From: freshair@iastate.edu (James W Gregory)
Subject: Re: Bike-only Households
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 19:23:07 GMT

In <1jrl9vINNc1f@uwm.edu> thelma@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Thelma Lubkin) writes:

>    I'm interested in the transport solutions of bike-only households.
>  My husband and I both bike to work (he doesn't count: he goes all of 5
>  blocks); we use our tandem w/ panniers and a cardboard box on top of
>  them, along with my free arms, for grocery shopping; we have 2 old style
>  Moultons with the serious carriers for carrying truly heavy things
>  (my husband once carted home a steel, 4-drawer filing cabinet on the back
>  of one of them, using a lawn mower w/o its handle to balance the weight
>  in the front.)

I bought a small, somewhat dilapidated house a few years ago that I'm
in the process of fixing up.  Since I needed to be able to carry
lumber home from the hardware store for my house, I built my own
trailer for carrying lumber (I, too, don't have a car). 
   I soon started using it to carry groceries home from the food
store.  It began to irk me that everyone else was driving their cars to
the supermarket, forcing the food stores to cover our fine city with
oceans of asphalt parking lots so people would have a place to park.
I decided to start using my trailer to carry groceries for other
people.  A home grocery delivery business was born.
   Since that time I've built three other trailers, each time
improving on the original design.  My current trailer, which I made
using aluminum tubing, carries four weatherproof containers, each of
which can carry two bags of groceries at a time.  The containers lift
out of the trailer frame, allowing me to carry lumber (a necessity!),
bicycles, yard waste, cases of food, etc. (all of which people have
paid me to carry at one time or another).

>     Our most serious problem is parking: we won't take a bicycle unless
>  there's a reasonably safe place to park it, which means that we walk to
>  many events like concerts.

I can understand your concern.  My recommendation:  pull a trailer.
No one will steal a bike pulling a trailer--a theif would be too slow
when he tries to ride it away, and he would be too readily noticed.
(I speak from experience.  I've had two bikes stolen in the past two
years.  Both times I did not have my trailer connected.)

>      I'm not an all the time rider either: I can't handle snow, and I won't
>  start out in heavy rain, so the fact that everyone else has a car is very
>  helpful:  I've found people quite willing to cart me, and often my bike too,
>  home.

For snow and ice, I highly recommend studding your tires with
automobile tire studs.  Last week, when a serious ice storm had
cancelled classes at the university and had shut down the bus system
(a very, very rare event), I was out delivering pizzas for a local
pizza restaurant.  The studs on my tires allowed me to get around
without any difficulty whatsoever (and earning me $65 for the day!)
while everyone else was stuck at home.  
   Getting by with just a bike alone is not difficult, it just takes a
little imagination and a lot of committment to go against the
status-quo...
    Good luck.

-Jim 

-- 
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Jim Gregory      freshair@iastate.edu    |  "10,000 lemmings can't be wrong"
Dept. of Plant Pathology, ISU (by day)   |          - anonymous
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