We have a tent!

Our remade awning

After months of working on the project, things are really taking shape. We have been cooking up some dinners for the family in the garden these last weeks. We were pleased to successfully erect our 'remade' awning just a few days ago. 

Garden cookery

After Aprils rain, realising we might just need a rain cover, we rummaged around and were lucky enough to find an old, colourful, A-frame tent, which had belonged to the village playing field association in Pete's village. Having just invested in new tents, this was surplus to requirements - lucky us!

We wanted to lose some of it's weight, but retain enough shelter to protect us in poor weather (but probably not a big storm...)  There were grand plans of having this as our main tent, and being able to pack it down for night...but in the end, these were a little ambitious and we settled for the design shown above, by removing the front entirely, reducing the sides to triangles and using longer poles to give us some head room.

This weekend we went for some music and city fun in Bristol...taking in 'Vegfest' a free food and music event down by the harbour. We made a lucky observation, the stalls had their names up high - to be seen over the crowd, so i'm now sewing us a banner to go along the top! 

Pedalling to Pick up Sticks

Trip Mileage: 119miles.

Through wind and rain, and thankfully some sun, the Pedallers made it up to our first event of the season 'Pick up Sticks'. A wondrous gathering of friendly, hard-working individuals coming together to live, learn, cook, eat, play and be together at the newly re-established Earthworm Housing Co-Op, Leintwardine, Herefordshire.

http://pickupsticks2012.wordpress.com/  

For us it was an opportunity to test the road worthiness of the trailer, the stamina of our legs and to start share our project with people in REAL life (i.e. not through this blog..) We can now safely say that the trailer is road worthy, and kept everything (almost) dry despite a full day cycling through the rain. Our mental strength was tested somewhat on that wet second day on discovering we had taken the wrong road out of Hereford, adding over 10 miles to the journey, but we managed to keep up our spirits, singing through the rain till we reached our destination. Although it was hard going, we now know it is totally possibly to travel by bike and still arrive with the kitchen sink!

We'd like to say thank you to our Hereford hosts, whose hospitality enabled us to make the journey.

We couldn't have picked a better first trip, to share a weekend with people, some unknown at first, and some old friends, where the focus is on balance between more than one element; of fun, and work and play. So often our lives are divided, different parts serving different roles. work = money, party = fun.
The focus of the weekend was to share work on the grounds of the house, knowledge and skills whilst living, playing and eating communally.  Pedallers Kitchen contributed to the communal cooking, firing up a rocket stove oven which hadn't been used in a while to make Cake and sour-dough bread, giving us a crash course in full time rocket stove cooking. The outdoor kitchen at earthworm boasts the MOTHER of all rocket stoves...which did the majority of the cooking for the weekend.

Rocket StoveTASTic!

 We look forward to Pick up Sticks take 2!

The Christening

We have just returned from taking the loaded trailer, with all the kitchen bits, on its first outing on the road. No problems... fortunately, because we set off to our first proper event tommorow - Pick Up Sticks. A 60 mile cycle. Here's some photos from todays little jaunt.

Swapping the trailer between bikes (and our new logo)

Curvaceous frontage

The trailer is only reflectors, lights and roof away from being fully roadworthy. Check out the new streamlined front!

Hitch installed (without a hitch)

Despite the title pun, this has been one of the trickier parts of the build. There are a lot of different requirements that make up the ideal hitch, and attempting to accomplish all of these in a DIY hitch is a difficult task. We needed our bike trailer hitch to:

• Have movement in every plane (including twisting)
• Be easily detachable
• Be interchangable between different bikes
• Be very strong
• Be able to withstand pushing from behind (when breaking with a heavy load)
• Not interfere with the rear rack or panniers
• Not attach to the axle (we both have quick release skewers that couldn't handle the load)
• Not place too much strain on any one part of the bike frame

So no easy task...
The making of the hitch is one thing that no one agrees on. Every one seems to be different, even with off the shelf trailers. With homemade trailers (and also some bought ones), many opt for flexible couplings such as pneumatic hose or a heavy duty spring as this allows the required movement in all planes. However, I'm not really keen on the flexibility, especially if the trailer is pushing from behind.

I have trawled through the internet looking at every design I could find, but none really seemed perfect for the job... but fortunately I have a mechanical engineer for a father. I planted the seed of the problem in his mind and sure enough he managed to produce two amazing options for the pivot. One was a ball and socket, turned on the lathe, and a beautiful piece of work, but the angle of rotation turned out to be not quite enough.

However, his second creation is not only beautiful but functions perfectly. It is based around a door hinge, but with lathe turned and milled parts, and with a rotating nylon sleeve on the shaft to allow for the twist. This took care of the movement, but I still had to sort out the attachment...

So I have spent the last couple of days staring at the bikes, and playing around with bits of wood and metal and trying to accomplish all the above bullet points with limited tools and materials. Today I took the plunge and started drilling, cutting, bashing and screwing and unexpectedly finished with a strong functioning hitch that seems to tick all the boxes.

The attachment is sheet aluminium with a shaped piece of wood sandwiched between

A work of art!