7jul+10aug-2002

Most bike shops are happy to give you a fistful of punctured tubes. You want some.

The time I rode with Critical Mass, I gave all my bungees to the guy who was pulling a couch - it was stormy and the cushions very much wanted to blow away. But I haven't missed them at all. Bike innertubes - maybe cut in half lengthwise for light duty, maybe slip-knotted at the ends - are a fine substitute.

I am a sad, sad bunny when I've potential cargo and no IT*, but I do the best I can with, e.g., a pair of reflecty bicycle-clips, my denim jacket, a dollar-a-pound gore-tex jacket, and a cable-lock. See above. There was a bunch of bananas (and other fine comestibles) involved, and one didn't want to bruise them.

For SCUL rides, I bring:

• rank insignia/medals dogtags, only actually I always forget
• water bottle with jug-neck hitch (The Knot Book, Geoffrey Budworth).
• a velcro-on pseudo-fender (Crap Catcher), rain pants, rain coat (if there's radiation expected)
• a zillion (5-8?) extra fleece scarves if it's not cold yet but going to be, one if it's already cold.
• vegan snack fooood (we stop at lots of DDonutses, but that's no help to me) - at the very least, a couple Odwalla bars. Once, chocolate chip cookies rolled in espresso-grind french-roast before baking.
• plastic grocery bag to contain all that
• at least two half-innertubes to secure the bottle and the bag-o-gear to the frame of whatever chopper I'll be on - and/or to courierbagify the grocery bag
• (I think I'm going to pick up a quick-release seat-post rear rack to bring.)

(It turns out the SCULfolk use the things, too. Does everybody?)

My uses for the stuff:

• strap gear to a bike - bottle, tailcoat, felafel (just kidding! the felafel sandwich went in the bottle cage, steadied by a reflecty clip, not IT) - to the handlebars, seatpost, enormous fork, or rear rack
• strap rear rack to bicycle - I had a flat and had to green-bike the patched wheel and all my gear a mile back to the Trek - I gave it a rack from one of the city-bikes in the basement but somehow lost the wing-nut for the anterior/superior attachment while padding the seat-stays with IT against the rack hardware - so on that end, it got lashed on with IT instead...
• I once made an ad-hoc glasses-strap by snipping a tiny hole in each end and pulling the rest though (lark's-head-style) with needlenose pliers.
• Trashpicking - a thousand times more useful than my gun rack
• TLA Moxiemoron's construction makes significant use of IT.

Here are some of the things I've biked home by means of IT:

• strapped onto the rear rack:
  • panniers(!)
  • a few cubic feet of groceries
  • a baby trike (6-8" wheels?)
  • a baby bike (8-10" wheels?)
  • most of a kiddie cruiser (20" wheels wheel)
  • on one significant occasion, two 16"w bikes and one 20" all at once - with two half-innertubes, an aikido white-belt (of unknown provenance), and the pannier's shoulder strap.
  • two 5' pieces of 1" conduit for seat tube and uh stem for MoxieMoron (strapped to the rear rack and head tube and bicycle-clip-ed to the top tube)
  • two 10' pieces of 1" conduit half for seat tube and uh stem for VWBeetle and half for later (strapped to the rear rack and head tube and velcro-cinch-ed to the top tube)
  • I loaded a piece of found pipe up with four or five 6-to-13-pound free-weights weights and secured the ends with IT and then strapped it to my rack; on the same trip, I also loaded my antlers (bar ends?) with a 13-pound weight each and held them on with IT.
  • a cannister vacuum cleaner (along with buckets of other good stuff (but the etc was in buckets), same trip)
• over-the-shoulder, etc.:
  • I once biked a 22"x32" picture frame (to frame the four principles of Kokikai Aikido) from Pearl in Central Square to the MIT dojo by wrapping it up in a bedsheet and strapping half-innertubes all around it, and carrying it in traffic like (and yet unlike) a shield.
  • a mountain-bike frame (groooan, 4 hilly miles) - I folded a t-shirt into a pad and strapped it on against the top-tube/seat-tube inside corner - if you try this at home, so to speak, don't strap the pad as tight as I did, or it approaches rock-hard-ness - just as bad as before but with a more comfortable radius of curvature.
  • one of those ergonomic office-chair inflateaballs - I package-wrapped a piece around it in two directions, with a little loop left over to hold onto. At that point, you could sling it over your shoulder and ride no-hands, or hold the end in your teeth and elbow it a little for stopping.

It takes a knot just like you'd want - even just an overhand knot, pulled tight, will stay pretty well. And slipped knots in the stuff untie well. But it's at its best for lashing - a bunch of times around, tight, and tuck the end under, maybe slip it.

Here are some other people's projects that rely heavily on innertube:

• this fellow's Hasty Outrigger Canoe.
• the clothing at Vampire Technology

*I'm sorry. Just as it amuses me no end to call trashpickage "off-the-shelf components," this stuff is begging to be called IT.

(Read about photopage/pag-*?)