In light of my use of a bicycle for transport, I ask you, gentle reader, to comment with the strangest thing you have seen being transported on a bicycle. No, your little sister/brother doesn’t count. I will start the bidding, as it were, with having seen a cyclist pulling another bicycle; he had the front wheel strapped to an Xtracycle (a kind of frame extension/funky pannier), but it would have been little trouble to do the same trick with a regular bicycle. Or would it? Hmmm. Perhaps I’ll have to try it some time.
Meanwhile, it’s a cat’s life at our house. Our Siamese helped clean Youngest Son’s room by preventing any books from falling behind the bed.
I see a LOLCats caption for this photo: “Now that I’ve finally finished reading these books, I need a nap.”
3 comments:
Well, the strangest thing I have ever personally transported on a bicycle is probably a backpack full of library books. However, the summer I was fourteen, I was very religious and ended up on a group of teenagers doing missions/relief work in Mozambique. We were there about a month helping to construct a hospital, and every day we worked next to a road that featured Mozambiqan commuters, workers, assorted pedestrians and so on. A lot of people didn't have automobiles, so they used bicycles to transport all kinds of things. Huge stacks of wood, bales of straw, baskets of produce like bananas and oranges and cassava roots, bundles of cloth, cages with chickens in them, you name it and someone could put it on a bicycle. It was really neat.
Good pic of you with the stove on your bike. Linda and I carried all our groceries home for the week in panniers but that is hardly notable (until you go uphill - gosh those cans get heavy). I think a woman who made a dog trailer and rides around so her dog goes everywhere with her in town is the most hardy I have seen as the trailer is 25-40 lbs easily.
AS to the bed, does your son sleep on the floor?
Tayi: Thank you for going to Mozambique; I'm sure you helped some people more than you'll ever know.
In China, it's nothing to carry 200 pounds of live chickens by bicycle. And in a cycling magazine in the early 1980s, there was a photo of someone towing a couch with a bicycle.
Beth: we bought a Burley trailer in 1990 to haul the kid around in. 18 years later, it has carried three children and thousands of dollars in groceries. I took the seat out about 4 years ago, and now we can load it up with over $250 in food. That gets heavy, but when you put 4 jugs totaling 40 litres of water in it (my Beloved couldn't drink tap water during one pregnancy), THAT feels like a trailer as it pushes and pulls your bike.
Groceries in panniers are awkward to balance. But you do learn what all those gears are for. I use front and read panniers frequently.
I've also seen dogs in trailers; they look great.
I'm sorry, I should have explained the bed! Oldest son began moving out a year ago, and last month, we finally got all the stuff out of his room, and began painting it for Middle son. In the process of moving him, we rearranged the bedroom he used to share with the Youngest son. The cat supervised the emptying and moving of a bookcase. Then we had to put all thoe books back... The three of them are voracious readers, especially Youngest; he was reading Harry Potter (and damning his soul, apparently) when he was in grade 2.
So the mess bed was only temporary; usually it's liberally sprinkled with Lego AND books, with the Lego mostly cleaned up and no more than half a dozen books beside the pillow while the little guy and the cat sleep.
Another possible use for a bicycle: hauling musical supplies. The Ginger Ninjas (http://www.gingerninjas.com/) used ten Xtracycles (http://www.xtracycle.com/) to haul their band from Claifornia to southern Mexico and back. No cars or trucks; bicycles with guitars, amps, drum kit(!), sound system, and even a bicycle-powered generator, so they can play ANYWHERE.
I guess that means you'll have to work to find something that would surprise me - maybe hauling a telephone pole?
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