Gear of the week | Douze cargo bike

What does this have to do with the GotW? I was finally able to use my everyday GoaY (Gear of all years) to travel to a series of ski tours. What's it all about? A cargo bike powered by green electricity! Last season I was on the verge of writing about the Douze V2 cargo bike because I have so much fun with it as an everyday vehicle. No other vehicle (ok, I still take the camper van on vacation) has accompanied me so often in the last two years or brought me safely to my destination with bag and baggage! In the city, I've always mostly ridden my bike, but I ALWAYS ride the Douze cargo bike! And above all, I use it for all my transportation, even within a 20 km radius. It rides almost like a normal bike and if you want it to be sporty, you simply switch off the assistance - but then it's very sporty over long distances.

I've ridden an incredible 5,000 km on it since then. Whether for transporting children or PG materials from the warehouse to the office and back. Sometimes fully loaded with cardboard boxes for the recycling center or for the first Corona lockdown - watch out for the DIY stores - wood shopping (after all, you want to use the free time to expand the bus). Or loaded up with children and SUP on the way to the lake. Equally popular is transporting cousins to grandma's house. Or taking the other grandma to the train station (please don't tell anyone!!). I can no longer imagine my everyday life without the cargo bike.

After it had snowed so far down in the Black Forest and the masses of cars and people in the higher regions had been a real nuisance, it seemed obvious to simply set off from Freiburg by bike. But more about that elsewhere. This is actually about the product. What can I say? The Douze V2 (the shorter wheelbase) is sporty and maneuverable. The load basket is easily big enough for two pairs of ski boots and two large touring rucksacks - so one or two ski partners have already been picked up halfway along the route. Two pairs of skis can be perfectly secured with the PG ski straps. The Douze is also available with a longer wheelbase, but the small one is big enough! In an emergency, it can also be dismantled into two parts and transported away. And without having tried it out yet: The child safety of the two seats can probably be debated - after all, the seats are low down in the aluminum basket. With the precious cargo (no, not the skis!), you simply have to drive a little more carefully.

Winter tires - I haven't needed spikes yet - should of course be fitted, but when loaded, there is enough weight on the front so that the front wheel doesn't slip away at the slightest tap on the brakes (more the case with a light load). As long as the roads were clear, the standard tires worked well. Only the battery dies a little too early, so that with ski equipment and a lot of pedaling, a 25 km journey (with a few meters in altitude) is already borderline. And unfortunately, the gear ratio is not really designed for mountain stages, but the goal is not to reach the summit, but to get to an acceptable snow depth. This has always worked wonderfully so far.

Of course, now you, young or old, can say: You can do it with a Grävel bike too! I say: You're welcome to! I enjoy the little green energy support - after all, I'm on the mountain to ski and don't want to set off completely out of breath! Incidentally, there's a very competent store in Freiburg with the bicycle specialists from Fahrrad-Spezialitäten!