| Happiness, we love new visitors!! Get FREE updates delivered daily to your inbox by subscribing through email or RSS feed.While you are here enter the 9 in 2009 Giveaway! Click here to enter! |
Right about the time I posted my dirty green secret about driving an SUV (gasp), I noticed a post from a favorite site of mine, Keetsa, about using cargo bikes instead of your family SUV. The titled struck me so I clicked and actually started laughing when I saw the picture. I just simply cannot imagine myself toting my children to school on a cargo bike or my family getting into our SUV of a bike and biking it to the store. Especially in the winter, unless there are special tires or tracks on the thing! Then I started thinking about how cool it is and in my very “ungreen” but slowly going green town, I’d get many looks and maybe some people would start thinking about what they drive. It could be a catalyst for change, save some green and maybe start a new trend where moms are seeing who has the nicest wheelbarrow bike in town! Wouldn’t that be something? Moms in Europe use these all the time! There’s even a twelve seater so you can be a bus!
I ran this idea by my husband to see if Mr. Green and Clean Dad would be inspired to trade in or at least acquire one of these SUV bikes. Green snot flew out his nose when he saw what I wanted because he was laughing so hard! Not laughing at the bike or the concept but at the thought of me riding one of the cargo bikes with our children, up our huge hills (we live where there are lots of hills) and into town 5 miles. Then he stopped (the image must have disappeared from his head) and thought about how neat the bikes were and if we lived in the city how great this could be. Of course if the imported bike was more affordable we would be inclined to give it a whirl and would love trying one but for a couple grand, we just have to pass. Sorry folks, for now I’m keeping the traditional SUV but this cargo bike sure is sweet and maybe some day I can have one. If things continue going the way they’re going maybe my kids will have one when they grow up and I can ride in one?
Maybe you’ll be so inclined to ditch the SUV and skip the hybrid and go straight to peddle power. You’d be very green in my book! There’s a Dutch Bicycle Company that imports the cargo bikes and another company I discovered called Bakfiets (all photos are from Bakfiets). I’ll contact them and maybe the
y’ll give a discount or a giveaway? I was reading a post on Treehugger about these bikes and a commenter suggested modifying an already existing bike and making your own wheelbarrow bike. I can see my hubby doing this with some duct tape and some old Huffy from the basement! This could become a fun contest for a town and there could be a wheelbarrow bike parade. Like they have a cardboard box race? There’s even cargo bike festivals because this form of transportation is becoming ultra popular and oh’ so eco-savvy! Not where I like but somewhere!
