Mobility

Gert Swarts and his trailer

Mobility can mean different things, depends on your situation, I suppose.

One of the greatest limitations of bicycle transport is humping your "stuff" along with you, and that stuff can be anything from your slinky little Apple to a whole pile of garden tools and pretty much anything in between. Well, Gert Swarts is one step closer to overcoming that hurdle.

Bike trailers are nothing new and there are a host of variations on the theme; single wheel, double wheel, short, long, light, heavy, side hitch, top hitch..........
The only thing is that they appear to be few and far between (I only know of one person who has one) and I have never seen one in this neck of the vlaktes.

So that's probably what motivated me to make this trailer for Gert.

Appropriate branding !

The detail of how I made it is in an earlier post, with some rather poor quality pictures, but you'll get the general idea. If there are any "rules" then they must be:

• weight centred over the axle
• strength over weight
• made of locally repairable materials

For the rest, the trailer can be made to order, depending on what's available. Some of the Northern Hemisphere sites talk of using wood (but with Black X SA Pine rather not!)

Interesting to note that both of these frames were about to go off the scrap recycling depot in Oudtshoorn, talk about saved from the knackers!

And what has it meant to me?

Quite a lot in fact, to take two scrap frames and fabricate a pretty decent trailer is very satisfying. And helped along by the legendary Jame Marshall Hendrix.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ_Kip3FP0Q

and.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCwCBh0z3Hs&feature=related

... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GydN5VDDBMM&feature=related

So, if you have two old steel frames in sight, you'd better tie them down or they could just end up in the Karoo as a trailer. If you have two old steel road bike frames even better. (In fact we've closed in on the old steel frame futures market!)

Hasta la vista, Gert