Christmas Tree By Cargo Bike 2024 (Mallorca Edition!)

What, you thought just because we moved from Amsterdam to a Mediterranean island that we’d stop our decade-long Christmas tree-by-bike tradition? Nope, not a chance!

After all, one of the most important things I packed up in the moving truck was our Urban Arrow cargo bike. Albeit, as you’ll see, it’s had a bit of a hard time handling the 17% grades found on our daily routes here – even more so when you add a Christmas tree and three kids to the mix. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves…

First up, is actually finding a Christmas tree on Mallorca. We don’t live in Palma (the main city), but about 25-30 minutes away by car (or about 35 mins by fast-moving e-bike…at least downhill). And this time of year, a lot of the island near us shuts down as tourism evaporates (not just small restaurants & hotels, but massive chains like McDonalds and Starbucks close for the winter). The point being I was worried that even finding a Christmas tree would require an extensive trek pushing me well beyond the battery of the Urban Arrow.

Thankfully, as luck would have it, a Christmas Market popped up at a nearby skate park. It’s only a 15-20 minute bike journey away, so well within the range of a full cargo bike bidirectional journey. Thus, with our mission profile clearly outlined, we loaded up the cargo bike with all three girls (aged 5/7/8), and set out.

My wife was on her commuter ebike as well. This is one of those places that excel at being perfect for ebikes as a daily commuter. We live atop a hill, with steep climbs as you’ll see. While you can certainly do these on a regular bike (as we do for sport on a near-daily basis), it’s less enjoyable trying to haul kids or groceries in 38°C/100°F heat.

About 20 minutes later, we arrived at the Christmas market. Obviously, we got distracted for a while with Christmas things.

But eventually, it was time to scout out which tree we wanted.

The pricing was pretty similar to either US pricing or Netherlands pricing, in the 70-80EUR range for a tree taller than me. In the end, that’s my *only* requirement for a Christmas tree: It must be taller than me. Also, it can’t be a palm tree. Sorry folks, I can’t have a stray coconut falling on Santa’s head and being responsible for a Christmas failure.

After selecting our tree, it was time to get it bagged up. Turns out, our wood was too girthy for the wrapper (yes, that’s literally what she said). She being the lady that owned the Christmas tree stand. However, what really threw them for a loop was us rolling our cargo bike around and throwing it in.

Fun fact: You don’t need any straps at all for a Christmas Tree inside a cargo bike. At least, assuming there’s a seat installed. That’s because the trunk simply slots under the seat, and then the downward force locks it in place. Doesn’t budge an inch. Plus, if you add a few kids atop it, then you’re definitely good.

With that, we were ready to roll home.

Except, one problem: We spotted a windmill across the street.

As the Dutch cycling rules very clearly indicate, one must always take a photo with any windmills you pass on a ride. Given that our cargo bike is Dutch (in every way possible), we had to adhere to these rules:

Ok, with that sorted, it was time to put things in gear and get home. For about 90% of the journey home, we have reasonably good bike path infrastructure. It’s perhaps 3-4 meters wide, free of cars, with only occasional Spanish pedestrians that completely disregard even the most vibrant of bike bells.

While a Christmas tree in a cargo bike doesn’t even deserve a glance in Amsterdam, here, it confused the eff out of people. Straight up stopping to point at us. Granted, the cargo bike here does that on a normal trip to the beach too.

Of course, all good things must come to an end, and that included me riding the bike. You see, as I noted earlier, we live atop a hill. There’s only one road in, and one road out. And that road has no less than two 17% incline sections (you can add a 3rd if you want to choose a different feeder road). There’s simply no avoiding them.

The problem with the 14-17%, is that the fully loaded Urban Arrow simply can’t make it up. Mind you, this isn’t actually a problem of my legs, or even the Urban Arrow motor. Rather, it’s the free hub design inside the rear wheel slips. So basically, the entire chain starts slipping and the only choice is to abandon ship and run up the hill:

Don’t worry, our kids are really good at this by now. They know how to quickly bail out like a bunch of parachuting cartoons, run the 50-100m stretch, and then jump back in again. All while I then concurrently go all cyclocross on the cargo bike, and push it up the hill. Don’t believe me? You can watch that in the video up above – all three hills!

A few of you have reached out about the free hub thing. There are replacement/alternate solutions, from two different vendors, which essentially require replacing the free hub/rear wheel. Once that’s done (costing roughly 800-1400EUR, depending on the solution), then the existing motor should easily handle it. Unfortunately, despite easily handling all my race/regular bike maintenance, I’m a little skittish on this conversion job. Thus I’ve been procrastinating on it. There are zero bike shops I’m aware of on the island that can deal with cargo bikes (if you know of one, please tell me!!!).

In any event, with the final hill completed, we were finally in our neighborhood, complete with the appropriate background sign:

Another successful cargo bike year was accomplished!

With that, thanks for reading! Oh, and you can look back at all 12 years of Christmas Tree By Bike here! And, if you celebrate Christmas – have a Merry Christmas! And if not? Feel free to binge-watch all my YouTube videos on the 25th instead. :)

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