Sunday, February 5, 2012

Double Double-Wide

I interrupted Minerva's "winter vacation" Saturday afternoon to do a grocery run.  I knew that with both Superbowl snacks and the rest of the week's groceries, I was going to have an extra large load, and I wanted to use the voluminous Fast Rider panniers that only fit on her longer chainstays.

It was a pleasure to ride her- it's amazing to me how two upright step through city bikes can be so dramatically different.  Although I guess it shouldn't because the geometry is completely different -riding minerva is like sitting in a chair- it's so incredibly upright,  and I've missed it. 

In any case I ended up with an enormous load- surpassing even the capacity of the big panniers.  So I devised a reusable bag version of "Velouria's panniers"  and by my third stop, had a load 4 grocery bags wide!   Too wide to get through the 3' gate.

I looped the handles of the bags through the lock and locked it closed, et voila!


Time to watch the game (and commercials) - Go Pats!

Edited- I'm counting this retroactively as Utilitaire 12.1-  My first entry in the Utilitaire challenge- more details here:

8 comments:

  1. Some pretty wide load you had there...hope it didn't upset the feel of the bike too much.

    -Trevor

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  2. Ah ha! I like what you did there with looping the handles through the lock. I've been trying to find clever ways of getting those shopping bags to attach to the rack. :)

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  3. Love the ingenuity of recycling/purposing the lock ,whats with the blue lites on the handle bars?

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    1. I still haven't taken Minerva's holiday lights off- I hadn't ridden her since the first of the year. Need to do that so that I can use the (rechargable) batteries in other things.

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  4. That is a good idea. I will try that when I go get groceries. I also put my U-lock in the same place. I got that idea from you also.

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  5. My DL-1 is missing the rack and lights. Ware did you get yours at, or would you have any idea ware to get one?

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  6. Dan,
    I bought the rack from the Seattle Dutch Bike company, but it was the last one they had at the time. It's a dutch brand called STECO, and they're a bit hard to find here, especially in a size to fit a 28" wheeled bike. It's super solid- you could easily carry around a 200 pound person sitting on the back.
    The rear light is a Busch and Muller Toplight plus, which runs off the generator front wheel. I do not think that B&M makes a battery operated version of the Toplight plus, but they do make some rack mounted battery operated lights. I have a Cateye 5 LED flasher on my other bike's rack, which is pretty good too.

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    1. Thanks for the info. Again I really enjoy you projects. Very hands on.

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