The weekend of April 17 through April 19 was underscored by a mini heat wave, providing an open invitation to little else but getting out and about by bike. The tomato twins were called into action numerous times during the weekend, for everything from simple, barely 1/2-mile runs to Oregon Park, to trips to the grocery store and beyond.

When using a bicycle for utility purposes (cargo and child transport), you do your very best to consolidate trips just as you might when using an automobile. The major difference is that distance and terrain play a larger factor into your decisions, but mostly its cargo capacity that plays the biggest role in the decisions you make regarding where to go and when, and even which bike(s) to use.

The box bikes (Chinese bakfiets) from Joe Bike are more affordable facsimiles of the Dutch Bakfiets short-box cargo bike, as opposed to the long-box Dutch Bakfiets sold at Clever Cycles. The long-box adds cargo capacity as well as the option of seating your children in tandem, compared to side-by-side only seating in the short box. This is a nice option. The trade-off is that the bike is much longer and a bit heavier, making it slightly more challenging to navigate for a new rider –though experienced  riders find little challenge in the extra length and heft.

Whatever the case, the box bike, once filled with children, doesn’t leave a tremendous amount of cargo room for groceries, etc. (see comment), so you have to rely on the bike’s rear rack and/or bags. Subsequently, when Keri and I both venture out with our daughters, it’s nice to take both our box bikes so we can each take a child –thereby reducing our respective loads while increasing our overall cargo capacity. This being said, we’ve recently started to bring our Yuba Mundo into the mix again.

Keri loves the Mundo because of its super-plush ride provided by massive balloon tires; the rigid, extra-long, high-ten steel frame; and it’s spongy saddle. I can’t blame her, either; the Mundo is a pleasure to ride, though I think I need to swap out that 38T crank for a 32T crank –it could benefit from slightly lower gearing. In addition to Keri’s love for the Mundo, we find that it serves another very useful purpose when venturing out for various utilitarian tasks, such as we did on Earth Day, April 22.

This Wednesday we decided to take the entire family to Portland Nursery to pick up some seeds, a poppy plant and a couple of bales of Black Forest organic soil conditioner. The girls love the nursery because its where the Apple Festival takes place each Fall –of course, they think it’s occurring all year (alas, it is not). Nevertheless, the scope of this trip –less than four miles round-trip– required that we consider something other than the box bikes if we wished to make one trip. This is where the Mundo fit in perfectly.

Black Forest organic soil conditioner comes in dense, heavy, three cubic feet (3 ft³) size bales, approximately 28 inches long by 16 inches wide by 12 inches thick. I have no idea how much each bale weighs, but they’re relatively heavy. I likely could not fit more than one bale into the bike’s cargo box without creating a potentially unstable and/or hazardous situation. What’s more, I couldn’t carry anything but the bale!

Subsequently, we called the Mundo into action to do what it does better than anything else: carry heavy and awkward loads with ease. I purchased two bales, placing one bale on each of the Mundo’s rear side carriers, using a single bungee to secure each bale in place. Done. The load was low to the ground, very well secured, and the bike rode like a dream. Keri used her box bike to haul the girls, seeds and our lone poppy plant.

This was a trip that may have been a show-stopper for a bicycle-focused family that didn’t have the right combination of bikes, trailers, etc., or it simply would’ve taken more trips with fewer people. Thanks to purpose-driven bicycle design, we were able to accomplish a seemingly straightforward urban task without using an automobile. Yes, it takes more time and sometimes more creativity, but the rewards are always present in the personal feeling of satisfaction for accomplishing something that you may not have considered –or even thought possible– just three years ago. What’s more, it’s always fun to see people smile when they see what’s possible with a bike.

It’s important to point out that if we only had a single box bike, or only a Mundo, or perhaps only an Xtracycle (etc.), we still could have accomplished the trip, just in a different manner –likely requiring more than one trip, without the entire family. That’s the best part of using a bicycle for utility; you really can’t go wrong, because if you make a less-than-optimal decision, you’re not hurting anyone or the environment. In fact, you’re simply gaining a different experience and maybe some more exercise. This is not the case when using an automobile for the same type of basic utilitarian activity.

Consider that on Sunday, April 19, some combination of our family ventured out by bike on four different occasions. Nearly every trip was under three miles round trip. As reported at BikePortland.org yesterday, 49 percent of trips (taken by Americans) are less than three miles, yet barely one percent of said trips are taken by bike.

This is an unfortunate statistic for many social reasons (e.g., unnecessary traffic congestion, air pollution, storm drainage pollution due to run-off of automotive fluids; wasted opportunity for exercise; isolation from neighborhoods and community). Automotive companies rightfully argue that today’s vehicles are more than 90 percent cleaner than their respective products from the 1970s. This is not false, yet it’s only part of the picture.

The primary component of an automobile that reduces the toxicity of emissions (thereby ensuring minimum air pollution) is the catalytic converter. The catalytic converter functions by utilizing a heated honeycomb of complex metals and substrates that produce a chemical reaction wherein toxic combustion by-products are converted to less-toxic substances. This more completely burns toxic exhaust from an internal combustion engine, thereby reducing the level of poisonous gasses released from said engine. These devices were required by law beginning in 1975 and have progressed through several decades of research. Unfortunately, the progression is simply a manner of making something that is harmful, slightly less harmful.

Although catalytic converters are effective at removing hydrocarbons and other harmful emissions, most of exhaust gas leaving the engine through a catalytic converter is carbon dioxide (CO₂), the greenhouse gas indicated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a significant cause of global warming. Additionally, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stated that catalytic converters are a significant and growing cause of global warming, due to their release of nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas more than 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Unfortunately, the main failure of the catalytic converter is not so much in its potential for ‘not’ gating CO₂ or for enabling the release of N20. The primary failure of this device is in its inherent, designed-in failure to function at low temperatures, as is the case when a vehicle has not been in use for a number of hours.

You may notice that when starting a car for the first time after it has sat overnight, the exhaust is especially pungent. This is due to the fact that the car is automatically mixing the fuel/air ratio (making the mixture more fuel-rich) to enable an easier ‘cold start’. Unfortunately, the catalytic converter has yet to heat up, thereby leaving much of the unburned, fuel-rich air to exit into the atmosphere. Even if a vehicle has a pre-catalyst located close to the engine’s exhaust manifold –which, due to its proximity to the engine, heats up quickly and reduces cold-engine emissions– the results are only slightly mitigated.

So how does this all come back to the carrier pigeon and my family’s several trips out on a Sunday afternoon?

If nearly half of all trips taken in the United States are similar in distance to those that my family makes by bike, then these trips likely are utilizing internal combustion engines that are not significantly heated to provide maximum emissions reductions. The trips just aren’t long enough to ensure that every mile is traversed with a catalytic converter functioning at 100 percent efficiency. Essentially, these short trips are not enabling cars to work as efficiently as designed, thereby making them far more harmful than their mere fuel consumption would imply. By the time the car gets to its destination and shuts down, the engine is just reaching a point of maximum emission efficiency.

Bicycle trips simply don’t suffer from the failure of a catalytic converter. We as humans still need to warm up, but we don’t tend to release a fuel-rich mix of unburned toxins into the air while we loosen our muscles and joints. What’s more, we release far less toxic (though perhaps not less offensive) fumes. Automobiles are wonders of engineering and have their place in the transportation system of our modern urban society, but for nearly half of all trips taken, they may not be the most responsible choice.