A Big Dummy's Best Friend

As you already know, I have a strong belief that bicycles are great tools to be used for a wide variety of utility purposes. I've never been into bicycle racing or fast carbon road bikes. I think that half the fun of a bike ride can be in going slowly and enjoying the sights you would always miss if you were in a car. This is why I want my next bicycle to be a folding one. I think it's the best compliment to a longtail bicycle. With an Xtracycle and a folding bike in my garage, there are few scenarios that a bike wouldn't be preferred.

I'm doing a sales presentation for class this Friday, and I chose to sell my professor the folding bike that I see myself getting somewhere down the road. The BikeFriday Tikit. I'll have some pictures of it later this week. I'm positive you can fit at least 3 of them on a Big Dummy.

Check out this short video of the "Tikit 2 Ride" in action. So Sweet!

Pizza Bike in the News

The Naperville Sun ran an article on my pizza delivery adventures.


Check it out here!

Real Rockstars Tour on Bikes

As a kid, there were countless times when video game controllers were swapped around the neighborhood. With the Dummy, even the whole RockBand set is doable without even taking it apart. This time I was just taking the drums to UPS because they're broken and I needed to ship them somewhere, so I decided to haul it the safer way.


This made me think of how I should go on an Xtracycle RockBand tour, but decided that I would be far less cool than one of my early inspirations, Ginger Ninjas, who did it way better.

3J Delivery "(insert slogan here)"

DLK created my new logo! Version 2 coming soon...
Can you say Pizza-Chinese Food-Sandwiches-More Pizza-Catering-Furniture-Moon Jump-Freelance Delivery Services?

Thoughts?

2 Weeks Down

After being in the pizza delivery by bicycle business for a couple of weeks now, here are my thoughts:

The whole operation works surprisingly well. Pizzas stay hot, they don't slide around at all and depending on how many pizzas the car driver has to deliver at any given time, there's a good chance some people will actually get their food faster by bike. I had my initial doubts that it would be a failed test after a few days of doing it, and I'm happy that it can work.

The vast majority of people totally dig it. Now that the weather is starting to look hopeful, I can tell that people are generally in more pleasant moods and much more willing to chit chat about that crazy looking bike with a pizza on the back. I've even gotten a few "Hey that's an Xtracycle!" shout outs.

There have been a couple of anti-bike delivery folks. Not sure if they're just skeptical of it, but one guy really confused me. On the day I started doing this, he came into the shop to pick up his pizza and asked us something along the lines of "Who is being forced to ride the bike today?" We tried explaining that it was actually my choice and I enjoy doing this, and that it is supposed to be helping the environment. Oh well, he didn't seem to get it and just hopped in his humongous car and drove off. I just hoped that everyone wasn't going to be like that, and I'm glad they're not.

A Mother's Day Ride

I'm way overdue to put a picture up here with someone riding on the back. As you can see, it's a pretty roomy ride. Here's my mom and my sister taking a little test ride.

I've been delivering pizzas on the bike for a week and a day, and so far I'm pretty happy with it. The main concern of it just not working at all because of a number of issues like time, cold pizzas and shifty-ness have pretty much been answered. It actually works really well. People are for the most part into it, although a few are kind of weird about it... More pictures and stories coming this week.

I also took the bike into the shop on Friday because one of the wideloaders wasn't snapping in. They drilled some of the paint off and now it snaps in really easily. A little issue, but I'm really glad I can use both wideloaders now with no problem.