We live in a somewhat small town on the California coast (Santa Barbara) and the ease of parking directly at the destination – whether the beach, the movies, or a friend’s birthday party – is a big win. The kids love riding in the trailer and happily eat, drink, play and nap in it. We use it nearly every weekend to do 90%+ of our around-town family activities.

The Xtracycle + trailer is the best solution, in my opinion, for a family with kids. That way you get full cargo capacity on the Xtracycle while still allow the kids to ride in comfort. I think it’s much easier for the kids to nap in the trailer (with sun shade, secure seating, etc.) than on the back of the Xtracycle.

I recognize that people have come up with a wide range of ingenious kiddie seat ideas, but those take some doing (there’s no turnkey commercially available solution that I’m aware of currently). Having the kids ride on the X does limit to some degree the amount of cargo you can carry, since the kids need a place to comfortably put their legs. You don’t have that issue if you use a kiddie trailer along with the X.

While my family isn’t car-free, we are definitely car-optional! The X and the Wike in combination are what makes it all possible.

The Xtracycle will work nicely with almost any two-wheeled bike trailer. The only slight consideration is that the rear of the Xtracycle frame does extend out around the rear of the wheel. This will result in limiting the ability to make extremely sharp right turns (the kind of turns you can only make walking the bike). The hitch arm will come into contact with the Xtracycle frame slightly sooner in the angle of the turn then it would on a standard bike.

Neal,

Thanks for the excellent, blog-inspiring question about the Xtracycle vs. bike trailers.