{"id":2468509,"date":"2019-09-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/uncategorized\/motherload-film-review-cargo-bikes\/"},"modified":"2022-05-12T13:14:12","modified_gmt":"2022-05-12T19:14:12","slug":"motherload-film-review-cargo-bikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/culture\/active-families\/motherload-film-review-cargo-bikes\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Film Heralds the Coming Cargo-Bike Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

What if bikes could save the world? The notion is as old as the bicycle itself, but it gets a refreshing new spin in the recently released documentary Motherload<\/a><\/em>, <\/em>produced and narrated by veteran filmmaker Liz Canning. The film\u2014which is an\u00a0official selection at the San Francisco Green Films Festival, the Breckenridge Film Festival, and\u00a0others\u2014celebrates the humble beginnings and revolutionary potential of the utilitarian cargo bike, those iconic, long-tail steeds designed for schlepping kids, groceries, gear, and pretty much anything else you can lash on top or on the side.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cargo bikes aren\u2019t sexy\u2014at least not yet\u2014but neither is the world in which Canning finds herself after giving birth to twins in 2008. A former commercial filmmaker turned work-from-home mom<\/a>, she\u2019s tired and despondent, mourning the freedom of her life pre-kids and the ease with which she used to take to the roads on her bike. The message in the movie\u2019s opening scenes is familiar: child-rearing <\/strong>is an\u00a0<\/strong>exhausting\u00a0<\/strong>enterprise, and if you\u2019re not careful, you\u2019ll spend 18 years behind the wheel, driving your kid to baby sing-along class and varsity soccer practice. Wake up when it\u2019s over, and you\u2019ll be a shell of your former self.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for Canning, she lives in Fairfax, California, the\u00a0<\/strong>self-professed birthplace of mountain biking<\/a> and a hotbed of cycling culture. When she begins noticing other parents pedaling cargo bikes online, she immediately wonders: Why were there no cargo bikes to be seen in Fairfax?\u00a0<\/p>\n

When she finally breaks down and buys the long-tail (her indecision serves a cinematic purpose, allowing her to digress into a brief but compelling history of bicycles and feminism), Canning discovers a fringe world of industrious, bike-obsessed individuals determined to improve their family\u2019s health and happiness\u2014and the planet\u2019s\u2014by trading four wheels for two. They ride bulky Bakfiets<\/a> made in Holland with wooden kid carriers that look like miniature dump trucks; jerry-rigged townie bikes with handmade planks for seats; and $5,000 electric-assist cargo bikes<\/a> from companies like Xtracycle<\/a>, whose founder, Ross Evans, developed the first long-tail cargo bike in Nicaragua in 1995.<\/p>\n

You may not be able to live in\u00a0your cargo bike, but you can live on\u00a0it.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n

Canning is careful not to portray these parents as hardcore eccentrics or extreme athletes\u00a0but as\u00a0ordinary people in ordinary towns making out-of-the-ordinary choices, just like her.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m not an athlete. I\u2019m not superhuman,\u201d says Brent Patterson, a father from Buffalo, New York. \u201cI\u2019m just a completely normal person like you.\u201d It\u2019s a heartening takeaway: if\u00a0<\/b>she can do it, so can we. She introduces us to people like Emily Finch, who carts all six <\/em>of her kiddos around on two wheels, and Patterson's\u00a0family that\u00a0<\/b>sold its\u00a0car and travels by cargo bike year-round, even in snowstorms. Many of the people she meets\u2014especially, it seems, the moms\u2014endure all-too-rampant \u201cbikelash\u201d from aggressive drivers who shout profanities out the window, accusing them of endangering their children. Not all live in bike-friendly communities like Marin County or Portland, Oregon, and not all are as comfortably off as Canning; some had to sell their car or take out a no-interest loan in order to afford a cargo bike.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Motherload<\/em> is the story of one woman\u2019s emancipation from the drudgery of the carpool, the drop-off line, the grocery run, but it\u2019s ultimately an aspirational look into a global movement of alternative parenting<\/a>. Cargo bikers are a pared-down version of\u00a0#vanlife<\/a> or #tinyhome<\/a>\u00a0devotees, who sell their houses and possessions to live with less. You may not be able to live in<\/em> your cargo bike, but you can live on<\/em> it.<\/p>\n

And therein lies the film\u2019s deeper appeal. What if it\u2019s possible for the humble cargo bike to rewrite the script for beleaguered American parents? Could a two-wheeled\u00a0revolution be the antidote to our increasingly sedentary, tech-driven, risk-averse indoor lifestyle?<\/p>\n

These are lofty claims, and Motherload<\/em> stops just short of making them. It doesn\u2019t need to.\u00a0The movie\u2019s enthusiasm for biking is contagious, and by the time the credits roll, you\u2019ll be crunching numbers and fantasizing about selling your car and becoming a cargo convert, just like Canning. \u201cI love my life!\u201d Finch exclaims. It\u2019s a sentiment echoed by almost everyone in the film. Bicycling might be the answer to much that ails us, but at its heart, it\u2019s freedom on two wheels, a pure embodiment of joy, and quite possibly the closest we grown-ups can get to being kids again.\u00a0<\/p>\n