Nora and I are going bike the Katy Trail in Missouri in June. 250 miles more or less in 7 days more or less. As we’ve been preparing for it, I’ve been a bit concerned that we might not be able to put all our stuff for the trip in our rather small saddle bags, so I started thinking about making a trailer for my bike.
Let me just admit at the outset that I wouldn’t have needed to build a bike trailer myself. There are more shapes, sizes and configurations than there are bicyclists who want to pull one. Still, after hours of research that eliminated them one by one, I had a better idea. Yep, you know where this is headed.
I suppose I should also confess to a certain amount of hubris. I checked out all of the trailer tongues and hitches and had a much better idea. Yes, I know bike trailers have been around since before I was born, but still, they all might have missed something. I mean, 10,000 years since the last Neanderthal picked bits of turkey leg out of her teeth with a thorn, someone is still coming up with new types of toothpicks. So why not trailer tongues.
Enough with the admissions and confessions. I considered what size to make the box and decided to design it around a lightweight duffel because then when we stop for the night, we can just pull out the duffel and take it to our room. Brilliant. More research, more elimination, and finally a green duffel on my front porch, the perfect size.
I made a very lightweight box out of very lightweight plywood. It was a work of art even if no art was involved. Woodworking isn’t my love language, but I’m good at it. Perfect.
Once I had the dimensions for my box, I had the dimensions for my wheels, since I wanted to store my trailer with the axle, wheels and tongue all inside the box when not in use. 16”. This is just enormously creative thinking and something not everyone for the past 10,000 years has taken into account. I researched, and ordered, and within days my wheels were on the front porch. After a couple hours, they were on my trailer. Splendid.
Now for the tongue. This was my tour de force. This is where everyone else missed the mark..
I realized after a lot of thinking that instead of hooking the trailer tongue straight to the bike’s axle as so many other misguided inventors had done, I could hitch it higher up onto my existing rear bike rack. All I would have to do is get a long piece of flat aluminum, bend it around a jig with my bare hands, and I’d end up with an “S”- shaped tongue, starting under the trailer and snaking up to the proper height on the bike rack.
Being able to shape it with my bare hands was probably a hint as to how flimsy it was, but hubris comes with blinders. When the tongue was done, with the right mixture of caster parts, bolts and nuts going different directions, and some admirable creativity, I created a hitch that would turn any direction and swivel. Clever, even if some of it came straight from YouTube videos.
Yes, I was a little concerned about how flexible my aluminum tongue was. Almost as flexible as my own. That “S” shape gave it lots of opportunity to do its own thing, but I decided that would be an advantage: I could pedal and the tongue would let me nudge forward before the trailer decided to follow along, a bit like the slack built into railroad car couplers. If it works for trains, surely it works for bicycles. After more thought, of course I realize that trains and bicycles have significant differences, but that was then.
So of course this concept doesn’t actually work for bicycles. Before I even took it out for a test run I realized that my creativity was misguided. Sparing myself inevitable humiliation, I started over with a “Z”-shaped tongue. Still a bit too flexible maybe, but I was still using freight trains as my guiding lights.
Saturday morning all was ready. We hauled bikes and trailer to a favorite path and launched. The test drive. The time I’d been looking forward to as my triumphal entry. I would post pictures and people would be proud.
It’s hard to describe how it went, but you’d come close to getting the picture if you think of riding a bicycle with a large dog on a leash tied to your rack. A dog that wants to sniff at things on the sides of the trail and make its own decisions about when to lag behind and when to catch up. I could feel my little trailer doing just that: bouncing happily, wandering side to side, and deciding the whole time whether it wanted to keep up or not. It was awful.
When, after a couple miles, we returned to the car, it had even started to fall apart, missing a nut that held the tongue in place. I, of course, was the nut who didn’t think it would require a lock washer.
On the way home I stopped by Home Depot to shop for better tongue material, then headed for my garage. I looked it all over, then paused and wondered to myself if I had correctly remembered the size of our saddle bags. I checked. Huh. They were bigger than I remembered.
“Nora,” I asked, “Do you think we could get all our stuff in the saddle bags after all?” Tragically, she said yes. More tragically, I agreed.
I’m a lifelong learner, so the good news is that now I understand why trailer tongues aren’t made in “S” shapes, or even “Z” shapes for that matter. The better news is that my trailer stores very compactly where no one can see it. The best news is that we’ve both learned a lot about traveling light. Sigh.
“Someday” I’ll go back to my project. I’m just sure it’s still the best idea ever.