TANDEMISING A BROMPTON

Todd Fahner used the ingenious ITchair Brompton child seat adaptor as the basis for an inspired modifi cation – the ITandem!

The ITchair kid seat for Bromptons was speedily dispatched from Barcelona via the Spanish Postal Service, and it arrived in Portland, Oregon in just ten weeks! With it fi tted we can be out the door and on the road to friends, the park, store, school, train station or airport in seconds, without bothering with cumbersome trailers, big seats, straps, locks and all that, because the bike still folds up as handily as ever. My son’s initial scepticism dissipated over our fi rst fi ve-mile ride. It’s nice to be able to carry on a quiet conversation with your kid as you explore. He’s in charge of ringing the bell. You do need to ride with your knees somewhat splayed to clear your child’s hips, but it’s not too bad. Just the ITchair has been wonderful, but son wants to pedal. He’s not big enough yet for a traila-bike/tag-along, and can’t keep up on a bike of his own. So how about I remove the footpegs and hook up some stoker cranks? I wasn’t sure it would work when I ordered the parts, but I had to try. It was a snap! It works pretty much like Stokemonkey, my electric power-assist system, only children are much more expensive, much noisier, but nowhere near as powerful!

Todd Fahner

PHOTO: JONATHAN MAUS/BikePortland.org

Todd is the manufacturer of the ‘Stokemonkey’ high performance electric-assist system for bikes fi tted with the Xtracycle cargobike frame extension. You can read about this and much more at his blog: www.cleverchimp.com IT-Chair: made by Bike-Tech in Barcelona – see www.it-chair.info. UK distributor is Bikefi x: Tel 020 7405 1218 or seewww.bikefi x.co.uk

A BIKE FOR LIFE

Pieter Tauber from Alkmaar in the Netherlands wrote to tell us about his latest development in easy-access cycles, which he has designed over a number of decades.

The picture (left) shows my latest model, ‘de Lifetime Fiets’. Compared to the Tavara (Tauber Van Raam) which has been made by the Netherlands manufacturer Van Raam for the last 20 years (at around 400 a year), I’ve moved the saddle down by another 6 cm in an arc centred on the bottom bracket. This gives a wonderful seating position, more comfortable, and it’s very easy to put your feet on the ground. You can also enjoy more pedalling

power against the saddle’s back support. The bike is also very compact and easy to handle. The angle of the seatpost means that the saddle can be adjusted over a very wide range towards and away from the bottom bracket. That means the bike can be used from all ages from eight to eighty. I personally am trying to prove that over 80 is possible, too.

Pieter Tauber

41