happy with the old.

The old Unimontage bracket allowed the GMG classic to be fitted to non-standard pannier racks – this was great for fitting GMG seats to such bikes as the Kona Ute, Xtracycle, Madsen Rack and Yuba Mundo – all bikes that are difficult to fit child seats to. However they did not work with GMG’s new range of rear child seats – Yepp.

So GMG have redesigned the Unimontage bracket so that the Yepp seats are now compatible with it – but the downside is that the bracket is no longer compatible (out of the packaging) with the aforementioned bikes.

Below you can see the new version on the left and the old on the right.

The key thing missing on the new rack is the 4 holes wide of the 4 slots on the cross members. Without these wider racks can’t be accommodated – unless you drill. The new bracket is also a few mm narrower which means on some racks it doesn’t quite sit level.

We think the solution is to drill holes as there is plenty of metal there to drill probably two holes on each ‘corner’. We think this will work on the Yuba, Madsen and Ute racks (we are conducting a test) . We have yet to try this on the Xtracycle – the old Unimontage worked when used in conjunction with 22mm ‘p’ clips – we hope that a drilled rack and ‘p’ clips will also mean Xtracycle users can still enjoy the excellent GMG child seats.

Here’s one we helped a customer fit to an Xtracycle using the old Unimontage and ‘p’ clips….

Thanks to David Calway for the excellent 3 pictures above!

We will update the blog when we know for sure what fits what and how!

Bobike Maxi Tour Seat

We are a fan of the relatively new Bobike Maxi Tour Child Seat.

Whilst the Bobike Maxi and Mini+ child seats are great the Maxi Tour is even greater in our opinion. Why?

Well, it has an adjustable head height, rear reflector/light built-in but most importantly it surrounds your child with much more plastic than the ‘regular’ Bobike Maxi and min seats. This means more protection from the moving parts of the bike, from the elements and most importantly from impacts and accidents.

Fitting is really simple. We fitted it to ‘Basher’. Basher is our guinea pig bike ( a bit like Peter Elland’s “Yellow Bike” in Velo Vision Magazine). Basher was once a 10 speed Dawes Lightning  racing bike – it’s been in our family for years. However with the wonder of tall stems and swoopy handlebars it’s been given a new lease of life as a Town Bike (and guinea pig). This in itself is a ‘story’ for another post.

Bobike Maxi Tour Child Seat on Town Bike

The reason we go into some detail about Basher is to emphasise the compatibility between the Bobike Maxi Tour and the bike you may have. “Will this child seat fit my bike?” is a question echoing the walls of Practical Cycles HQ constantly. Usually the answer is probably – sometimes it is definitely and occasionally it is never!

The Bobike Maxi Tour is a child seat that ‘likes’ bikes with a longer rear end. What do we mean by that?  Bikes such as hybrids, mountain bikes and road (racing) bikes are invariably built for speed and manoeuvrability so they tend to have short wheel bases (the point between where the front and back wheels contact the ground. So fitting to these sorts of bikes can be difficult but not always impossible – we fitted it to Basher don’t forget and that was a 1980s 10 speed racer (but back then – the common man had not yet been treated to short wheelbases so there is quite a bit of length on the back of Basher).

Bobike Maxi Tour Child Seat Fitting Bracket Detail

Long back ends can usually be spotted by the space between the seat tube of the frame and your back wheel or mudguard – if you can fit your fist in there – you can probably fit the Maxi Tour.

The Maxi Tour is a seat designed with Dutch bikes in mind (after all Bobike are a Dutch company that make their child seats in Holland). Dutch bikes have that lazy long back-end and lovely sit up and beg position (see our Dutch BSP bikes) which makes fitting the Maxi Tour easy peasy.

The Maxi Tour also has a little sister – the Bobike Maxi City – a similar seat with similar fitting device but with just a few small differences that make it slightly less expensive.

The real difficulty with child seats is deciding where you want to go to next!….