My first bike was red. Red tires, red handlebars, red seat. We lived on a dead end street in the suburbs, and once I learned to ride that thing I was out on the pavement wheeling around from sunup to the last glimmers of daylight. As I got older I learned how to repair a flat tire, and eventually how to replace those red tires once I’d worn them bald (due to excessive bodacious skids). Then I got curious and started taking the whole thing apart. I loved that it was machine I could understand and master even as a kid.
Despite these fond memories, I did not grow up to be a Bike Guy. By sixteen I was all too eager to upgrade from two to four wheels. Doing skids on my bike was fun, but highways go a lot more places than you can get on a bike, especially in the suburbs.
Thus it was with some trepidation, but still a whiff of thrill from my youth, that I decided last year to buy an electric cargo bike.
I’ll freely admit the urge to do so came from peer pressure. At my daughter’s school, I’ve been seeing parents rolling up with their kids on the back of exotic-looking contraptions that look like this:
Or like this:
There are also a lot of these, which I confess look don’t really awaken the same sense of envy:
I think this last option makes parents look like a hot dog vendor, where the hot dogs are kids.
To get a sense of my options, I decided to “go shopping” at the school’s bike rack at its peak of use during drop-off. I wrote down the names of all the bikes that looked interesting, and later looked them up to see how much they cost, and how they differed from one another.
Here’s how they stacked up once I made this comparison:
| Name | Cost | Coolness level | Durability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rad Wagon | Ouch | High - seems to have wooden parts? Looks like a Montessori toy | Not great—wooden parts look like they warp over time |
| Bunch | Mega ouch | Low - hot dog vendor | Fine |
| Tern | Also ouch | Medium - looks like a Decepticon | Fine |
| Aventon | Not so bad | Medium - looks like a regular bike | Less great - some rust and broken parts |
| Urban Arrow | Super duper ouch | Like the Batman version of a Bunch | Never got close enough to see |
Just looking at the things on a bike rack wasn’t getting me very far, so I decided to phone a friend who genuinely is a Certified Bike Guy. He told me to get a Tern. I consulted my carefully constructed price list above and asked him again. He said other options might be cheaper, but the Tern would prove more reliable in the long term. I bit the bullet and placed an order.
The model I opted for is called a Quick Haul Long. It’s what they call a “long tail” bike–it has a super long chain, and lots of space in the back to carry kids or cargo. Tern makes it super easy to customize in lots of ways. I opted for a seat with a frame around it to contain my wiggly five year old. Now that our younger girl is old enough she rides in a Yepp seat from Thule when she’s tagging along. I’ve also added a rack on the front of the bike since I took this photo, which gives me more space to strap on pool bags, backpacks for school, etc.
I’ve now had the thing for more than a year, and all I can say is that it has been life-changing.
Living in DC, having the bike makes it easy to go places I would never dream of otherwise, especially on weekends, like Union Market or a neighborhood farmer’s market. These are places where parking a car or taking the Metro is often not worth the effort. Don’t get me wrong—I love Metro, but it’s a real drag for schlepping groceries home.
The best part by far is how much our kids love it. Just to give one example, we take the bike now to swim class every week, which in the car would require driving on a highway AND sitting in endless red light cycles to get across town. With the bike, we take a dedicated bike trail the whole way. There’s a playground along the trail where we can stop for a few minutes if we want. No hunting for a parking space, no worries about traffic. The kids hop off the bike and can start playing.
One thing I hadn’t considered beforehand but am grateful for is that the Tern does not have a throttle. This might make me sound like a fuddy duddy, but I don’t want to ride around in a glorified electric moped. The only way to make the Tern move forward is to pedal, but there is an electric motor that kicks in to help. It has an integrated system that somehow magically sense how much work you’re putting in, and matches it with some motorized assistance, like a giant hand helping push you uphill. More assistance means less battery range. I tend to keep mine in “Sport” mode, which is one below “Turbo,” the highest. This gives me about 20 miles of range, which is more than enough to get anywhere I need in DC and back.
This obviously isn’t the best choice for everyone, but for our family, having an extra vehicle to transport kids and get groceries has been fantastic, and a good way to avoid having to buy a second car. Plus, it makes the smallest errand a fun adventure with our kids.