A year of DIY projects with our Yuba Mundo

Here’s a timeline of most of my Mundo projects and tinkerings…

Spring-time capacity? 2 child seats, 1 daddy saddle, 1 toddler seat, 1 large basket

4 on the road.  There’s an umbrella stroller bungeed to the long left running board (It’s hard to see, but Baby Boy is riding shotgun, enjoying The Avett Brothers on the sound system.)

2 “Peanut Shell” seats, with 5-point harnesses, footrests, & padding sit just right on the Yuba’s rear bamboo deck (our tall girls fit perfectly well in them!)

The MUNDO is easily customized–I made this large rear basket attachment with vertical rack and large hooks quite easily with heavy-duty zip-ties, all the better for holding backpacks, helmets, and full grocery bags.

If you’re looking for a good baby/infant/toddler seat, the Yepp mini is pretty fantastic.  It has a durable but soft ventilated shell,  5-point padded harness, head protector and pillow, adjustable foot holders with straps, it can be quickly disengaged with one adult hand, and is easily locked and unlocked with the included key.

The side-view of the MUNDO when we’ve loaded it four-people-deep.  This pic was the inspiration for the name of our site.

This was the first shade-heavy configuration I tinkered with…You don’t need to be a mechanic or a tool whiz to customize your bike, trust me.  I am of little use when it comes to fixing complex things around the house, but a little creativity and willingness to experiment are well-rewarded with this bike.  You can accessorize it quite easily as seasons change, kids grow, your needs evolve, you name it.

Front view with the all-weather umbrella, tin-can-cupholder and toddler windshield (total outlay–about $15 after a quick trip to a hardware store.)

Here, I switched out the blue umbrella for a higher-visibility orange one, matching (coincidentally) the umbrella-stroller canopy shade I attached up front for Little Guy.  It’s swiveling joints made it useful as a both a shade canopy and windscreen for my little navigator up front.

Panniers attached to a front wheel rack and a collapsible basket attached to the rear deck make for extra backpack/grocery/whatever-needs-holding capacity

As the heat cranked up this summer, it was necessary to beef up the infant seat shade situation.  This may not be a pretty finished product, but it was effective.  A black mesh UV stroller shade up front and, up top, a flexible shade extension made from vinyl glued to a dog conical collar made the small orange shade clipped to the handlebars much larger without making it too bulky or inflexible.

Our latest configuration, with all three kids on the back!

The “Monkey Bars,” debuted by Yuba this year, are awesome.  This sturdy and light frame comes with adjustable/removable inner bars.  They can span the whole length of the rear deck or–as above–half the length of the deck.  On our bike, the back half of the deck holds one of the peanut shells for our little guy, complete with clip-on umbrella-stroller canopy for a windshield and UV stroller shade to battle the sun.  While Yuba makes a nice cushion for about $30, I used two $3 chair cushions, and they work great!

There’s always stuff that needs holding.  Two $2 IKEA plastic bag holders carry an umbrella and random clothes and small groceries in the rear while front panniers and black wire shelf frame pieces make a large and lightweight holder for tall backpacks and other items.

EMERGENCIES HAPPEN!  While I have bike repair supplies on hand, there are other–kid-related–emergencies that come our way, too.  The picture on the left is of a diaper-change kit (housed in an econo-sized Band-Aid plastic box) mounted with the brazons for a water bottle cage.  The one on the right is of a small travel bandage/first aid kit attatched with the brazons just behind the crankset.

Much like our four-wheeled vehicles, bicycles now have cupholders out the wazoo (well, ours do, at least!).  Two cages mounted just below the top tube hold water bottles/sippee cups and one cage on the handlebar holds a snack cup while a coffee cup holder I made from a mostly used-up packing tape roll screwed to a C-clamp keeps the java close at hand but nice and level to avoid spills.

The bike is lighter and easier to maneuver now than it was a year ago, which is a good thing considering that my kids keep getting bigger while I keep getting older.

Child-seats: you don’t always need children in them to make them useful

3 seats, 3 different loads, 1 successful outing with my special helper.

So, the other day, I was in the in the common situation of needing to run an errand.  But that errand then turned into two errands.  Then the kids took a nap.  But one woke up much earlier than the other two were likely to…normal stuff for parents, right?  The little circumstances of our days are fluid, changing one moment to the next in a way that’s not terribly fascinating, but often logistically-challenging nonetheless.

The second errand I needed to run was picking up a jumbo bag of potting soil at the hardware store.  This is not generally a task I would’ve considered accomplishing with a bicycle a year ago.  The first errand, a larger-than-usual Trader Joe’s haul, would’ve been easy enough to handle on my about-town solo bike.  But adding a 50lb bag of soil and a recently-wakened child to the mix meant using the YUBA.

I’m used to having at least both of the girls on the bike, if not them AND the baby, but it’s always nice to have a little on-on-one time with one of the kids (it’s actually very necessary, and even doing mundane things like running errands with just one “special helper” provides bonding time we don’t usually get when taking care of the children, en masse).  So my little Doodlebug and I headed off to Trader Joe’s to get a bunch of stuff.

**Something I’ve learned riding a cargo bike: just because the bicycle can handle a whole bunch of weight on the back doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t still distribute the weight more evenly across the whole bike whenever I can.  So, instead of removing the baby’s YEPP Mini seat before we departed the house, I kept it on so I could use it to carry the groceries, knowing that the rear of the bike would be carrying a larger and less-wieldy load than usual.  (The YEPP Mini, by the way, is rated to carry 33lbs, and that thing is sturdy).

So we went to Trader Joe’s, got what we needed, enjoyed a pulled-pork taco from the demonstration counter, (I also had a wee cup of French Roast), handed out a couple PRACTICAL CYCLE business cards to some people who wanted know where I got our YUBA, and we headed down the street to the hardware store.

It’s a small thing, to be sure, but I prefer shopping in a grocery store that has hand-drawn signs referencing Monty Python scenes whenever I have the choice.

Doodlebug and I had a nice time in the hardware store (almost any place can be a destination worthy of at least a modicum of anticipation and excitement with a young child–especially a place that has birdfeeders, a wall of kitschy keys waiting to be carved, numerous powertools, and an old-timey popcorn machine dispensing honest-to-goodness real popcorn).

After browsing and munching, we got our potting soil and I loaded it on the rear “Peanut Shell” seat (Doodlebug was sitting in the front one, right behind me and within tickle range).  I made sure to use one of the bungee cords I keep on the back of the bike to sufficiently anchor the floppy bag to the seat.  It worked like a charm.

We made it home easily, enjoying some tunes along the way in the afternoon breeze -the (The Avett Brothers: “The Carpenter” if you’re interested), and–soon enough–the girls were planting sunflowers and herbs with Mommy in the garden.

Not very long ago, I would’ve just jumped in the car and handled these errands, probably by myself.  On this day, though, I got some exercise, some sweet time with my little one, and a little more social interaction than I would have gotten otherwise…all for the cost of about 30 extra minutes.

I’ll pay that price any day.