The Aluminum Euro Pugsley

a fatbike for everyday

I wasn't really paying attention when fatbikes first became a thing, but anyway somewhere around the start of it all, there was the Pugsley from Surly.  It could manage 4-inch-wide tires while using mostly standard MTB stuff.  In particular, it used a standard 135mm MTB hub in back.  This may seem kind of unsurprising, the tire of course is only around 100mm wide, so a 135mm hub seems like plenty.  You need to remember though that there needed to be room for a derailleur setup.  And not just a modern 1-by setup, you're looking at maybe 3 chainrings up front with 9 sprockets in back, and the chain needed to clear the tire.  They solved this by building the frame crooked: the hub was shoved towards the drive side so it stuck out sufficiently, and the not-drive-side frame curved inwards to catch that end of the hub.  To absorb some of the offset, the rear rim has the holes drilled off-center.  After a while, special fatbike hubs came along that were 170mm and 190mm wide, making things symmetric again, and stronger, no doubt.  So Pugsley was a curiousity, some bike-geek trivia that we could all tuck away in the back of our minds.  It went out of production in 2021.

Well years later, along came me, myself and I, and "we" got two reasonably-priced modern fatbikes with 190mm hubs.  They're kind of fun, sometimes a lot of fun, and the bikes easily showed their usefulness on snow-ice-pavement.  Then a winter commute situation arose that seemed like it might fit a fatbike.  Being experienced in the ways of gear hubs (and also usually annoyed with derailleurs), it seemed like a gear-hubbed winter commuter fatbike was just the ticket.  Getting a 190mm hub is expensive.  I remembered the Pugsley.  I discovered a couple of used examples online, but the price made me hesitate, and then I discovered something else.  Something cheaper.

My eyes somehow picked out, in a random used fatbike posting, the telltale sign: the rear spokes ending in one line, offset from center of the rim.  Apparently, Surly wasn't the only brand that made these twisted offset frames for fatbikes using 135mm rear hubs.  (Forgive my ignorance.)  A local-ish Norwegian-ish brand Diamant also made them, but in aluminum, and with their less-prestigious brand name stuck all over it.  So, Diamant Mammut, model year ~2014.  (They sold the same thing in a different color as Nakamura BigBob, and apparently in the USA as Motobecane Fantom FB4).  This bike also had the requisite mounts for fenders and racks, very much a drop-in Pugsley replacement if you ask me.  I obtained one, at a good price and not too far away.  (Nice thing about used fatbikes is that there seems to be an over-supply of them, and probably the owner didn't ride them enough to wear much out.)

OK, the next part was a bit tricky: how to prepare it for a life of thankless toil.  What was the frame offset, anyway?  What kind of hub is going to work well, and what length of spokes?  For a Pugsley, this will be possible to look up on the net, no such luck for a Mammut.

one plausible version of the wheel geometry

Well, the rear rim was drilled 10mm to the drive side, all the spoke holes in one line.  Its 80mm wide.  Using a flat stick, it looked like the non-drive-side end of the hub stuck out 3mm or so beyond the rim.  A bit of math and it seems the hub offset should be 24-25mm to the drive side, more than a Pugsley (17.5mm they say).  I also disassembled the old wheel and examined the spokes, did what measurements I could, and used https://www.kstoerz.com/freespoke/ to make some estimates.  A bit of trial-and-error, and I found that 250mm and 252mm spokes were sufficient to build the wheel on an Alfine 8, although the 250mm ones were a touch short.  Putting things back into the spoke calculator suggests that the hub offset was more like 20mm, or even 17.5mm.  The smaller offset appears to be necessary to explain how 250mm non-drive-side was short while 252mm drive-side was OK.  However in that case, the hub end should have stuck out more beyond the rim.  I guess that remains a mystery.

Despite all the unknowns, the new wheel fit fine, the brake disc slotted in perfectly, and the chain tensioner lined up where it needed to.  Spoke tension meets my standards, which aren't professional, but thus far I have never had spoke break on any wheel I've built.  (Has to be said, this was my first non-symmetric wheel build.)

I ordered huge fatbike fenders from https://classic-cycle.com/ and they ended up fitting well, although the top of the front fork was a bit of a pinch.  I had to file, cut, and heat-form the fender to sit well... but after that, it sure did sit well.  Those fenders are huge, and quite stiff.  There was also a little messing around to get the fender stays past obstructions, mostly the disc brakes.

front

back

I had to replace the rear hydraulic brake line (in part because a new handlebar required a longer line) and somehow failed to get it tight enough, which was messy.  The oil is non-toxic I guess.  The rear disc got oil seepage on it, but actually that was OK riding on snow and ice.  I just kept riding it until until the oil film gave up.  Hydraulic discs are OK, but IMO too much work for any commuter bike that can avoid them.  Go with Shimano's roller brakes and/or a foot/back-pedal/coaster brake for minimal maintenance.  I did test-fit a wheel with a roller brake to the Mammut frame, but found the unusual shape of the frame on the non-drive-side put it out of reach of the brake arm.  A roller would have been a nice brake for my purposes, but then I would have missed out on the Alfine 8.  (I really like the Alfine 8 combined with the two chain wheels up front.)

Anyway, I rode around my Mammut all winter with the regular summer fatbike tire in back (optimistically labeled as 26x4.5, more like 26x4.2), and a Dillenger 5 (26x4.6) in front.  I was taking it shopping and riding it into the city for meetings.  This was a huge success, I really liked riding it.  It wasn't super fast, and conditions didn't require such a bike, but I liked it.  Those tires made the randomly-distributed crappiness of winter paths minimally bothersome.  A person might look at the tires and assume they float on snow like a small rabbit, but no, not at all.  In fresh snow, you just end up squishing a path twice as wide as anyone else.  They are merely more stable, able to roll on/over more crap without it bothering the rider.  The tires were wide enough to reliably find gravel laying on ice, and also to give some warning when it was time to slide.  A few times the front tire (studded) even slid on ice (in a friendly way), which I can't recall having done, without falling, with a thinner tire.  When the conditions warmed and I first hopped onto a regular bike, it felt small, bouncy and unsafe.  Clear paths eventually fixed that feeling.  I can't deny its good to zip around on high-pressure tires and smooth clean pavement.

Returning to the winter mindset one moment longer, the Mammut worked out so well that we tried a FitNord Rumble 300 for the lady, and that worked out so well that we decided it would be good to build yet another commuter fatbike for a role that involved sitting overnight at a train station.  Spooky.  I found another Mammut, basically identical to the first one, but even cheaper than before.  The guy selling it was pointing out how it still had 31 not-broken spokes in the back wheel.  Perfect, sold!  I wonder if I can make a chain tensioner work with a 27t sprocket on a Nexus Inter-5E (a SG-C7000-5D).  That'll be a project for after summer.

 

FitNord Rumble 300, 2022

 

the FitNord Rumble 300 ready for action

Cargo trikes/bikes are handy, but there are more efficient ways to transport just yourself.  Our starting point was Danish-style straight-bar bikes, beasts of burden, one per person.  Then there is a cool old bike at the fleamarket, then you need a bike to stand at a train station, then you need a bike while you fix another one, an e-bike would help, a fatbike looks fun, etc.  Somehow over the years we ended up with 10 working adult bikes plus two niholas.  (I'm a geek, almost all the bikes are substantially tweaked.)

Fatbikes are interesting.  If you don't know, they have tires 4-5 inches wide (lets say 100-120mm) and are usually sort of old-school MTB is design.  A bit upright but not too much, comfortable to sit on for long periods.  (There are "cruiser" fatbikes, but those don't look like serious transport.  YMMV.)  One fatbike application is some mix of mountain-snow-exploration-biking, so a good number of fatbikes come with all the mounts for fenders and racks, and without flashy nonsense like a suspension fork.  Basically, its easier to find a fatbike to set up as a no-frills commuter than a MTB.

In 2023 I bought a used (and inexpensive) fatbike and built it up with a Shimano Alfine 8 hub, permanent lights, rack, and full fenders.  Great bike, been riding it to town all winter, worth a blog post.  This contributed, along with a snowy and messy winter, and the near-failure of an e-bike ("snowy and messy winter"), to a situation where we were open to trying an e-fatbike for getting to work.  Also this coincided with a local-ish bike brand putting their e-fatbikes on a substantial almost-spring sale.  So now we have a FitNord Rumble 300 from the model year 2022, in 2024.

Let us begin with the company (FitNord).  They are based in Finland, but there is no doubt that a lot of the product is straight from China.  This is both good and bad.  The good part is a lot of bike for the money, especially at those sale prices, the bad part is that some elements are done to a minimal standard.  I guess the Finnish part is what gives us a purposeful fatbike ready to mount the full-coverage fenders (purchased separately), the rack (also purchased separately), and even equipped with a solid kickstand.  Wowa.  (Their sales materials could have been better, I didn't even know there was a kickstand, but I was super-pleased when I laid eyes on it.)  IMO this right here is a huge recommendation: its a total commuter e-fatbike, period.  Beyond the basics, many parts have been done very well.

There were a couple of quality issues, and I'm fortunate to have some competence dealing with them.  First, the wiring for the "e" part of the bike.  Whoever pulled those wires just didn't care.  They were laid so that the thin inner wires were exposed to rough-cut edges on the frame, and also they were hanging out (sleeved) under the bottom bracket unnecessarily.  I fixed this with some light disassembly and cable-pulling.  Also I suspect the wires at the top were arranged so that rainwater could run down them into the connectors, so I squeezed in a big blob of bathroom silicone where the sleeved cables passed through the frame (internal, not visible from the outside).  I literally began my ownership of the bike with disassembly and improvement, before turning the power on.  The cherry on top is a doggy-bag I electric-taped to provide a rain cape over the top of the battery and/or power connector, so that the area stays a bit drier.  Although the controller itself is up in the frame where it ought to be dry, the various cable connections downstream of it seem at risk of corrosion, if neglected.  The next flat tire a fatbike gets around here, the failed tube is going to yield a fancy new rubber rain cape.

cable needlessly exposed at the bottom, as delivered

the cable sleeve stops a bit early, as delivered

wires in a risky configuration, as delivered

cables pulled through after the rough-cut edges were sanded down

The front hub also seems to be cheaply made.  The disc rotor rubs alternatively on the inside and outside of the brake pads, at this point I assume it is because the hub isn't machined straight.  This cost me one rotor, because at first I thought the rotor was bent in shipment, and I proceeded to bend it up even more.  Then I bought a new one, and refrained from bending it.  The current situation is that it still rubs, but the massive winter tires are so loud, nobody can hear it.  Also the rubber bearing seals on the hub were awful, at least one started to squeal right away.  I ended up taking out the bearings, cleaning it up, and packing lovely washout-resistant grease everywhere, also around the seals.  The one bearing race looked almost a bit damaged, as it a bit corroded, who knows.  I'm not a total pro on cup-and-cone bearings, but I think they had over-tightened them, as they were not smooth when turned by hand.  I certainly felt very sorry for my cone wrenches trying to undo the locknuts, holy crap.  There was probably sufficient grease from the factory, anyway, so thats good.

I would also rate the battery cradle as marginal quality (don't bash it around!), the seatpost seemed unusually happy to slide down after getting the customary layer of grease on it (to prevent it seizing), and the pedals are cheap (but functional).  At risk of triggering OCD problems, the drive-side pedal appears to be somewhat farther from the centerline than the non-drive-side.  (I don't feel the difference, and am not going to tell the lady about it.)  The battery also strangely extends beyond the frame only on the non-drive-side, but it works out fine.

Proceeding past the attention-to-details problems above, there is good news.  This thing ate up a 26x4.2 45Nrth Wrathlorde tire in front, a 26x4.2 45Nrth Dillinger 4 in back, huge full-coverage fenders (from Classic Cycle in Germany) and a XLC RP-R15 rack.  Everything fits nicely without any risk of rubbing, although the fender and rack did compete a little for access to the frame mounts.  The support for the front fender passes right by the brake without needing to be bent.  The rear tire couldn't have been too much larger before meeting the frame, but the front had more space in the fork.  The lights that came with it are pretty usable for commuting (and not the cheapest thing they could have found), though we added one more light front and back.  We even got a Reelight SL520 front blinker light installed, which isn't always easy with fatbike-scale frames.  Incidentally, the front wheel appears to be built somewhat asymmetric, making it easy to mount the Reelight generator on the drive-side front spokes.  Another odd feature is that both wheels are 36 spoke, unusual for a fatbike (or MTB) but probably a great idea for a working bike.  We also swapped the straight bar to a curved one for ergonomics, and put on nicer grips.  Anyway, this thing is now set up a lot like a proper Danish pendler bike, just with tires that are 2.5X wider ... and knobby.

rear tire clearance with 26x4.2 Dillinger 4

The Rumble 300 has an 8-speed derailleur setup, with a substantial-looking chain on it.  The screw pinching the shift cable wasn't even tight out of the box, but its just standard derailleur adjustment to get that fixed.  The motor is in the rear hub, the label is Techdrive.  The name is basically un-Google-able.  I assume that its some label stuck on a widely-sold product from some substantial Chinese manufacturer.  The axle is bolt-on, very much the opposite of "quick release", a plus for anti-theft.  When ridden, it works well.  There is a torque sensor that very rapidly notices when the rider wants to move, and the assist levels are pretty good.  I did not notice any particular drag from the motor.  The battery matches the spec published for the 2023 model rather than 2022, and it seems to have been properly handled while sitting in storage, because it delivers great range.  (Does over 50km in below-freezing temperatures, on imperfect paths, running studs, soft tires, on hills, with useful assist.)  Functionality overall is a huge success, I can't think of anything that could reasonably be improved.  We specifically did not want a model with a center-mounted motor.  Partly because that costs more, and also because it would mean more stress and failure potential on the chain, and also IMO a center motor is more exposed to water spray or just plain submersion.  (The part about submersion of the motor is not only hypothetical, the e-bike that started having problems this winter had actually been taken through a flooded river this past summer.  Not to be repeated.)  I don't particularly like these derailleur geartrains on bikes that are supposed to be beasts of burden.  Ideally you'd have a center motor with a big robust gear hub in back, but the market doesn't do that right now (short of Rohloff of Kindernay).

The range of gearing could be a limitation.  It would be very unpleasant to get up our hill without assist, and even with assist, if there is heavy snow to fight through uphill, its going to heat up rider and motor both.  Fatbikes BTW are not especially easy to ride in unpacked snow, because they are going to squash a big path through it.  The wide tires might however make the journey possible, offering both stability and traction.  Its untested as of yet, but I suspect at the lowest assist level, that the bike will avoid applying uncontrollable motor power in situations where forward progress is a challenge.

Anyway, this thing is a heck of a beast of burden.  Probably summer is not its ideal season; we intend to run a cheaper skinny-tire summer e-bike instead.  But this winter has offered a lot of opportunities for a fatbike to do its thing.  Its snowed a good deal, its rained, its melted, its re-frozen into every conceivable shape and consistency.  Surfaces which are not smooth, or which are not stable, or which are icy.  Ruts and edges in ice, iced paths under water.  Big tires are excellent at all that, run them a bit soft to absorb the smaller texture, to stay on top of shifting snow, and to spread out to find what grip is offered.  There is a potential for the front tire to "plane" on top of snow if ridden too fast into too much semi-dense snow, which results in a loss of steering control, so the bike isn't going to enable heroic monster-trucking so much as it offers improved safety margins, and comfort, when used sensibly.  Just a part of getting to work.

Thumbs up.

two commuter fatbikes (the Rumble 300 was still nearly stock)

 

Shimano BR-IM80-F, BR-IM50-F, BR-IM45-F

Its been most of a year since I wrote anything.  Life goes on.  I've been doing lots of commuting on an official Danish-name-sticker bike, straight bar, fenders, cargo rack, lights, gear hub, etc.  Its got a Shimano roller brake in front, attached to a dynamo hub.  This is lovely except that it isn't much good for stopping.

I noticed some years ago that more impressive-looking roller brakes were available.  My bike had a BR-IM50-F.  I wanted one such as a BR-IM80-F, but I could find none for sale.  None online, none in bike shops.  Generally they were not even available on bikes in Denmark or Norway.  I had bike shop owners argue with me about whether one would even fit my bike.  I had people say it was all the same, no point in switching.  I had noticed that http://www.workcycles.com sold lots of them, but they didn't really do small part orders.  Then, I actually went to Amsterdam.  I even had to go to the workcycles shop twice to get through to a mechanic without too much waiting.

So, now I had a BR-IM80-F in my hands.  In my carry-on at the airport even, by accident.  That got a raised eyebrow.

Anyway once home, I performed the swap.  Possibly the easiest part swap this side of a pedal with greased threads.  Take off the wheel, apply a 17mm (I think) deep socket, change the shift cable to a new-style cable (had one laying around), done.

So did it improve braking performance?  No.  Not in any noticeable way.

Here I have laid out a BR-IM50-F, BR-IM80-F and BR-IM45-F with their business sides exposed.  The two newer ones appear to be identical except for the cooling surface, and the older one is just damned dirty, also possibly a little worn.

So hopefully by writing this down in the sight of a search engine, others can be informed.  These roller brakes are generally not so useful on hills, and getting a "bigger" one doesn't help.  I have another bike which, like the one I just modified, has only the potential to mount hub brakes.  On that bike I mounted a Sturmey Archer XL-FD (a 9cm drum brake hub), which fits perfectly, brake arm and all, and its stronger though perhaps a little more temperamental.  (Niholas use the 7cm version of that drum brake.)  Going the Sturmey Archer route does appear to require building your own wheel though, not a big supply of pre-fab wheels built on drum brake hubs.

The right winter tire

So we have two Niholas.  They've got different gear hubs and winter tires on them, and I swap back and forth as appropriate.  (We basically only take out both trikes at the same time in the summer.)  Since I can jump back and forth, I've got rather more insight into winter tires on Niholas than most.  Allow me to share.

The fancy trike has a Nokian/Suomi Extreme 294 (26x2.1), and the basic one has a Schwalbe Snow Stud (26x1.9).  While both are studded winter tires, the tires are in different categories.  Which is to say, they can be compared, but the differences outweigh the similarities.  The Extreme has way more studs and has more aggressive tread, which pays off on climbs, and on pavement it sounds like a wheel covered in velcro (especially at low pressures).  The Snow Stud is mild mannered on pavement, making hardly any noise of note, wasting less energy, and doubtless lasting longer, while also being a lot cheaper.  Of course it doesn't climb as well.

And to be clear, the Nokian/Suomi Extreme does climb.  It digs and it scratches; pure ice can possibly be climbed up to a 15% slope with something like 20kg in front 10kg in back, and low pressure.  Softer stuff can be climbed beyond that, however this can require patience, low gearing, and stamina.  The Snow Stud gives and spins up much sooner in almost any snowy, slushy or icy surface.  The worst surface I have experienced for the Snow Stud is one that is icy and slightly lumpy, it just completely defeats the tire.

So here is the difficult part about transporting children as part of a cycle commute in an Oslo winter: each tire is sub-optimal, one could say annoying, when its out of its element.  I haul a kid up a fairly steep and marginally-maintained hill on my way to work, and I also go the rest of the way into the office with less load, on better paths, on the same Nihola.  The tire that can conquer the hill (the Extreme) proceeds to sap my energy and destroy itself on km's of pavement.  The tire (Snow Stud) that is pleasant on the pavement can be difficult to scale the slopes with, in many conditions.  Happily, rear tire inflation can be adjusted to significantly widen the range of situations a given tire can perform acceptably.  Airing up and down is kind of annoying, but its a lot less work than cycling km's with an inefficient tire.  (So: want traction?  Air down.)

For a more normal Nihola usage scenario, which would be a relatively short tour of schools, stores and public transportation, either tire would vastly outperform a standard slick summer tire (in snow or on ice).  Also, with some basic steps like airing down and carrying some kilos on the rear rack, even the Snow Stud will likely provide more traction that the standard gearing of a Nihola can require.  (With the exception of smooth ice.)

A few more nuggets.  Its pretty easy to lock up the rear tire of a Nihola while going down hill on ice.  If not addressed, this can easily lead to the trike not pointing in the same direction it is moving, which is not necessarily cause for alarm, but should probably be corrected.  A rear tire with more studs will make sliding harder and recovery easier.  (I would advise using front and rear brakes on icy hills.)

I have purchased a pair of studded front tires (20x1.6 Schwalbe Marathon Winter), but not installed them.  The regular Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires work pretty well on some pretty slippery stuff, and unlike on a bike, sliding the front tires is not necessarily cause for alarm.  Studs would probably help, but also that adds rolling resistance and noise.  I have decided that the conditions are not currently bad enough to bother swapping the tires.

I would like to try a Schwalbe 26x2.0 Marathon Winter in back.  Looks like a great choice for ice, or even pavement, but its harder to say if it can dig well enough in snow.  One of the problems I've had with the Snow Stud is that it won't dig sufficiently in some types of dense slushy snow.  Sheets of ice may or may not be a primary concern, and the Snow Stud is priced fairly low, so it could be that the humble Snow Stud remains the best trike tire for reasonably flat places with reasonably mild winters.

Update a month later:

Still running the Snow Stud, and its pretty harmless on pavement.  Really not a bad tire for insecure weather.

A Schwalbe Snow Stud is happy even with no snow in sight.

Commuting 2

I've been commuting on my bike most days the past two weeks because one of our Niholas is temporarily out of service (more on that later).  This morning while driving my regular commute I noticed that, despite the somewhat low inflation on my 622-37 tires, my bike was trying shake the meat off my arms.  Hmmm, the Niholas don't do that.

On my way home, after having picked up my son, I had the chance to drive over some roots on a little path, using my bike.  I wasn't looking to drive over roots, they just happen to be on the path, and the path is very narrow.  It turns out that I had driven over the same roots this past Friday with the Nihola and actually hadn't really noticed them, but on the bike they were impossible to overlook, very bumpy.

Its interesting to switch back and forth between bike and trike, it brings the differences into focus.  This is a bike with 622-37 tires, not some skinny racing slicks, and not even inflated to a level any performance biker would tolerate, but in many cases it rides rough compared to the Niholas.

My commuting bike, totally out of place in the land of sport commuting that is Oslo.

Wandering off topic...

Interestingly, this bike is a reputable Danish name sticker on some soulless multinational corporate asian-made bike.  It costs half what a Nihola costs, if we don't add options like child seats to the Nihola that the bike clearly doesn't have.  But this isn't actually as favorable to the bike as it might at first seem.  The Nihola is made in Denmark, built to order, you might even meet people who assemble it.  Every part is quality and likely to last.  To contrast, the bike is sold a chain store that shovels crap in bulk.  The spokes on mine started rusting within weeks, the kickstand failed, every last piece of plastic has failed in three years, and the handles have creaked since day one.  They even outfitted it with a poorly-sealed gear hub.  (On the positive side, the tires are great.)  Anyone who didn't want to fix a bike themselves would have thrown it in the trash already.

A Nihola might actually have a lower cost per km as a commuter than a typical name-brand Danish street bike, if you are careful with your options on the Nihola, and maybe a bit unlucky with the bike.

As a Commuter

A winter commute near Copenhagen, before moving to Oslo.

A Nihola can reach a pretty decent speed on level ground.  I find 20-25km/hr to be sustainable for long distances, which is plenty fast enough in my world that top speed is not the limiting factor on commute time.  When my wife and I first got a Nihola we didn't see how anyone could go nearly that fast, this due to the way balance felt, but once we adjusted to the way a trike needs to be ridden it was no longer a problem.  So while in the beginning balance was my limiting factor, now strength is my limiting factor.

Also, while commuting strenuously on the Nihola with the SRAM P5, I find my knees become sore.  I believe this is due to the rather large steps between gear ratios, combined with the effort of moving the trike.  On mostly level ground 5th is a bit too fast and 4th is significantly too slow.  The SRAM P5 lovely hub, but a poor choice for trying to set cargo bike speed records.  I don't believe that I have the knee problem on our Nexus 8 Nihola, which puts 7th and 8th gears close together, and right where I need them.  (Without going totally off into a discussion on gearing, I should say that both trikes have a 24t rear sprocket and 38t front, lower than the "factory" ratio.)

So, how hard is a Nihola to pedal when its empty?  I'll start with some numbers.  On flat stretches, I mainly use 5th gear on the SRAM P5, giving 64 gear-inches with my sprockets.  On my commuting bike on the same sections, I use 6th gear on a Nexus 7, giving 70 gear-inches with my sprockets.  I pedal at similar rates on both machines, but work a bit harder on the Nihola.  Anyway using this I estimate my Nihola speed on flat ground is 90% of my bike speed.  Of course this isn't any racing bike: 28"-37mm puncture-resistant tires, nearly straight bar, Nexus 7 hub, full fenders, rack, cargo basket, dynamo lights, 16kg, dirty, various rattles...  So you could say I'm not fast on any bike, but not really slow on a Nihola either.

The amount of load seems to make little difference on level ground, but it makes more difference if the front tire pressure is low.  When there is unfavorable wind the Nihola drags more, but actually nowhere near as badly as I had feared before I tried it.  (But taking down the rain cover is important to minimize the drag.)  Up hills, the weight of the machine (32kg is the official figure) naturally slows a person down, but again its not catastrophic.  How about loaded, up hill and against a headwind?  Well, you'll be thankful you don't need to worry about balance.

The riding geometry is somewhat upright, but not overwhelmingly so, in my judgement.  Less upright than WorkCycles Cargobike, unless my eyes are playing tricks.  More upright than a Bullitt, but I'm sure that surprises no one.  Since moving to Oslo I have become a big fan of placing both hands in the middle of the handle bar, which I believe improves my body position and is helpful when pedaling hard.  I find this is more natural than doing the same on a bike, where doing such a thing harms my balance.

I find that a Nihola can be a comfortable commuter, but the road surface should be in decent condition and there should not be too many abrupt corners.