Trike trial!
Howdy HCCers, meet Peter (he’s the taller one):
Peter and his family have their own compost bin but have also been contributing scraps to the HCC for quite a while now. Peter has also donated some large bags of leaves, keeping the HCC well supplied with carbon rich materials. But for the best contribution of all, Peter is helping to make the HCC carbon neutral (finally!).
Saturday is the main day for bucket swaps, and I have been driving around Watson and Downer to collect buckets of scraps on Saturdays for a while. At first I justified it because I would tie it in with collecting juice pulp from the farmers market. But what I really wanted was to be able to do the bucket run using pedal power. For that I needed a cargo bike. I started looking into cargo bikes and quickly learnt that a Christiana cargo trike would suit my needs, with an extra large bucket for carrying lots of buckets of scraps. Funnily enough I had been walking past one of these exact bikes each time I swapped buckets at Peter’s place but it took me a little while to realise that was the same model I was researching online! Better yet, when I asked Peter about it he told me he would be happy to sell it as his boys were outgrowing the kids seats it was originally bought for.
The Christiana cargo trike is all human powered (although it may be possible to fit a motor), so I needed to try it to see if I could collect all of the buckets under my own steam. Peter was very gracious and let me take the trike out yesterday morning, all around Watson and Downer, picking up buckets. Below illustrates how the trial went in pictures:
perhaps you can tell by my expression but this hill in Watson did me in!
Basically, it was a very pleasant way to collect buckets of kitchen scraps. Much more fun that hopping in and out of a car. I was initially worried that I would annoy some drivers by taking up more of the road and being slow. But by the end of the ride I was much more confident and could easily slow down and pull left if need be. It helped that I went out quite early so that there wasn’t much traffic at all when I first hit the road. The total route did take me longer than in the car but that was partly because I kept stopping to take photos! (and to check the map a few times to verify shortcuts).
So, will I do it again? I sure will! The trial run was so convincing that I bought the trike off Peter the same day. I’ll look forward to taking it out again next weekend. I might just change the route slightly so that I go down Negus crescent rather than trying to push up it!
Many thanks are due to Peter to making the transition to carbon neutral bucket pick ups so easy. I thought I might have to go far and take much more time testing out and finding the right solution but luckily there was this great option right in Hackett 🙂
