I wrote last week about the Indie Web: the way that the web has the ability to help us grow and connect as individuals in awesome new ways.

Here’s my latest entry in that story:

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved doing everything by bike.  As a kid, the bike was my favorite way to get around, and to this day I use my bike daily to run errands and get places.  I particularly love using my bike for actual tasks, not just for “going for a ride” — I think there is something natural and awesome about that, as I’ve written about before.

And I’ve also always been a bike hacker.  I distinctly remember taking my first bike apart and spray painting it all different colors.  My current bike is a 1970s racer hacked to become a fast city bike.  It’s awesome.

So, bringing those two ideas together, along with what’s possible on the Indie Web, something great happened this week:

For a long time, I’ve wanted a cargo bike - these are regular bikes hacked to accomodate passengers and other loads. They’re super popular in Europe, in particular places like Copenhagen and Amsterdam.  It seems so obvious to me that I should be riding my kids to school and to the park in one of these things.  The fact that I don’t have one is majorly disappointing.

But, the problem is that they’re super expensive.  Buying a brand new cargo bike from one of the manufacturers in Europe or the US can run upwards of $4k.  And, there’s virtually no secondhand market for cargo bikes in the US — I assume both because they are relatively uncommon, and because once you have one you tend to hold on to it.

So I’ve been trying to figure out how to get ahold of one without dropping crazy dollars.

The other day I tweeted out my problem, and within five minutes was pointed to something amazing: Tom’s Cargo Bikes.  Tom is a former muscle car builder in — where else — Portland, Oregon, who over the past few years has turned his attention to building custom cargo bikes.  His bikes are amazing — choppers of all shapes and sizes, using entirely recycled parts.  No two are the same.  You can check out all of his bikes here.

And, rather than costing thousands of dollars, Tom’s custom bikes start at a much more modest $600.  So, for my birthday this year (which is Sunday), we are all chipping in and Tom is going to build me a cargo bike.

For the past few days, Tom and I have been emailing about ideas, and when he’s done with his current batch of bikes he’ll start in on mine.  It’ll probably end up looking something like this (but with a seat for the kids):

I am beyond psyched about this, and for so many reasons.

I’m going to end up with something way cooler than I could have ever imagined, I’m supporting a super talented craftsman who is building a great small business, and it’s costing way less than any of the alternatives.

Vive le Indie Web!

For the past two months, Frannie and I have been doing yoga.  It’s a totally new thing for me.  I was skeptical about it at first, but it’s been totally awesome and perspective changing.  Even though I am completely inflexible and unaccustomed to all of the poses (and perhaps because of this), doing the practice and cracking open my body in new ways has really had a noticeable effect.  I walk out of yoga feeling open, calm, confident, and clear.

There’s a lot I could talk about, but perhaps the idea that has stuck with me the most so far is the idea that we — generally speaking — walk around carrying an air of “subtle discontent”.  This is the nagging feeling that there’s something wrong, somethin missing,  something to get to (that’s not here), something more important to be focusing on, to be doing.  If you think about it and try to notice it, you might be surprised how ever-present it is.

This tends to manifest itself physically in tension between the eyebrows.  And a part of the yoga practice is noticing that feeling, releasing it, letting it melt away, and focusing on experiencing and enjoying the current moment.

For me at least — and I assume for lots of folks who are working hard and are generally under stress — this idea really hit home.  I think there is also something related to this in being hyper connected and constantly checking our phones.  Checking my phone, anxiously, habitually, for new emails, tweets, etc., is a certain form of this subtle discontent.  

Last night at USV, we hosted the latest of several recent meetups on the “Peer Economy”.  We are in the process of organizing a number of companies and organizations that represent a certain sector of the internet economy in NYC, with an eye towards building a more formal coalition (perhaps in the model of San Francisco’s BayShare) at some point in the future. As is to be expected, we spent the bulk of the discussion trying to figure out what it is, exactly, that ties us all together.   I think there’s a pretty strong thread, but it’s not immediately clear how best to describe it.  So I hereby invite you, the Internet, into the conversation. So, as a thought experiment, how might you describe the common approaches and values between:

• peer-to-peer marketplace platforms like Etsy, Krrb, Skillshare, Shapeways and

I wrote last week about the Indie Web: the way that the web has the ability to help us grow and connect as individuals in awesome new ways.

Here’s my latest entry in that story:

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved doing everything by bike.  As a kid, the bike was my favorite way to get around, and to this day I use my bike daily to run errands and get places.  I particularly love using my bike for actual tasks, not just for “going for a ride” — I think there is something natural and awesome about that, as I’ve written about before.

And I’ve also always been a bike hacker.  I distinctly remember taking my first bike apart and spray painting it all different colors.  My current bike is a 1970s racer hacked to become a fast city bike.  It’s awesome.

So, bringing those two ideas together, along with what’s possible on the Indie Web, something great happened this week:

For a long time, I’ve wanted a cargo bike - these are regular bikes hacked to accomodate passengers and other loads. They’re super popular in Europe, in particular places like Copenhagen and Amsterdam.  It seems so obvious to me that I should be riding my kids to school and to the park in one of these things.  The fact that I don’t have one is majorly disappointing.

But, the problem is that they’re super expensive.  Buying a brand new cargo bike from one of the manufacturers in Europe or the US can run upwards of $4k.  And, there’s virtually no secondhand market for cargo bikes in the US — I assume both because they are relatively uncommon, and because once you have one you tend to hold on to it.

So I’ve been trying to figure out how to get ahold of one without dropping crazy dollars.

The other day I tweeted out my problem, and within five minutes was pointed to something amazing: Tom’s Cargo Bikes.  Tom is a former muscle car builder in — where else — Portland, Oregon, who over the past few years has turned his attention to building custom cargo bikes.  His bikes are amazing — choppers of all shapes and sizes, using entirely recycled parts.  No two are the same.  You can check out all of his bikes here.

And, rather than costing thousands of dollars, Tom’s custom bikes start at a much more modest $600.  So, for my birthday this year (which is Sunday), we are all chipping in and Tom is going to build me a cargo bike.

For the past few days, Tom and I have been emailing about ideas, and when he’s done with his current batch of bikes he’ll start in on mine.  It’ll probably end up looking something like this (but with a seat for the kids):

I am beyond psyched about this, and for so many reasons.

I’m going to end up with something way cooler than I could have ever imagined, I’m supporting a super talented craftsman who is building a great small business, and it’s costing way less than any of the alternatives.

Vive le Indie Web!

For the past two months, Frannie and I have been doing yoga.  It’s a totally new thing for me.  I was skeptical about it at first, but it’s been totally awesome and perspective changing.  Even though I am completely inflexible and unaccustomed to all of the poses (and perhaps because of this), doing the practice and cracking open my body in new ways has really had a noticeable effect.  I walk out of yoga feeling open, calm, confident, and clear.

There’s a lot I could talk about, but perhaps the idea that has stuck with me the most so far is the idea that we — generally speaking — walk around carrying an air of “subtle discontent”.  This is the nagging feeling that there’s something wrong, somethin missing,  something to get to (that’s not here), something more important to be focusing on, to be doing.  If you think about it and try to notice it, you might be surprised how ever-present it is.

This tends to manifest itself physically in tension between the eyebrows.  And a part of the yoga practice is noticing that feeling, releasing it, letting it melt away, and focusing on experiencing and enjoying the current moment.

For me at least — and I assume for lots of folks who are working hard and are generally under stress — this idea really hit home.  I think there is also something related to this in being hyper connected and constantly checking our phones.  Checking my phone, anxiously, habitually, for new emails, tweets, etc., is a certain form of this subtle discontent.  

Last night at USV, we hosted the latest of several recent meetups on the “Peer Economy”.  We are in the process of organizing a number of companies and organizations that represent a certain sector of the internet economy in NYC, with an eye towards building a more formal coalition (perhaps in the model of San Francisco’s BayShare) at some point in the future. As is to be expected, we spent the bulk of the discussion trying to figure out what it is, exactly, that ties us all together.   I think there’s a pretty strong thread, but it’s not immediately clear how best to describe it.  So I hereby invite you, the Internet, into the conversation. So, as a thought experiment, how might you describe the common approaches and values between:

• peer-to-peer marketplace platforms like Etsy, Krrb, Skillshare, Shapeways and