My Kona Ute

Kona's Ute is a bicycle designed to carry more stuff than an ordinary bike. As cargo bicycles go, it's not the biggest load hauler around (see the Yuba Mundo, Surly's Big Dummy, and Xtracycle), but given the price and my intended use, I decided the Ute was the way to go. I purchased my Ute through Rapid Transit Cycles, an excellent commuter-oriented bicycle shop in Chicago. The staff were very helpful and they worked hard to locate 2009 Ute for me.



The Kona Ute comes in two sizes, I got the larger 20-inch frame. It has comfortable swept-back bars that give the rider an upright position, probably an advantage in traffic, less advantageous in a headwind. The Ute has a front disc brake and rear V-brake. It's geared low by road bike standards, but not quite as low as most mountain bikes. It has an 8-speed rear cassette with 11- to 32-tooth cogs, and up front the crankset has a 26- and a 36-tooth chainring. With those gear options, I won't be going fast on this one. But it's not about speed. The Ute comes with big 29" wheels and wide 47mm road tires for a smooth ride on rough roads. The frame and fork have plenty of clearance for at least 2.5-inch tires. I also picked up some 2.1-inch studded winter tires for it, but I'm hoping I won't have to put them on until next winter. This warm weekend has me feeling optimistic, but the weather god might have her own plan.



I was looking for a bicycle that would facilitate daily transportation to and from work, coupled with frequent trips to the grocery and hardware store. I've had great success riding to work on my Soma Double Cross, but I've always wished I had a little more capacity for carrying groceries or other miscellaneous stuff in addition to my usual cargo of laptop computer, stack of books and papers, lunch, work clothes, and small assortment of bicycle tools.

The Kona Ute's wheelbase is about 10 inches longer than that of my Soma Double Cross, perhaps 11 or 12 inches longer than a typical road bike. That's still much shorter than a tandem bicycle, which has wheelbase around 28 inches longer than an ordinary bicycle. The Ute's extra length is in the rear of the frame between the seatpost and the rear axle, where the frame is formed into an integrated rack with a 33-inch long wooden deck. This effectively allows the Ute to carry the equivalent of two additional panniers on the frame. One drawback that I will mention is that the hooks on most standard panniers are too small to grasp the fat tubes the form the Ute's rack, but I'm sure that fat tubes are necessary for strength.



The Kona Ute comes with a single, gigantic, orange bag, sized to readily accommodate two standard grocery bags. The bag is made of a waterproof material, but has a pretty open design. Any precious cargo in the bags, such as a laptop computer, will need have it's own water-resistant container. If this bag proves useful, I may get another. I might also consider attaching a big wire basket about the size of the orange Ute bag, or mount a horizontal rail on the frame that will allow me to use my Ortlieb panniers on one side.





An everyday bike should be as user-friendly as possible. If a bicycle is going to be used for daily transportation, including the last-minute oh-no-we're-out-of-milk trip, it needs to be convenient to simply jump on it and go. That means avoiding the need for special shoes and clothes, and having the necessary lock, lights, and cargo containers sitting on the bike, ready to roll. It needs to be just about as easy as jumping in the mini-van (and it's certain to be more fun). For now, I've mounted some smallish battery-powered lights on the handlebars. It's getting light enough in the morning now that these should suffice, but in the long run I plan to install a tire-driven generator (dynamo) that powers a good headlight and taillight.

Fenders and a kickstand also go a long way towards making a bicycle a useful piece of transportation. The Ute comes with a smallish fender up front, but none in the rear. I opted to install the Planet Bike Cascadia 29er fenders because they're big enough to cover the Ute's huge tires, and because the long rubbery extensions do a great job of keeping spray from reaching feet and the bicycle's bottom bracket, crankset, and chain.

The Ute comes with a two-legged kickstand, which looks nice and seems to function really well. I can see that it's difficult to design a two-legged center-mounted kickstand. If the kickstand is narrow enough to stay inside the chain when up, it's not wide enough to support the bike when down. If the kickstand is wide enough to support the bike, then it needs to stay under the chain when it folds up, in which case the pivot point has to hang a few inches below the bottom bracket. Balancing the width, potential for chain contact, and distance the thing hangs down, makes for tight constraints on design. We'll see how it works.





The first thing I noticed when riding the Ute is that it's tall. It's big wheels, and high bottom bracket, along with the upright position, make me feel like I'm really up in the sky. This might be a drawback for a utility bike, but since the load will be carried low alongside the wheels, I think it will be fine. The swept-back bars are comfortable; they're as wide as most mountain bike bars, but swept-back handles give them an unusual feel. It came with a very short handlebar stem, which I traded for a longer one since I'm fairly tall and the reach felt pretty short with the stubby stem.

This morning I took it to the grocery store for coffee and milk. With the long wheelbase and fat street tires, the ride was smooth and comfortable. The upright position was nice for navigating through the grocery store parking lot. The big front wheel was too tall to squeeze into the crappy rack at the grocery store; I used the kickstand to stand the Ute beside the rack. The big orange pannier held the jug of milk just fine. The ride was unaffected by a single jug of milk on one side of the bike. Later in the day, after some neighborhood cruising with the kids on their bikes, I made another trip to the store for chips and salsa. No problem with that load either, except that now it's in my belly.

Tomorrow I'll ride my Kona Ute to work!