Hauling by cycle

Over the last month or so in this fine city that I call home, people have been gearing up for large item pick up day by tossing whatever they don't want onto the curb. This should really be called freecycle day, because along with all the people tossing out gobs of amount of stuff onto the street are the gobs of people driving slowly through neighborhoods looking for items to load up into cars, trucks and trailers. It's a beautiful thing.

I threw on a hat and an appropriate tie-dyed t-shirt with accompanying sandals and went out my front door to wheel around my neighborhood looking for goodies. It's basically a DIYer's wet dream out there with the amount of stuff that people throw away, so I rode slow and took my time checking out everyone's little pile of crap. My quest was rewarded when I came across about fifteen five-gallon buckets split between a few different houses. After several trips of tottering towers of buckets knocking around in my bike basket I finally had them all safe and sound on my deck where I would later be turning them into a network of self watering containers for growing vegetables.

This is where I think the bicycle basket or in my case and over-sized milk crate comes in handy. There are definitely other more stylish ways of hauling around everything you need for the day or running errands, like panniers or a rack with a bungee cord, but the crate is king as far as I'm concerned when it comes to versatility and ease of use. A rack and bungee cord requires that everything you are carrying be small or at least easily contained. You could technically haul an armchair with some rope, but it's still just one big thing. Panniers are nice for carrying things that you are going to bring into other places, like laptops or clothing and the like, but space is limited and there is a need to balance the load otherwise you get a wonky ride. The basket on the other hand requires only that things don't bounce out. I can throw just about anything into it and I don't have to worry about precise balancing or worry about having a bunch of smaller items loose and jumbled. The buckets for instance would have been a challenge to haul without the basket. They wouldn't fit into panniers and while they could technically fit onto a bare rack with enough bungee cords it would have been far from easy. With my basket they towered over my head as I rode and provided that I didn't make any sharp turns stayed exactly where they should have been until I deposited them at my front door.

I'm not going to tell you that the crate is the attractive option, because it definitely isn't. It's the work horse, dirty pick up truck of the three choices of bike attached cargo hauling, but it's the easiest and if you ride around in the next few days you'll probably be able to find one of your vary own laying forlorn on someone's curb, just like the one I found one year ago.

Go mash some pedals.