Willimantic, Now & Then
My first experience with bicycle commuting, way back in 1970, was a grueling one. I would get home in the middle of the night, sweat-soaked and exhausted from the long climb. The ride also had its beauty. Route 8 followed the marshy waters of the Still River, and I saw ducks, muskrats, beaver, redwing blackbirds, turtles and many other creatures on my morning ride. I would spend the day at school, and then ride to the factory for my shift.
A couple weeks ago I realized a life-long quest. It came with no great fanfare or congratulatory hoopla. In fact, it came out of a dumpster.
It is a salvaged child trailer for a bicycle that my old friend Denise Dixson rescued from a dumpster a few years back.
My quest started many years ago, when I got my first bicycle. Almost ever since, I have been looking for better ways to carry more things on a bicycle. There are bookracks, of course. There are also backpacks, and panniers, for the front and back of the bike. I have had all those things. I once had a straw basket for the front of my bike, which wasn’t that great for cargo, but it had a lot of style.
By Mark Svetz
So…I was back to wondering what I could do about the bike. There is a guy who fixes bikes out behind the Wrench in the Works, on Main Street. He has a couple of trailers he made for his bike. One of them is fashioned from a broken child trailer. I thought to myself, “This has possibilities.”
I am thinking I could make something like that. Maybe this guy behind the Wrench could help me. I am feeling that old excitement again. You know the excitement when you can see a way to fulfill a quest.
Reiney Brown, Denise’s partner, arrived back in Willimantic from Santa Fé a couple weeks ago. We were talking and, since Reiney is a mad inventor, I told him about my quest, thinking he would have some suggestions. Little did I know.
WILLIMANTIC –June, 2008
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Shopping carts have often come in handy. Sarah and I once rolled our canoe from Spring Street over to Pleasant Street where a bunch of friends were organizing a canoe ride down the Willimantic River. We used two boards lashed across the cart to hold the canoe, and I suppose we made a spectacle of ourselves, but we got the boat to the river.
In Manhattan, I once had to call a car service to carry a bunch of lumber from the hardware store to a job I was doing in the neighborhood. A shopping cart would have taken too many trips. Talk about failing in my quest!
It was also in Manhattan where I saw many bicycles with huge baskets for delivering groceries. They were cool. There was a place called The Hub, where they made bicycles with dump bodies, bikes with carriage seats behind them for carrying tourists, huge cargo containers for bikes, and many other specialty cycles. This place fed my fantasy for years.
Now we are back in Willimantic, and I have to carry those buckets from our shop on Church Street to the Park Laundromat on Watson Street. I am not as young as I used to be and my arms get tired.
I have been using a hand truck, which is a nice system, including the social interlude I like so much. But it takes 20 minutes or half an hour to get to the Laundromat, even more if the social interlude is extended.
Cargo is the tricky thing. I consider it a challenge to move not only myself, but also my gear, without resorting to a car. One time, many years ago, my son – who was 11 or 12 at the time – and I moved to a new apartment with a shopping cart. We had great fun talking about “People’s Vehicles,” as we made one trip after another.
The Little Bicycle that Could
All the various packs, racks, sacks and baskets served in their turn to get my groceries, books, tools, toys and who knows what else, to or from my various destinations. But always, there were things too big or awkward to carry. That, my friends, is at the center of my quest.
I got that first bicycle when I was living in Harwinton, just outside Torrington, on the other side of the state. I was going to school in Winsted, about 10 miles up old Route 8, a beautifully flat road! I was working nights at a factory in the South End of Torrington. This made a total commute of about 25 miles. I had been hitchhiking for a while and decided to get a bike.
I had a rig once where I hooked my two-wheeled hand truck to the back of my bike as a trailer. It worked once or twice, but I would hit a pothole and everything would scatter in the street.
It was when we were living in Manhattan that I started carrying wet fabric to the Laundromat in five gallon buckets. I have never found a good way to do this on a bike. Hanging from the handlebars, they make the bike too unsteady. The buckets are too big to strap to the bookrack. They don’t fit in the panniers. In New York, it was just a block or two to the laundry, so I carried them, one in each hand. That was cool and it made for a nice social interlude in my day.
“Denise still has that trailer she found in the dumpster. You want to borrow it?” He asked.
There ya go. A lifelong quest is fulfilled.
It is a beautiful trailer. Reiney had replaced the wheels with some others from a kid’s mountain bike. The trailer is sturdy. It hooks onto my bike with ease. It carries four buckets easily, even more with a little effort.
It is now a five-minute ride to the Laundromat. Oh, there is still the occasional social interlude, but what fun would it be without that?
Now…I wonder if I could tie the canoe onto the trailer?
Once I settled into the “urban life,” after moving to Willimantic, I began to see many possibilities for bicycle transport. Actually the bicycle is just part of my transportation picture. Mostly I have been on a life-long quest to get around without a car. A bike was all I ever needed to get myself from one place to another.
Sarah and I have, after all, ridden our bikes through the Rocky Mountains, the High Sierras and the Great Smoky Mountains. It’s hard work, but a bike can get you just about anywhere, if you have the time.
Brochure for Manhattan based
Off to the laundromat
I had one of those child seats on the back of my bike, so it was an easy thing to carry my book bag back there. When I wasn’t commuting, I was riding with my infant son on the back. I fell in love with bikes during those years.
Preparing to ride up Mount Rose el. 10,000 feet!
Sarah near Carson Pass in the Sierra’s
