National Forests for the win! Best camping ever!
I think they meant the wheels for the trailer were scavenged from a $20 used bike; the bike it’s hitched to is probably not included in the $150 figure.
Bingo. The anchoring points on the chlorplast would vibrate apart eventually.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of a trike-pulled RV (like some of these things).
But I prefer my rig (circa 2006) over any of them:
…and my new setup eliminates the Burley Nomad trailer in favor of about 70 liters’ worth of Arkel panniers, though it’s not tour-tested yet and I still don’t know where I’m going to put solar. The trailer was lovely, but sometimes a hassle getting to campsites (e.g. along the Oregon coast, in the redwoods). The “mini RV” concept would limit that even further.
Seeing as he appears to be lactose intolerant, he’s missing one very important appliance.
Old campaign signs, you say? Well…
But some signs are so good, maybe recycling doesn’t do them justice:
Good heavens! I had thought only that wildman Steve Roberts was doing things like this. Your rig looks fabulous.
Bicycle RV part the third: Winnebiko & BEHEMOTH
… a pedal powered home after the Dragon’s cold and geeky heart. At the time Behemoth (“Big Electronic Human-Energized Machine… Only Too Heavy”) was Unix powered $1.2 million USD mobile computer, which now resides in the Computer History Museum.
State of the art in 1991.
Thanks! It was a fine, if a little unwieldy, setup. Someone stole the trailer the year after I got off the road here in California but I’ve still got everything else. (In fact I just came back inside from a short - very short - loop around the neighborhood on the trike…the first thing that needs tuning up is the engine, i.e., me…but I’ve got my eye on the road again…)
My trip was partly Steve’s fault, actually. I found a copy of Computing Across America somewhere, and just knowing that somebody else was loopy enough to do such a thing gave me a bit of permission to take off on my own journey after contemplating it for about six years. Steve found me online while I was on the road and bought me a beer via PayPal while I was holed up in a motel somewhere in Kentucky feeling sorry for myself (I was blogging via a then-cutting-edge EVDO modem hooked up to a cell phone amplifier; I linked to his site in a post, and he tracked the link back). Good man. Unfortunately, I was a little short on the kind of fully portable, in-demand skill sets that would’ve allowed me to carry on indefinitely, but I did get four solid months of technomadness in.
I enjoyed my Burley trailer. All except for the crappy Chinese inner tubes.
Those things are fucken indestructible, and you see them only marginally faded after years of being forgotten on streetcorners and in people’s yards. Glad they’re finally putting the world’s strongest, most annoying material to use.
I loved that thing…agreed on the tubes (and the tires). I put Schwalbe Marathon tires on mine, and had one flat the entire time I toured with it: literally the last day on the road. And that was only because I was barrelling down off a mountain pass on the 101 and hit a sizeable chunk of concrete, at speed. My trike missed it, but the trailer didn’t - not a puncture so much as a pinch-flat.
You’d have to put solar panels on the trailer, or park it at home, plugged in, at which point you might as well just sleep in the house.
Yep, it is a matter of time before this thing falls apart.
And if it happens in the middle of nowhere it would take an extremely conscientious person to transport every bit of debris back to civilisation.
If these things catch on we can expect a much bigger litter problem in our national parks etc.
Wow. That’s quite a tale.
Really sorry to hear about the theft of your trailer though. Ouch ouch ouch!
I first came across Steve’s story in a Mondo 2000 article and I am still impressed with the kind of project it is, and the people who embark on such, well…
… because it’s so unusual, so full of contrasts. Freedom and heavy cargo. Weather and wind and being in two places at once if you’re on the web while pedaling. Bike camping and internet-connectivity (which with wi-fi everywhere these days and cell phone tethering/hot-spotting is less daunting than decades previous). Such a striking combination of tech and human-powered mobility. I think that we’re pretty lucky to be living in a time and space where all the conducive conditions come together to make technomadness possible.
For those of us who can’t make such a trek for various reasons, your trek (and Steve’s et al.) are a reminder that there’s a lot of exploring left to do here and now, even on our own planet. Exploring the edges of functional compact portable technology under IRL conditions, and just how friendly (or not!) the human culture surrounding you (or… not!), is as noteworthy as what those folks in the International Space Station are doing, and they’d probably really benefit from a debrief from you as much as you could from them.
Thanks for keepin’ it real. And creative. If you do come through Austin or 20 miles near it, that next beer’s on me.
Much less than 60lbs.
My bushwalking tent has around as much interior space as that trailer. It weighs about 3lbs.
and is probably poisonous (that is the expected remark for EVERYTHING Australian, isn’t it?)
Well, occasionally if I let it get mouldy.
I love that movie. Ben Wheatley is amazing.
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