I've recently noticed a certain wear pattern to my left shoe that I haven't seen before. I wonder what that scuff could be from.
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What Is This Nonsense?
I created this blog to share my experiences with the Bakfiets cargo bike. Expect trivially personal anecdotes, ride reports, and whatever else Bakfiets-related that I find interesting.
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5 comments:
Just saw your blog mentioned in the Clever Cycles Twitter feed.
I totally have that same wear pattern. In fact. I have similar shoes as the ones in the photo and had to restitch the front toe. I may have to apply a bit of Keen-like rubber on the toe for some toe-tally perfect bakFEETS.
http://www.ecometro.com/portland/search.aspx?tag=The+Wheel+American+Family
We're in NE PDX looking at buying a Bakfiets, and when we had a rental over the weekend, one of my first thoughts was, well that's sure going to screw up a lot of shoes. My thought was to put some sort of rubber cover on it (honestly, I'm not crazy about the entire latch system and would probably look at a way to replace it), but there's also a product called Tuff Toe that's basically an epoxy marketed to, in my experience, motorcyclists, though googling it this morning found many other markets, to protect their boots from shift lever damage (same toe even - hey, I could just always wear my moto boots....). Might be worth checking out if you wear the same shoes a lot and don't mind a shiny toe-cap.
One of the things I like about the Bakfiets -- and "slow bikes" in general -- is not having to wear a particular set of shoes to ride. I wonder if I could disassemble/remove the latch and dip it in a similar compound, rather than doing the same to the shoe.
Another thing... what's that little hole in the latch there for? It's almost begging to have a string tied through and run up the cargo box. Then you'd just have to pull the "drop kickstand cable" instead of using your feet.
I was thinking something less elegant - like wrapping it in duct tape or anything that would be softer than the toes of my shoes - but they did use to sell this stuff called, I think, something like Plati-Dip that was sort of like a think paint/plastic goo into which you could dip metal tool handles and what not; if it's still around that would probably do better what you suggest than the epoxy, and be cheaper to boot.
I like the idea of a cord to drop the stand as well, but I actually find it more awkward to latch up than to unlatch, though that might just be a quirk of the rental we had - my wife actually resorted to reaching down and pulling it up the last bit by hand to get it to stay in place most times.
I actually wear flats & flips while riding my bakfiets. And yes, I have to be really careful lifting the kickstand as not to have that scuff on my actual toes...
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