A few weeks ago I have seen a picture of the sidecar for a longtail bicycle, which is called Xtracycle. Xtracycle is a cargo bicycle, the earliest of the longtail type, and is famous for the very flexible platform and large amount of accessories. This sidecar is one of them. As you can see from the picture, it has only one wheel, is positioned next to the bicycle, and can be folded up.

I thought it was a marvelous idea. So I started to think in what form could it be replicated so it attaches to a regular bike – just for smaller loads. The main complication is, that a regular bike doesn’t have a lot of space on the back to have a sidecar be hooked up. And even most of the little space it does have on the frame to get something mounted on, is overlapped by the foot of the pedaler, so if anything sticks out to the side, it would get caught.

Well, I did dare to buy the 40 pound load, and mounted it onto the sidekick all right. The roads were mostly cleared by that time, so I got home mostly unscathed. The only thing that happened was that the arm, which was mounted to the chain-stay part of the bicycle frame did get loose, so I had to stop on the way home to put a rope around both and fasten them to each other. And in case you were wondering, here is a picture of the trailer when I folded it up after the trip. Still a little bit askew, due to the loose arm. And, of course, not as quick to get folded up as the Xtracycle sidecar; it takes a bungee cord to hold it in place.

And to better show the amount of snow we got, here is a picture of the chickens trying to find something edible in the narrow path I dug in the snow to be able to get to their coop.