How to Double Up a Bike

I don't know how many people there are out their that love to bike, but I live on mine! My bicycle is my mode of transportation all summer. I probably put on 100km in a summer just on my bike! My friends are mostly the same towards their bikes, but started to find some issues with this mode of transportation. Mainly, what to do when someone hasn't got a bike to use. Normally, we would have to walk around or ditch travelling altogether.

One day when we were young we discovered the fun in pulling each other around in one of those little plastic wagons. It was so fun and some decided that it would be much better to attach the wagon to a bike and then pull some one around. We together a couple pieces of wood and voila, we were in business. In fact, it worked so well that we decide we had better make our own version of this "chariot". We started with scrap pieces of wood, nails and some basic tools that were laying around. We didn't get very far at first. We only completed the base of the towable when we ran into the problem of figuring out an axle and wheels. I worked on it once or twice and then forgot about while it collected dust in a friends chicken koop.

Just recently, we gained a friend from across town that didn't have a bike, limiting out transportations when he came to one of our houses. So we elected to try and get the "chariot" running. Me and a friend of mine worked on it for hours with few tools and limited resources. Eventually, with alot of sweat and frustration, we got the first version rolling. Well,...sorta. I didn't really work with bicycle tires and rebar, but it was a start.

A little while later, i fount some wheels at Canadian Tire with an axle and mounts that looked perfect. We put that on there with a new means to hitch it to the bike and tried it. Miraculuosly, it worked even with some one sitting on it. We were ecstatic. I towed it home and it made it with little damage. After a quick paint job, we had a working carrier for a stranded friend.

The only problem was the small tires and the thrown together hitch . Eventually I found tires to replace the old ones. They were larger and inflated give us a smoother ride and less road noise. We bought a gate latch to use as a hitch and it has worked pretty well so far. This sort of thing shows you that with a little imagination and time, you can create useful things that are rarely seen anywhere else. There is nothing the like the feeling you get when your pulling a black bicycle trailer behind you and you get a nod or wave from someone passing by. I encourage others to build things similar to this. It's pretty easy and requires only about $50 for it to work well. I would like to hear from anyone has done this before or is going to after reading this. Don't forget that this is just for fun and shouldn't be used for commercial purposes(I wouldn't use mine if I hadn't built it!). Have fun building and biking