Remember the Jello commercial assuring kids that no matter how much they've eaten, their stomach will always have room for the gelatin dessert? Our house is like that, but with bikes.

To date, we have 2 kids bikes, 2 cruisers, 2 mountain bikes, 1 roadie, 2 cyclocross bikes, and a few frames my husband thinks I don't know about. (There's no use coming to our house to steal them, none are exceptionally expensive and we have 2 cats prowling the perimeter, trained to kill.) So when my husband heard about a friend of a friend selling an Xtracycle, what goes through his singletrack mind? "There's always room for bike-o."

If you've never been introduced to the endless utility of an Xtracycle, let me turn you on to it. It's a bike version of a truck flatbed that can be added to any normal bike frame. It extends your cargo towing, hauling, moving, and piggybacking capacity to extremes. Animate and inanimate gear ride smoothly and harmoniously behind you. On my Xtracycle maiden voyage I pedaled a 4 and 6 year old plus assorted sporting equipment up a slow incline over a 3 mile distance. Admittedly the bike has 18 gears and skinny tires, but it was easier than riding my burly 3-speed cruiser only hauling myself and a laptop.

Xtracycles are the bomb for anyone wanting to free themselves of a car more often. These are the trunk the original bike design forgot. The only downfall is, even if your house swallows bikes like a kids swallows jello, their long frame is troublesome for parking in small spaces.