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Saturday, February 07, 2015

Beer Run!

Of course the question you all want to know is: How much beer can a Haul-a-Day carry?

The answer is I don't really know the maximum but I can set a floor.

So I rode over to my nearby beer store. This is what I bought...


It comes to:


  • 8 x 750ml Avec Les Bon Voeux
  • 6 x 12oz Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA
  • 6 x 12oz Ballast Point Sculpin cans
  • 4 x 16oz Golden Roads Wolf in the Weeds IPA
  • 1 x 750ml spoiled grape juice (a/k/a "Wine")
  • 1 x 26oz distilled grain spirits (a/k/a "Booze")
It doesn't look like much in the cart, but it is a a fair amount to transport on a bicycle.





I didn't plan well enough -- I meant to bring some newspaper to wrap the bottles. We have a paper bag law and one use paper bags are 10 cents. I knew that went for grocery stores but didn't realize it was for bottle bags as well. The store gave me some cardboard inserts and using my jacket and a cloth bag I managed to get it all in and wrapped.

This was the first time I had a real load in the front basket and it worked OK. I am usually pretty good at balancing the bike with little or no forward motion  but not with a load. So long as I got a good push off it went fine. The disk brakes stopped with no issues.

It's less than two miles to the store, so it wasn't a distance test, but I am happy with how it worked. With a little better planning I could carry more but I wouldn't want to double the load.


Wednesday, February 04, 2015

More Haul-A-Day

So yesterday I rode off to a nearby grocery store that has "reverse vending machines" to get some bottle deposits back. So I loaded up the bike with three garbage bags of (mostly) 2-liter bottles and headed off.

When I got there, the store had removed the vending machines. It turns out the store is closing the end of the month and I guess they didn't wait to get rid of the recycle machines.

The store had big "Inventory Clearance" signs all over -- I figured there wouldn't be much in the way of groceries I wanted to buy, so I headed for another grocery store (actually closer to home but they don't have a recycling center).

I thought about just leaving the bottles at this store, figuring somebody who gathers recyclables for a living would pick them up. If I had seen anybody, I would have given them to them but just leaving them seemed like littering, so I bungie corded then to the top of the rack in the back (plus one in the basket) and took them home. The panniers are full of groceries but you can't really see that.

So I rode home like this. I got some strange looks -- I think some folks thought I was one of those who has all their belongings on their bike (we have a few of those in the neighborhood) but that is their problem, not mine...



Pat and I went out riding for lunch today and while it is not the greatest picture, you can see somewhat the relative sizes. Her bike is a New World Tourist that belonged to my father. If you look at some of the pictures from 2007, 2008 and 2010 you can see this same bike next to my NWT





Sunday, February 01, 2015

Farmer's Market Run

Rode over to our nearby farmer's market (Mar Vista Farmers Market). It's about 4.5 miles round trip.

Didn't get a huge amount of veggies but more than I would have on my NWT (with the 5 lbs or oranges).

The ride yesterday was about 5 miles (we call it the "Five Mile Loop"). I haven't been riding recently and so am out of shape. Normally these I wouldn't feel these rides but the 35+ lbs of Haul-A-Day does make a difference. I'm not complaining -- that is more exercise for me -- but I won't be doing any 25+ miles rides on it any time soon.






Saturday, January 31, 2015

New Bike Friday in the House



This is my new Bike Friday Haul-A-Day -- their non-folding cargo bike. Just got it assembled yesterday and took it for it's first ride this morning.

Some details: the rear panniers are similar (though smaller) to what you might find on an Xtra-cycle. They will hold a lot of groceries or whatever. It has a standard 8-speed derailleur and front and rear disk brakes. The front basket is frame mounted so that even loaded it won't effect steering much. It takes some getting used to, though. I got a bit sea-sick as the wheel would move but the basket didn't.

You can't see it here, but the frame actually collapses so that different sized riders can share the same bike (seat and handle height also easily adjusts) so that in theory different family members can share the same bike.

The stock model supposedly can transport 200 lbs of cargo.  I'm a little (yeah right!) over the stock rider limit but this one has some "heavy rider" upgrades so I'm not sure how much cargo I can carry but I doubt I'll do more than 100lbs as the main purpose is grocery shopping.

Our local electronics waste recycling facility is actually just off the beach bike path. As I am slowly trying to get ride of old junk -- anybody need a couple 2 serial, 1 parallel port boards? How about RLL and EDSI disk controllers? -- I look forward riding up there some future Saturday with a load of e-junk.

Added: First grocery run. That is a large canvas bag (foreground is a Trader Joe's) on each side.