I started on a cart run today that ended up being 10 miles round trip from my house to the grocery store NPS Market Square.
The last time I did this in the winter I got caught in the middle of a snow storm and my groceries were caked in mud, crud and other uglies picked up in a snow storm.
I call my current setup for a bicycle cart the Roswell Cart as it is spray painted on the back side a bright glowing neon green and has a bent New Mexico license plate with a reflector on it. Roswell Cart because while bikes are an oddity in Salt Lake City, bicycle carts are unseen and often unknown flying objects attached to the bicycle.
The ride to the store wasn't too bad, except when you get close to Redwood Road and have to change lanes to turn left. At that point it can get a bit unpleasant, but most driver see you have some oddly shaped object in tow and tend to slow, making it slightly easier.
After shopping I had two people swarming my cart. One individual was a bit hard to understand, but you can be sure I plugged the SLC Bicycle Collective at least once in the interest of that foreign object known as Roswell. The other was an employee mumbled a lot and mentioned something about ten speeds in his day. I didn't catch much dialog from him, but perhaps he was speechless at the awesomeness idea of taking tons of groceries home in tow. Both of them waited until I left, I think to see if the cart would explode or simply fall to pieces. It didn't, and it proved that awesomeness that cars aren't always needed.
On the ride home I got a friendly honk and a thumbs up from a long grey haired guy in a small pickup truck. But my victory was short lived on the ride as a truck nearly sideswiped me from the south side streets, but didn't and now I count the days where I can blare my on order horn at these encroaching motorists. I can't scream well. It comes out as a hoarse yelp at best.
So besides that minor triviality, the ride went well and I am ready to take a nice cozy nap.
Before I go, let me present this one last idea food for thought for Salt Lake City.
The SLC Bike Move.
Hopefully, we wouldn't have some dork singing "We got a bike move", but the idea is amazing and would give visibility to cyclists in a huge way. There are several instructables about building bicycle carts and we probably could use the SLC Bike Collective to put the carts together. If welding is an issue, a bambo bike cart could be a potentially feasible option.
The structure of the organization would have to be decided, but it would be nothing short of amazing to get it work. Bikes at work seem to have some of it figured out, including with their trailers and some great ideas should be had from their site content.
Just dreaming now, but hey it is the Year of the Bike right?
