We are getting excited for our upcoming trip to Oregon this weekend. Portland celebrates Pedalpalooza this month and it is packed with cool bike events. Since we are sponsoring the Disaster Relief Trials, we thought it would be a good time to pack up the van and head North.  If you’re in the Portland area, stop by and say hi at one of these events (we’ll have the all-new Boda Boda to try!):

Saturday, June 16th

Kiddical Mass, PDX
1pm-3pm
Arbor Lodge Park

Join Yuba at Kidical Mass, PDX for a fun-filled circus-themed family ride! Put on your bearded lady getup or dust off your bear suit, brush up your juggling or tame a bakfiets of tiny lions. Surprises are in store! Kids must wear helmets. We ride slow enough for little ones; kids must be able to ride in a (reasonably) straight line and start & stop as required. Come ride with us!
Katie Proctor, katie.proctor at gmail daht comm, Kidical Mass PDX, 607-262-0439

Yuba Open House at Joe Bike
4-6pm
Joe Bike
3953 SE Hawthorne Blvd
Portland, OR 97214

Want to be the first of your friends to try out the all-new Boda Boda bike? Hightail to Joe Bike on Saturday for an exclusive Northwest preview of the new cargo cruiser from Yuba Bicycles.

World Naked Bike Ride, PDX
8pm-12am
Meet at the empty lot at the corner of SE Water and Salmon streets

The PDX world naked bike ride for 2012 will take place on 16 jun 2012 at 10pm. Begin gathering at 8pm at the start location – the empty lot at the corner of SE Water and Salmon streets. For more info on the ride, check out the Facebook event.

The World Naked Bike Ride is an annual, worldwide bike ride that highlights the vulnerability of cyclists everywhere and decries society’s dependence on pollution-based transport. It’s also a lot of fun and it’s free for all! Portland has the world’s largest ride–with around 10,000 people on the road in 2010 and 4-5 thousand folks in 2009 and 2011–and we are looking to break the record for the world’s largest naked ride again in 2012!

Sunday, June 17th

Disaster Relief Trials
10 am – 6 pm
Velo Cult
1969 NE 42ND AVE
Portland, OR

Opportunity ONE: Family Utility

• Demo a full spectrum of cargo bikes from three shops:
  Clever Cycles, Joe Bike, and Splendid Cycles
• See the new Yuba Boda Boda cargo cruiser
• Learn about disaster preparation for your family and home
• See how you can transport your family without your car, or without using your car quite as much
• Have your questions answered by top cargo bike enthusiasts

Opportunity TWO: City Utility

• 30 riders will navigate 30+ miles, visit 7 checkpoints, and collect 100 lbs of cargo along the way.
• This event will provide a working draft for what a city can do with cargo bikes after a disaster
• Create connections among city organizations both public and private for the public good

Zombie Apocalypse Ride
10:30 am – 1 pm
Velo Cult
1969 NE 42ND AVE
Portland, OR

The Zombie Apocalypse Ride is combining forces with the Disaster Relief Trials. For those that love zombies and disaster preparedness but aren’t planning to race the trials, this ride is for you. This is a fun and social ride. Dress as either a Zombie or a Survivor (self-explanatory). Prizes for best Zombie and Survivor Bike. Easy paced ride with multiple stops where various facets of surviving the post-apocalyptic zombie world will be debated.

Want to be the first to see the Boda Boda in person?

Come celebrate with the team that made the Boda Boda Cargo Cruiser at our glamorous global headquarters on June 27th.

We’ll have food, music, beer, prizes and games to help make the evening special.

WHERE: Yuba Bicycles
2350 Marinship Way SW7
Sausalito, CA 94965, USA
Get directions

WHEN: Wednesday, June 27th, 6pm onwards

Draw to win a FREE bike!

On June 27th, Yuba Bicycles will release a new bike: the Boda Boda Cargo Cruiser. It gets its name from the ubiquitous utility bicycles seen all over the African continent. Boda Bodas get people and products to their destinations day in and day out. They not only carry essentials, but also transport the dreams and ambitions of individuals from their communities to the world at large.

The Boda Boda Cargo Cruiser empowers cyclists for everyday adventures, from trips to the farmer’s market to elegant picnics off the bike trail.  What do you dream of doing by bike?

How to enter
To enter to win a free Yuba Bicycles Boda Boda Cargo Cruiser, simply draw a picture of what you think it will look like. The drawing can be as simple as a scrawl on a bar napkin or as involved as a fully rendered 3D drawing. The person who we deem guesses the most accurately, gets a free bike.

Send completed drawings to kaytea@yubaride.com by noon (pacific time) on June 22, 2012 to enter. The winner will be announced at the Boda Boda launch party on June 27.

The fine print
Contest is limited to people in the continental US. Winner is responsible for shipping costs.

Kristin Rule, aka, ‘The Unconventional Cellist’, and Andy ‘Mechanarchy’, completed a 1,000k Bicycle Tour of Tasmania in December 2011 and January 2012. They rode Yuba Mundo V4′s (23kg), each ported 45-50kg of extra weight, and they were assisted up the crazy Tassie hills via Andy’s custom built Solar Electric Assist bicycle trailers.

Title track is ‘The Awakening’ (original live looping piece by Kristin Rule). Recorded Live in performance at the Cygnet Folk Festival 2012 (using Ableton Live & Softstep).

Bike to Work Day is one of our favorite days of the year, because everyone gets to experience a little bit of what a bike can do.

This year, we decided to represent at both the Marin County Bike Coalition’s Bike to Work Day Celebration Party at Mike’s Bikes in Sausalito as well as go to the East Bay Bike Coalition’s Bike Happy Hour in Oakland.

Marin County Bike to Work Day Celebration Party

The Marin County Bike Coalition celebrates Bike to Work Day by announcing the winners of the Bike Locally Challenge.  People interested in participating have been selected by an essay-application process to ride a bike for six months, if they complete the challenge, the bike is free.

This year, Yuba Bicycles sponsored a family bike category, where a family take the challenge on one of our bikes. The Brown family was selected, and they were very excited to get their bike.

The winners of the family commuter challenge are the Brown Family. Here they are with their new bike, and Ben.

Here are all the winners of the commuter bike challenge.

East Bay Bike Coalition Bike Happy Hour

The excitement at the booth was palpable.

These guys kept making jokes about how the Yuba Mundo would be perfect for a guy with two sister wives. He does have a good point.

The Yuba Mundo in front of the Yuba van.

This is the East Bay Bike Coalition's Bike Commuter of the Year with Kaytea.

We really didn't expect this guy to pick up this bike from the bike valet.	Tasty, tempting, taco bike tormented us all evening.
This guy built this chopper for himself. He also built the trike at right.	Folding tricycle with sound system, and a joke NOs system.

VeloLogistics.net has been making waves in Europe this week. The recently launched cargo bike sharing service enables people to find geo-tagged cargo bikes to barrow nearby.

How it works is simple: you go on to the site, register, and then add your bike. People then contact you about borrowing your bike. While the site doesn’t seem to support compensation for the bike owner (unlike recently-launched Relay Rides for cars), it does have clear interface showing what type of cargo bike lives where.

Yuba riders are an intrepid lot. You are constantly finding new and inspiring uses for the bikes. Here are before and after pictures from a Yuba rider, who used her bike to transport a trade show booth to an event she had. She got an impressive amount of stuff on the bike (and apparently still looked professional during the event).

She did it! A few months ago, we told you about a young entrepreneur who was raising money to build a revolutionary taco bike called Hot Bike. Congratulations to Rose Slam! Johnson, she got her project funded, and the Hot Bike is on the road.

She took a Yuba Mundo to the fine folks at Rock the Bike for the custom build, and here’s what they came up with:

The full set of photos showing the design and build process can be seen on the Rock the Bike Flickr.

Women represented just 24% of bike trips in the US in 2009; across the bike industry in general, it is typical for men to far outnumber women. Parents of young kids are also underrepresented.

Yuba Bicycles is a different kind of bike company. Naturally, our ridership is also atypical; ~70% of Yuba riders are women with young kids.

Here are two videos by Yuba riders showing their chops on their bikes.

This is from Lindsay of You Ain’t Got Jack.

This is from Elle of Tiny Helmets Big Bikes.

On March 29th-31st Cyclecide, in conjunction with Circuit Network, will be hosting an art show at The Lab gallery called “The Heavy Pedal Art Exhibition”. The Lab is located on Capp st. and 16th st. in the Mission in San Francisco.

The Bicycle is the most versatile machine on Earth. The aim of this exhibit is to explore the concepts, principals and ideas that the Bike has inspired, transgressed, or altered.

This is a call out to all artists, mechanics, tinkerers, and creative sorts who are interested exploring the diverse mediums of the bicycle. The criteria for this show is open. One can make graphics, sculptures, paintings, or make or bring an altered bike to hang from the ceiling. We will accept any medium one wants to use provided that it has something to do with the bike.

All submissions are due on March 13th. Please e-mail jarico@monkeybrains.net with a brief description of you piece and space considerations so we can make sure to accommodate anyone who wants to be in the show. All proceeds of any art sold will go to the artist.