Waiting with anticipation for my interviewees I stood outside on the sidewalk at 65 University Avenue on a quiet Monday evening. It had taken me a month and a half to arrange our meeting and I kept glancing up the street to catch a glimpse of this family of six who were biking seven miles south from Orem. Then, there they were, rounding the corner at 100 N in a “rickshaw,” a longer length, electric-assist pedal tricycle with two bench seats and an ornate blue and gold fringed canopy. You may have seen them around town, or spotted them on “Bike To Work Day.”
Last year Brian Pratt was given by his wife Chelsie an unusual and possibly difficult project to complete: “find a bike that the whole family could go out on, so we could continue to be part of BikeWalk Provo as before.” Chelsie, already a big fan of BikeWalk Provo, had ridden with the active transportation advocacy in a couple of Fourth of July Parades, further telling me that she also remembers “[I] took my kids, we did the first Bike To Work Day!” This year with her four children and another child on board, all smiling, Chelsie again participated in Bike To Work Day, showing up at Provo’s new City Hall in the family’s then recently purchased pedicab to the wonder of the many eyes that had gathered around them near the breakfast cooking station.
After moving to Orem in January of 2021 the family’s biking became a bit disrupted, they had also by then outgrown the bike-trailer previously being used for outings, events and social rides. Soon after, Brian began researching family bike options online, first considering cargo bikes and larger, cargo-carrying trikes, then finding a “pedicab (or rickshaw) for sale on Alibaba.” A couple in the family’s church ward already had one, which prompted Brian in his decision to lay out the cash for a pedicab that he later learned would take three months to arrive. When it did arrive Brian needed to pick up the shipping crate in Salt Lake City, “in my pickup truck, it barely fit.”
After assembling the ornate pedicab, fitted with sparkling, simulated vintage carriage lights, Brian still had to research a battery, which wasn’t included in his purchase. He tells me he had no problem finding a suitable battery on eBay, connected it to the pedicab’s adapter cord and tucked everything nicely away under the rear bench seat. Manufactured in China and shipped to a destination near one’s home, these beautifully crafted rickshaw styled trikes, as my online browsing revealed, appear to be readily available, new or used, and quite popular in many parts of the world. And the pedicab travels up to “29 miles per hour,” Brian adds.
It took Brian around six months from start to finish to fully complete his family bike “project.” But it was Chelsie who then began using their rickshaw in earnest: “started doing errands, taking the kids to school, going every Sunday to church with it… and getting kolaches, as we once lived on 100 South and were used to doing that.” As sidewalks are normally too narrow, Chelsie uses bike lanes or the left traffic lane to get around town. She emphatically assures me that drivers cause her few concerns and that she often “gets honks and requests for photos. It’s fun, the neighbor kids come over looking for rides.” Last winter, her 21 month old would often retrieve his snowsuit in anticipation of going for a ride.
