Bike Shovel Rack

I don't know about everyone, but when I do good I end up feeling good.  One small example happened on a busy three lane road I cross on my commute.  A lady's car had stalled and traffic was backing up.  No one got out of their car to help, rather they laid on their horns and everyone just tried to get around her causing traffic to snarl. 

She was driving an economy car and the road was flat so I leaned my bike against the traffic signal pole and told her to stick it in neutral and I would try to push her.  I guess commuting does strengthen the legs because I was able to push her about 50 yards into a median where she was out of the way.  The rest of my commute felt better than normal.

Reader Ryan saw an issue on his commute that needed attention and came up with a bike hack to address it.  The following text and pictures are credited to Ryan. This entry is a Bike Hacks Classic.

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A local green-way trail had a section covered in about 4" of muck from recent rain storms. I knew I wanted to clear it off but how would I get a shovel there? I spent some time in my garage looking through all the stuff I had kicking around. Out of some junk I made this rack. The body of the rack is a 1x6 piece of wood. I mounted it to the bike using conduit clamps. The shovel blade sits in the groove on the bottom, and the u-bolt gets tightened down to keep it from bouncing around.

I spent about two and a half hours shoveling the muck off the trail and when I was done it looked fantastic. The pictures show the rack and the before/afters of the cleanup. If each of us does one little thing to improve our community for other cyclists the whole world will become a great place to ride.

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Do you have Good Samaritan ideas or stories to share?  Let us know. 

 

Comments

[Brian]

That's an awesome idea, and you're a really good guy for cleaning up a public space, so don't get me wrong, but...to me, it's a shame that you had to do this job yourself -- that says to me that your local dept. of public works doesn't care about the bike transportation network. Make sure you rub their faces in it. We deserve better.