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I almost came a right cropper today carrying some steel rebar by bicycle...don't ask...only my catlike agility stopped me sprawling across the road...fortunately nothing was behind me... it would appear I never learn...
What horror stories have you along similar lines??
I read somewhere once that you can't consider yourself a real cyclist until you've carried inappropriate things by bicycle!!
Cheers :o)
Well, slightly OT but myself and my wife rode round Cuba about 10 years ago and saw a bloke with a live pig strapped to his rear rack. It didn't seem overly happy.
A step ladder , nail gun , a pick axe , an offshore kit bag
27 m of copper pipe tied along the crossbar- that picked up a resonance that was entertaining. Another bike towed behind, two kitchen units in a trailer, a large double radiator ( that one was done by walking alongside the bike with the rad balanced on the bike) 8 x 2.4m lengths of 3x2 PAR. that wa a tad awkward.
Never been huckled by the polis which is quite surprising. Also a few escapades on a motorbike including 8ft xmas tree with root ball carried vertically and 6 rolls of loft insulation
Something like this?
Maggots.
Lovely, fresh bronze maggots.
Two pints of them.
Swinging from my mates handlebars as we sped through Lichfield on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
By christ did they go everywhere when the bag swung into his spokes.
Two pints of them don’t half cover some ground.
They were actually in one ladies hair.!!!
Two bags of stuff (possibly toys, can’t remember) on the ends of the drops. Didn’t end well when one of them went in the front wheel whilst I was going down hill at speed.
Woke up whilst being carried in to a house by a lovely elderly couple. Bit battered, bruised and bloody. In my defence I was about ten or eleven when this happened.
I'm sure I've done similar dumb stuff many times, but the one that stands out is the time I carried a microphone stand in one hand while riding several miles across town. I think my arm was pretty sore afterwards. I also shouldered a road bike up and down Snowdon once, a style of adventure that I'm unlikely to repeat.
Once upon a time B&q were doing a cracking deal on an apple tree sapling in a terracotta pot.
It was only once I bought it and walked out that I remembered I had cycled to the store...
Popped back in and tided the pot to my pannier rack and very gingerly cycled home with a 2ft tree on the back. Got it home successfully too!
Only my own arse, far too many tales to tell.
I think you've painted an extraordinary scene 😀
I always favoured the 'strawberry' maggots
Pair or rod bars sticking out of my panniers - I'd crashed that morning, and these were replacements (upgrades) - nothing other than a few questions from other cyclists
As a kid, carrier bag full of fish and chips for 6 of us, yep, bag broke, fish and chips all over the road
The park round the back of my parents house has several conker trees so we used to spend ages there in the autumn collecting bags of conkers.
A mate and i had collected literally two carrier bags full each and were cycling back to my house.
There's a narrow alley that leads into the road (circle at the end of a cul de sac) and the house on one side had a pebble dashed wall. I scraped one bag along the wall and as i bumped down the kerb into the road the bag split dumping hundreds of conkers all over the road, into the turning circle.
God knows who cleared them up - they were there for days though!
When I was working at a big supermarket, I got a smashing deal on a Weber 57 centimeter charcoal kettle grill... No car, and 10 kilometers home.
good thing I had aero bars on my mountainbike at the time!
I'd been after a campbed for a while and spotted one on offer at Halfords (25% off, aka a fiver).
I rode over and bought one, slung it over my shoulder and headed off back to work.
As I went round a corner it slid down my arm and swung into my front wheel, catapulted off at some speed and ****ted my carbon forks...
Saving 5 quid cost me a new wheel and a set of forks...
Does a filing cabinet and office pot plant in a Burley across Sheffield count?
@verses should've bought the carbon version of the campbed, it might not have done so much damage
and yes matt I think your filing cabinet does indeed count
Cannabis plants and a G4 computer.
Myself. I'm often inappropriate.
Oh, and a girlfriend that put her foot in the rear wheel. Twice.
D521s...what a waste
Blood going between hospitals to get tested!
When I was a bike messenger. It was always a super urgent delivery so we jumped all traffic lights to get it there in time. I dread to think what would have happened in the event of a crash.
10 years ago I thought it was cool, I feel slightly used now.
A bugle in a duffle bag on my back when I was about 12 and in a scout band (happy days) - fell off and bent the bellend at right angles 🙂
A 6ft by 2ft painting across Edinburgh in a gale. In the right direction i was bombing along. When the wind caught it it was terrifying. Luckily i was quite drunk.
8x4’ sheet of MDF on my Brompton!
I still look back on this with wonderment- walking out of school when one of the athletics team cycles past, carrying a javelin. Somebody calls out to him, he swivels round, and the javelin gets caught in the back wheel. You can picture the rest.
We thought it was hilarious of course, but never gave a second thought to what on earth was going through the head of the teacher that lent out a spear to a 16 year old to take down to the local park to practice with. Ok, it was back in the 70s in small town NZ but even so...
Lol, excellent thread!
I've obviously led a sheltered (biking) life!
130kg of titanium powder in a 1wheel trailer. The leg strength required to keep the thing upright at junctions was just ridiculous. So difficult to get going without falling off.
3m lenghts of wood tied to my top tube. A policeman told me to get off and push.
All the food shopping for a small venture scout group weekend camp in panniers, big rucksac and front carrier of a post office bike. Ineffective Rod brakes would have made stopping going downhill somewhat impossible.
Mad skillz:
Not a pushbike but a motorbike - my late and much-missed Irish pal used to ride his MZ250 from Leeds up to Aviemore to ski with a pair of very long skis - 205cms I think - slipped underneath his soft panniers and tied together at the tips behind his number plate. He says he got a few curious looks from Police officers but never got stopped. He was a legend - he once experienced a nasty tank-slapper at speed on the road to Stranraer to catch the ferry. Stopped and checked the oil (having previouly blown up a Honda 750 engine through forgetting to put in oil) and carried on to Norn Iron for the weekend. Took the bike in for a service the following Monday and told the mechanic he thought the handling was a bit skittish. Later that morning the mechanic rang him and asked: "Did you really ride that at speed all the way to Newry and back? Only your rear tyre is showing its carcass and the front has lost an entire strip of tread all the way round!"
Both times on the main road outside Stirling University, I saw a guy cycling along in the rain with an open golf umbrella and another guy with a full length, old school plastic kayak on his shoulder.
Respect!
2 kids bikes and other paraphernalia! It was a cargo bike though....
DrP
My personal favourite. Not me though.
No accidents but i have carried a 25kg sack of potatoes on my Hybrid and a boxed up road bike again on my hybrid
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I went to India about 10 years ago on business. They are masters at inappropriately loading any vehicle. Here's some things I captured from a speeding taxi on the way to the airport (please excuse the qaulity of shots, my camera took a beating from the humidity.:
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I regularly cycle with a bucket of freshly resected colon from theatre to pathology department (only a 2min cycle)*
And then with pieces of colon tumour the pathologist has kindly removed back to our lab (about 15 min cycle)
* It is double bagged and then inside a biohazard courier bag,
This is how we got our boats around in Uganda. Awesome.
The worst thing I've carried by bike was....a bike.
A friend broke his wrist out in the Alps and so I had to get his bike to the bottom. To this day I'll never understand why it was that I took MY BIKE apart and rode HIS down... 😂 Must have been the stress clouding my decision making.
Spesh pizza rack ftw!
Added bonus was cars gave me lots of room for some reason?
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I borrowed the OH cannondale HT years ago to collect our dogs ashes from the vet. Lots of hills and road action on a bloody hot day in June with a rather elaborate box containing a tub of cross staffy ashes made it all the way home squeezed inappropriately into a camelbak
Always fish and chips after a ride with my mates as a kid/teenager, hooked over the bar end (oh yeah, judge my age!). Never ended in tears, but made for interesting steering.
I also used to like building balsa wood model planes, so quite a few sheets of balsa wood strapped to the top tube. So many other things I've just asked for some tape in the shop to put it on the top tube too, can't remember what though.
Bolt croppers (the longest Toolstation had in stock after I locked myself out of the house by leaving keys in the garage).
I've used the kids trailer to transport bikes to the ex's flat for rides.
BITD used what I seem to remember were called Roubaix wheel holders (my dad used to use them to transport his "good" wheels to TT's) to take wheels to the bike shop.
Er, huge fireworks. Can be a challenge.
Basically, there is always a way, but I've not
In Finale - I saw 2 people on different bikes carrying a large inflatable unicorn float between them - still fully inflated
There's an old crusty dude round my manor who works as a window cleaner. Been a local institution for years. Wears a suit and pushes a cheap bso about with massive extending ladders across the top of the bike.
Never is riding the bike, just pushing the ladders on it. 😊
In edinburgh at one point you could by alcohol at vastly inflated price afte 10pm when all the normal off license had shut.
I’m 6”4 and borrowed my 5”0 mates bike to get some vodka.
The vodka went into the front wheel and smashed our hopes and dreams all over the street 😢
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My truck broke down and I had some sheep on a neighbours ground down the road. The ewe had a bit of mastisis and needed treatment so she followed the lamb in the pannier back to the sheep shed. Carrying the hurdles was ok until you tried to corner...