selfaware soup

Week of Movement

Wheels, boots, and samurai.

2025-06-05

Wheels

I fulfilled a little dream of mine this week and got myself a cargo bike. I’ve wanted one for years but over the last few months the idea has been stuck in my head a lot more.

The problem had always been that good cargo bikes are expensive, and the cheap ones are often very disappointing. During the time when I volunteered as a bike mechanic and repaired a lot of cargo bikes for a non-profit bike rental organization in Berlin I saw a lot of the things that can go wrong and break, and how negatively that will impact the ride quality.

I had a few condition of what kind of bike I wanted:

• two wheels

  three-wheeled cargo bikes have absolutely terrible handling as they can’t lean into curves. There’s a few models that can lean sideways but they’re mechanically very complicated with a lot of custom parts and are also very expensive.

• cargo in the front

  These days there’s more and more cargo bikes that have the main cargo in the back, above and next to the rear wheel. This has the advantage that the bike is much closer in total length to a regular bicycle. But it also limits the shape of the things you can carry. They are great for having one or two kids in the back, but hauling any bulky object becomes tricky and the center of mass is very high, making the bike less stable.

• cargo low to the ground

  I like the way a bike feels when its center of mass is very low. It makes the ride very smooth and pretty much eliminates the risk of the bike tipping over when loaded with something heavy. It also makes loading and unloading easier.

• internal gearing

  I don’t want to deal with chain derailleurs unless I have to. Internal gear hubs are much easier in terms of maintenance and generally less trouble, and being able to shift gears while standing still at a traffic light is a blessing.

• strong brakes on both wheels

  A lot of the cargo bikes I used to work on as a mechanic had drum brakes which are a nightmare. They are relatively weak and tricky to maintain. Some also came with a coaster brake in the rear and maybe a decent disk brake in the front. The front brake is usually the important one, especially on heavier bikes, but I really prefer to have two brakes I can rely on and that means disk brakes on both wheels. Coasters are also annoying on a cargo bike because I want the ability to adjust pedal position freely at at stop so I can get going efficiently again.

• open cargo area

  Most cargo bikes of this type (long, with the front wheel ahead of the cargo) have some sort of fixed box or large basket to put stuff in. That’s convenient, if everything you carry fits into it. But it prevents carrying unwieldy objects, particularly things that are wider than the container. I want to have the flexibility to carry anything from a gym bag to a small fridge.

This basically only leaves the Bullitt as a bike that fulfills all of these criteria, or some relatively rare similar constructions. The problem is that Bullitts are expensive, even the acoustic (non-electric) ones, way outside of my budget. And even finding a used one that’s not electric proves difficult these days. I feel like electric cargo bikes have become vastly more popular, and for good reason. If I had to bring two kids to school each morning in one of these, I’d much prefer some motor assistance too. And now a lot of these family bikes are hitting the second-hand market as the first cargo-bike kids have grown too big and probably ride their own bikes now. So you’ll see a ton of used electric cargo bikes, but few acoustic ones.

I got really lucky and found this one for way under its worth and snatched it.

It even came with some bonus features that make it almost the perfect bike:

• belt drive (not necessary but really nice to have)
• 8 gear internal hub (instead of the lower end 7 gear option on Bullitts)
• cruiser handlebars (love those)
• leather saddle (which hasn’t been treated well but a little waxing will fix that)

I named her Marlene.

Boots

Last week I also got myself a pair of leather boots, first time for me. I have always been a bit intimidated by the idea because I knew that boots (more so than other shoes) need to be broken in and that this can be a very unpleasant process.

But I think I had a good strategy for this. The first two days I wore them only indoors at home while they were still perfectly clean (I’m a no-shoes household) so that I could take them off any time, if they became too uncomfortable. I still managed to wear them for about six hours on each day though.

Over night I shoved a small rolled-up towel into each boot, pressing it firmly into the front section to give it some pressure from the inside because they felt really tight on the sides and top at first.

Starting on day three I put them on for short walks outside, like grocery runs. On day five I started wearing them for full days at uni. That was still quite uncomfortable but progress was clearly happening.

Now, on day ten, they actually start to feel good on my feet. No more spots that cause pain after a few hours and no rubbing anywhere.

I think they’re done. These are my boots now. And I managed it all without getting a single blister.

Samurai

Seven Samurai has been on my watch-list for a long time now, pretty much since seeing the episode of Every Frame a Painting about Akira Kurosawa, but I never got around to it. I watched finally it this week with James.

I ended up disappointed, but a lot of that is probably due to the film’s age and how much its influences are deeply ingrained in modern film-making. You watch it and everything feels like you’ve seen it a hundred times, because you have. It’s just that this movie is the original source of a lot of these tropes.

I would still recommend watching it, but maybe manage your expectations a bit. It’s also very long, even by today’s standards, and quite repetitive at times. I think at the time of its release this was not as much of an issue because seeing a lot of the scenes of this movie at all must have been sensational. It’s just with an eye that’s accustomed to its legacy that it may appear stale.

Notable Media

• New TierZoo video about mollusks

  These are always fun.

• Sonic Empire (Short Mix)

  One of the best techno tracks ever made. Absolutely timeless. I dig it up every couple of months and each time I’m astounded how good it is.

• mitxela - Precision Clock Mk IV

  Just a cool electronics project, way over-engineered just for its own sake.