Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Shopping Cart Cargo Bike Follow-up (Instructables!!!!!)

  Some lucky Austinite got a bargain at $60!

Mesquite Hugger readers tend to be excited whenever we post about various ways to haul things on or in bicycles. I have to admit that one of the harder parts of riding a bike daily is figuring out how to transport stuff. A little while back we posted an article that highlighted a shopping cart bike for sale on the Austin Craigslist that garnered a lot of attention and a bit of inspirational drooling. And why not? When was the last time you pushed a cart around a store? They are amazingly useful for hauling stuff, but they are not really built for distance, speed, or real-world surfaces. Bicycles are normally not built to haul much stuff, but they are well adapted for speed, distance, and rough surface travel. And every mad scientist/maker/tinkerer/wierd-person-with-a-welder-and-a-junky-yard knows that when you hybridize two good things you come up with one truly great monstrosity! If you don't believe me, sit down and watch a movie marathon on the ScFi channel some time.

This town (Lubbock, TX) is severely lacking in mad-scientist hangouts - especially since Rusty moved across town - so I have been hanging out on Instructables a lot more. And Instructables is a great place to be further inspired by other mad-scientist types. There are even a few shopping-cart bikes over there:

Cart Bike by zieak
 
This one has been on Instructables for a long time, but the tiny wheels always scared me away.

 
This one is pretty sweet. The builder cites being inspired by the other two that are featured here.


I have a feeling that this one was the original inspiration for everything else on the page. If you like going off on tangents, do some searching on the author/builder Matte Resist. I hope to read more of his writing soon.

 
(I threw this in just because this post gave me the tangential excuse to feature another cool Instructable)

May your peanut butter get together with your chocolate and make a great cargobike peanut butter cup!

PS. Some local guy posted an olla Instructable recently. Check it out if you are really bored.

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