Hello everyone,
Welcome to Issue #4 of Cargobike Culture!
This issue we’re going international to talk about cargobikes with Nicolai from Portland, USA. We also have a lucky winner from our first contest and some cargobike Twitter news.
Follow up
I’d like to say a huge thank you to Cathy, Scott and the anonymous person from Vermont who all spotted a bargain and signed up for the $50 annual membership. And a giant thank you to Martin and Larry who signed up as $5 monthly members.
Last week we had our first competition to win an amazing toy cargobike to celebrate the launch of paid subscriptions. I’m excited to tell you that Larry has won themself a new desk toy! I hope you enjoy putting it together and will send us a pic when you’re done.
Meet a cargobiker - Nicolai, Kenso and Naomi Kruger
Nicolai is an architectural illustrator from Portland where she lives with her husband Yasu, son Kenso (9) and daughter Naomi (12).
The first time I met Nicolai it was pretty obvious she loved cargobikes. She’d flown halfway around the world to see a bunch of them.
We both attended the International Cargobike Festival and Conference in Amsterdam in 2022 and she’d seen some of my sketchnotes on Twitter.
She cornered me outside a seminar room and we quickly hit it off. A couple of days later and she was sat in the front of our family bakfiets whilst I gave her a tour of Utrecht and we’ve been friends ever since.
Back in Portland, Nicolai lives with her husband Yasu, son Kenso and daughter Naomi. They’ve been in Portland since moving back from Japan in 2015. They spent 9 years living in Tokyo where Nicolai worked as an architect and became fluent in Japanese. Their household is now bi-cultural, speaking Japanese at home and they travel back to Japan regularly. After working as an architect, she switched gears and became an incredible architectural illustrator (seriously, check out her work, it’s amazing).
Nicolai is the cargobiker of the family. She rides a longtail bike, which means instead of a big box on the front, it has an elongated rear to allow for passengers and cargo. Her bike is a Tern HSD which she got in 2020 when schools began to reopen. She took Kenso to school for about a year before he started to not like it so much, telling me “I used to like it but now I’m in 4th grade, it makes me feel like a baby”.
Even if Kenso’s not so keen, Nicolai loves having him on the back of her bike. “We have lots of nice conversations along with dog, cat and bird spotting”.
Her daughter Naomi, who is 12, has similar views to her brother, “Riding on the back of my mum’s bike would be so embarrassing”. Unlike her brother, Naomi is old enough to cycle herself to school. But her parents are too concerned about road safety for that to happen, “It’s not you I don’t trust, it’s the car drivers” insists Nicolai. When the weather is nice, Naomi will cycle together with her to Mum school. Otherwise it’s a 30min walk with her friends.
For day to day trips, Nicolai trys to avoid the car and take public transit when she can. When she’s deciding whether to bike or not, a big factor is how safe it will be to lock the bike at her destination. Like everyone, Nicolai wants her bike to be there when she gets back. We take it for granted that our cars will, but you can’t say the same with a bicycle.
For instance, their grocery store is bikeable, but Nicolai is never sure her bike will be where she left it when she’s done shopping. This worry of security is something I hear over and over again when I talk to people about cargobikes. It’s going to be the subject of an upcoming issue.
One thing the bike does exclusivly get used for is the Saturday morning trip to the farmers market. Nicolai rides with a bunch of her friends and their kids. Naomi tags along on her own bike, but its hard to keep up sometimes, “everyone else has an electric bike, and I can’t ride one yet”. I was really surprised to hear this as unlike in Europe, Oregon requires you to be at least 16 years old before you can ride an electric bike.
What I found most interesting during our chat was how much the kids want to be out biking on thier own, but for very understandable reasons, they can’t. This is a level of freedom which I think Dutch kids of similar ages take for granted. Its not unusual here to see kids as young at 10 cycling themselves to school, though they’ll normally be with a friend or two.
I really enjoyed talking to Nicolai and her family about their American cargobike life. Living in the Netherlands, it’s easy to take the ease of owning and using a cargobike for granted. I hope to share more international stories like Nicolai’s so we’re hearing from all types of Cargobikers outside our Dutch Utopia.
You can follow Nicolai on Twitter and find her illustration work at nicolaikrugerstudio.com
Cargobike of the week
This issue’s cargobike of the week is another toy bakfiets. This time from Cargoli, an off shoot of Germany based cargobike group cargobike.jetzt.
I don’t have one of these in my collection (yet), but you can order them from stockists around the world. A full list of stores is on their german site.
Other links of interest
Ireland increases tax benefit for cargobikes
The Irish government has increased the amount people can claim for a cargobike under the Bike to Work scheme from €1250 to €3000. Like other countries, the scheme allows people to use their pre-tax income to pay for a bicycle which can equate to quite a good discount. If you’re in Ireland, it’s worth checking out. It’s an important step to help more people access a cargobike, since they often cost considerably more than a standard bicycle.
Twitter corner
Ruth-Anna from Hackney in London shared these adorable pictures. She’s also a co-founder of Beyond The Bicycle, a UK based group who promote non-standard bicycles (including cargobikes!).
Dogs and Cargobikes, what’s not to love.
I stumbled across this awesome little business from Leverkusen, a city just north of Cologne. It’s a meals-on-wheels service called mydabbawala.de which use a modern version of the famous Indian dabbawala food containers. The menu looks delicious!
They also use cargobikes for delivery so I can only imagine how small their transport costs are compared to a van.
Finally I loved this tweet from Amanda in Berlin who got her entire Ikea haul home, with a kid, in the wind and rain, all with her bakfiets. Nicely done!
Next week
Our next issue will feature an interview with Amsterdam’s top cargobiking dog walking company. It was really fun to meet them, and even have a ride on their unique dog transporter. See you next week!