A Big Haul
Biking is ordinary. But every now and then I get the urge to do something extraordinary.
Yep, nothing like a big haul to make me feel all powerful.
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My co-workers in our warehouse get a kick out of me when I sneak 12 packs of beer in the back door to put into my panniers to take home. I do my grocery shopping during the lunch hour….and sometimes on the ride home, a guy just wants to crack open a cold one at the city park along the way, lol. I like to start my weekends as soon as possible after punching out for the day!
In the1990s there was a vogue among students in Sweden for military-surplus M1942 bicycles put on the market by the Swedish government once the Cold War ended (an entire warehouse containing about 40,000 of them, forgotten since the 1950s, had been discovered somewhere in central Sweden). These galvanised-steel, single-speed machines were so sturdy and so resistant to the most brutal ill-treatment – not to speak of being ridiculously cheap – that the student population snapped them up when they came onto the market. They had a front as well as a rear carrier frame, so the correct etiquette on a Friday evening in Uppsala was to transport the crate of beer on the rear carrier and the girlfriend on the front.
Since any bicycle can be wrecked if you work at it with sufficient determination and neglect even the most basic maintenance, the few surviving genuine M1942s are now valuable collector’s items. The later “Kronan” bicycle was merely a cheap and nasty copy: just as heavy but nowhere near as strong.
Quite right: while no one could be more opposed to cycling tribalism than myself, it still has to be declared, loudly and firmly, that any so-called “bicycle” incapable of transporting at least a 25kg sack of cement is no more than a Bike-Shaped Object and unworthy of that illustrious name.
I don’t know, Bikeyface, how much of a purist you are in these matters, but do you regard bicycle haulage as within the rules only if the bicycle is actually being ridden rather than pushed? Because as is well known, the Vietnamese in their wars against the French then the Americans made massive use of bicycles for load-carrying, often over hundreds of kilometres along the jungle trails, hanging sacks of rice over the frame – sometimes 300kg or more – but pushing the bike with one bamboo pole lashed across the handlebars and another to the saddle stem, then riding it back again unladen. You might try this yourself sometime for amusement. The straw hat and black pyjamas are optional.
In 1947 my father transported a gas stove several miles through the London suburbs by bicycle – though I gather that other people about the same time managed armchairs and wardrobes. There was something heroic about that generation.
I love hauling cargo on my Xtracycle. Most memorable are my Honey Bee rescue jobs. Carrying live bees in a hive on the back of the bicycle as 100’s of catch-up flying bees follow us to the Apiary. Love the feel of a heavy load of recycled goods also. Cheers !
Cargo bikes? Not always needed.
My perfectly normal Pashley Roadster Sovereign can take an entire grocery shopping cart (shopping trolley for ride-on-the-left types).
That’s with 70 litre Basil panniers, big and bulky stuff bungeed to the rear rack and a big front basket.
I made a trailer from a trash day find of a Burley kid carrier. First test, my push lawn mower. Bungee tie downs and all.