Prelogue
I purchased Bill several years ago.
Being a white, heteronormative male in America, I have the privilege of giving up things. And part of that privilege also means that, almost without fail, every time I do, I also end up buying something.
When we decided to relocate the Mooseknuckler Cycling Alliance Social Lounge from downtown Washington to downtown St. Geezy, there was a big impetus for even less driving in our lives. Pretty soon the Taco sat for weeks at a time as I could ride to work in about the same time that it took to start up the truck and just get it out of the driveway. So we sold it. And then I bought Bill cuz, you know, if you don’t have a truck you need a bike trailer.
Day 1 of owning said trailer, I pulled a couple of people around the block. And then I used it to haul the occassional bike in a box back and forth to the shop, but mostly it’s just hung out in the gear shed. Partly because it’s huge and partly because it is huge in an almost useless way. It is designed so you can build it out, but I never did that. I just left it as an open framed flatbed. As such, it could only haul big items that I could easily strap down.
A few months ago, I purchased a Big Easy. Kind of on a whim, kind of because all the cool kids are doing it and part because I thought Mama Bear could use it to get to work quicker and haul things easier when needed. It has been great at all those things, but what if I added Bill to the mix. How many things could I carry?
The Build Out
To that end, I contacted Jeff’s Trailer Creations. I’ve worked with him a time or two in the past. About 30 years ago, we built up our first bike trailer together. I used it to haul the lawn mower around and for delivering newspapers in the neighborhood. It was fun. As in funny. Watching a skinny little kid try to pull more than his weight around with a bmx bike got me plenty of laughs.
Around that time, Papa Brinkerhoff had taught me how to weld much to my dismay. I wasn’t into it. It was work and I hadn’t touched a torch since. I figured this would be a fun project that would maximize my cargo carrying capacity and give me a chance to relearn how to weld. It also gave me a reason to hang out in my dad’s shop and do things we did when I was a kid, like build trailers.
I had a pretty good idea what I wanted. I needed a solid bottom, about 12 inches of sides that were covered and the ability to remove the sides when needed for the odd boxed bike transport. Of course, once we got into it, it was clear that my pretty good idea was really just a rough idea and I needed the expertise of a veteran trailer builder to sort out the details. A little back and forth, some of this and some of that, and we were on the same page and moving forward. The metal was purchased and now we just had to built it up.
Our first item of business, I had to give Papa Brinkerhoff very strict instructions that he was not to do work without me. You see, the man is a creator. He loves projects and always has several he is working on. The point of this little endeavor was for me to learn some things and spend time with him. If he just did it himself, well, we would lose both of those goals.
Once we had all the details sorted out, it took 3 couple of hour sessions to finish the build. First, we cut and welded up all of the square tubing and the aluminum we were going to use for the bottom and sides. Next was painting the steel to protect it against rust and then finally riveting the aluminum to the trailer and sides and bolting everything together.
P. L. and R.
