Carrying junk on the cheap

To many who know me, I'm an eccentric bike geek. I love wrenching as much as riding my bikes, and can often be found geeking it up with other bike nerds in the "Bicycling" forum on Craigslist. Lately, with gas being as expensive as it has been, I've been working on eliminating the car for the few trips it was designated for around town. That goal, along with my insane need to build things has led to a couple of projects I just thought I'd share, since perhaps someone else might be interested in doing the same.

My latest project is a kitty liter bucket pannier. Mostly based on plans from DIY sites everywhere, I built it in about 30 min one afternoon after a trip for some hardware. Here are the pics of the finished product-





So far it's carried about 20lbs easily. And it came free with my 25lbs of cat liter.

The next project I'm working on is building a tray system for my Burley Flatbed trailer so I can haul other bikes with me. So far it's just in the planning stages, but it involves a couple of fork mounts you can buy from places like Performance, and some aluminum channel. We'll have to see how this one turns out.