Bike curious

[j4]

I will do a proper update soon, honest (& might even get round to reading other people's journals & commenting on them!) but right now I have a question which is a bit more time-critical and I'd be really grateful for answers from people who know about bikes...

So, now that Imogen is nearly 6 months old (!) it will hopefully not be too long before I can put her in some kind of bike seat & actually start cycling regularly again, hurrah hurrah. A colleague has offered me a standard sit-up-on-the-back child bike seat for free (so I will probably say yes to that anyway) but I still feel that what I'd really like is a Bakfiets-style cargo bike. The problem is that a) they are frightfully expensive, and b) nowhere in Oxford stocks them, so all the bike shops I've talked to have basically said "you don't want to buy one of those" & have instead tried to try to talk me into buying a bike seat that will fit on my normal bike (ie the sort of seat they actually sell).

HOWEVER, a cycling-mad colleague sent me a link to this cargo bike on eBay, in Oxford, for what looks like a very reasonable price (compared to the new cargo bikes I have seen online), and I am tempted. I am going to go and have a look at it tomorrow (Tuesday) and what I really want to know is: what should I be looking for to determine whether it's actually a sensible thing to buy? The description mentions "patches of rust on the frame" (they look quite trivial from the photos) -- what's the best way to check if these are a serious problem, & what work would need to be done to fix them or stop them deteriorating any further? (NB I'm not really concerned about cosmetic stuff, I just need to be able to reassure myself that it's safe.) Is it likely to be a problem getting parts for it if it's an odd make of bike?

To be honest the key question may turn out to be "is the bike actually short enough for a tiny person like me to ride it?", but I can figure that out when I see it.

Any other advice re babies-on-bikes is also welcome (unless it's "argh don't do it", but I know you're all more sensible than that. :-) Thank you in advance, kind people!

Comments

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

I would be very very concerned about lack of neck and back support; she's very young for all the jouncing about and absolutely too young for a back of the bike seat. A 3 point system may no longer be street legal for such a small baby and I would check around widely as to whether just-sitting-up is sufficiently strong for a bike seat. She needs a helmet: do they make them that small? presumably it has a raincover?

Bring a tack hammer and tap all the welds and joints. Look for signs of bending and dodgy repair. Check the wheels and axles as you would for any bike. It looks bloody heavy, as well - but you are very strong!

[fanf]

Some friends of ours put a child's car seat in their bakfiets.

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

If it was strongpointed in, great. Oxford is not the Netherlands. There are safer front-loaders in the UK than this one, by a mile.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I know she's still too young now, but she's getting bigger all the time (cue chorus: "they do that" :-) and given that it may take me months to find the right bike, I want to start looking/investigating/buying before she's old enough. The smallest helmet that the local bike shop sells is 46cm -- haven't measured her head yet but obviously if she's too small for a helmet she's too small for a bike!

I've not been able to find anything clear on the laws relating to carrying children on bikes -- do you know of any good resources? I hoped Cyclox would have something useful but if they do I can't see it on their website (I may try emailing them).

I don't think the bike has a raincover with it, but the hoops at each end of the box are obviously designed for one to fit over, so I'm assuming I'd be able to buy one.

It does look heavy but I'm used to riding a chunky mountain-bike, not using the gears much, & transporting ridiculous amounts of stuff in the bike basket (about twice Imogen's weight in shopping on the last trip to Tesco!). Impossible to tell how bad the weight/handling on this bike would be without trying it though!

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

Burley trailers and Cougar Chariot or Croozer front-loaders seem to be significantly safer than a garden box on a BSO. :-)

[j4.livejournal.com]

Trailers always look very unsafe to me, wobbling around behind where you can't see them (& cars can't see them easily either). Unfortunately in the absence of much real data everybody assumes that the thing they used to transport their own children is Very Very Safe and everything else is Bad (because nobody would make a Bad decision for their own child, but Other Parents can do silly things).

What's the Croozer front-loader? I can't see it on their website (http://www.croozerdesigns.com/products.html)...

[scat0324.livejournal.com]

I think you're right - the main advantage of the trailer over cargo-bikes is that one of us can leave it at nursery and the other one can hitch it up on collection. I think the trailer is safe enough but then we've had M in it (well, in the Babyshell http://weber-products.de/zubeh/baby_main.htm ) since about 6 weeks with no helmet, so I'm clearly evil and bad and wrong :-), but I think the cargo-bike has got to be a bit safer overall.

[bjh21.livejournal.com]

I use a bike trailer for transporting stuff, and my experience is that looking back to check on the load is difficult because it's in a difficult place to see and riding with a trailer needs extra concentration anyway.

So I suspect that whatever the actual relative safety of the various options, a trailer is one whose safety is particularly difficult to reassure yourself of while riding along. I deal with this by wrapping things up and tying them down quite firmly (http://bjh21.me.uk/pictures/2011-12-07_dollshouse/cimg2424.html), but I've never transported live cargo.

[bjh21.livejournal.com]

(oops -- just realised I posted this months late on an ancient thread. Sorry)