Commuting - The Green Machine (New Towing Set Up)

Ladies and Gentlemen, I now present to you, the Green Fishing Machine (pun intended). :D
The canoe was green before I got my hands on four colors of Krylon Fusion.

Well, actually the vehicle was new last July. The boat is used/new, got it less than two weeks ago. The trailer is brand new, just came today.

http://static.flickr.com/27/65685805_9d3ee6fd51.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/33/65685741_45f63061e9.jpg

Now I can pedal, paddle, hunt & fish in the same day (with appropriate lighting at night, of course). :D

Two really cool things about it:
I can go all day paying for zero gas.
I can put the boat in and take my tow vehicle with me in case I want to take out somewhere else.

Haven't done a real road test yet, just up and down the sand road in front of the house, but I expect anywhere within ten miles to be in easy range. :)

Did you make the trailer yourself? I like it.

Nice.

Since canoes tend to ride upside down at times, you might want to think about tying in the "tow vehicle", just in case. ;)

"Tell me again sir, how did your bike end up in the middle of the lake"?

"Um, it fell out of the canoe".

:)

The trailer's made by Wike.
http://www.wicycle.com/kit.htm

I looked at a few others on the 'net, but this looked like the best set up for the money. I also got the alloy wheels, apparent in the photo, and the canoe pack, the trailer breaks down into it's major components and can be packed in a bag. :)

The best way I have found to carry the bike in the canoe seems to be facing foreward in the bow with the wheels straddling the bow seat and lashed in from the head tube to two points on opposing sides of the canoe to hold the bike upright. With the wheels straddling the bow seat the chain has to be a little loose, but that seems to be okay. :)

Once it's lashed in, I can reduce the profile of the bike by lowering the seat all the way down and lowering and folding back the handlebars with just an Allen wrench.

Well done.

Why lower the profile? To reduce drag as you tear up the lake at high speed? Looks like an awesome setup, but don't let your kids talk you into letting them ride in the back while you ferry them around. But if you can talk your wife into riding the bike while you ride in the canoe, then by all means, go ahead!

"Tell me again sir, how did your bike end up in the middle of the lake"?

"Um, it fell out of the canoe".

"Tell me again, sir, how did your canoe end up under the middle of the lake?

"um, the weight of the bike sunk it."

(probably not a real serious worry, but hey, bikes don't float.)

hey, bikes don't float.)

I think some of the roadies here wouldn't need much more than an empty water bottle to make this happen.

(** starts pondering a safe way to measure the volume of a bike **)

That's a great canoe hauling machine!! How does it handle on the road with eighty pounds of cooler and fishing gear in the canoe?

An empty gallon milk jug tied to a twenty pound road bike ought to float it.

Don't have a conversion factor for inches cubed flotation for air....

I'm looking at your bike (noticing it doesn't exactly have a granny gear...7sp IGH?), contemplating the weight of the boat, trailer & supplies and thinking....I hope there aren't any significant hills where you want to go. That, or your legs are WAY stronger than mine.

Looks nice though. I'd love to see the driver's faces as they pass you on the road. Even more I'd like to see the face of the guy with the F-350 Diesel Dually pulling out his ciagarette boat at the boat launch when you pedal up, put your bike & trailer in the boat and paddle off :) (I realize you probably don't use a boat ramp, but I think it would be funny to see how people would react to you if you did.)

I think that scene would be even better if you could get the bike to have positive flotation and do a flying launch past all those gas suckers at the boat launch.

Ride right into the water, get in the boat, dismantle the bike from the hitch and stow it as you float away from the ramp. Mocking brake failure would turn it into comic opera.

That is great. I've often wondered how we could bike / boat from Ohiopyle to Confluence and boat back downstream to Ohiopyle. Got to pull out before hiting the class III and IV rapids, though.

http://www.atatrail.org/map6.cfm

3 speed IGH. Haven't broken out the scale and weighed all the individual parts, but I figure the canoe with everything in it will come in at about 130 lbs. Which is significantly more than the Burley Flatbed Utility Trailer weighed with everything on it, with essentially the same wheels. There's no significant hills here. The worst thing is going to be that a lot of the roads in this county are still sand. One of the places I like to go is only about 7 miles from the house, but about 5 miles of that are unavoidable sand road.

edit-Oh yes, J. Lowering the profile of the bike gives me less in the way up front for casting and shooting around. :)

I've been considering the benefits of a folding bike that I can maybe just lay in the bottom of the canoe, but I don't have one on hand right now. :)

what are the dimensions? I've got a 12' aluminum boat I'd like to try towing...

It's the Old Town Canoe, Guide 147.
MATERIAL PolyLink3™
LENGTH 14' 7"
WIDTH 38"
DEPTH 13"
WEIGHT 74 lbs.
CAPACITY 900 lbs.
http://www.otccanoe.com/canoes_recreation.php#guide147
:)

Take a look at this.

http://www.pedal-paddle.com/media.htm#

That's deffinately cool, but it appears to lack the utilitarian concepts of the Green Machine. ;)

If things work out, I'll be able to throw the Green Machine in the river later today. Maybe I'll have some pics to post by this evening. :)

That is really darn neat! I'd love to see the looks on the other fishers' faces when they see you roll up with that rig. Awesome!

I'd make some deployable ethofoam sponsons for the bike so you could ride it right into the water, then shift the sponsons onto the canoe gunnels.

If the trailer folded and could fit inside the canoe, as well as the bike, that would be great!

How bout a QR fork mount, mounted in the canoe? That way you could be pretty sure that the bike wouldn't fall out.

If the trailer folded and could fit inside the canoe, as well as the bike, that would be great!

How bout a QR fork mount, mounted in the canoe? That way you could be pretty sure that the bike wouldn't fall out.

The trailer breaks down into small pieces. I'm pretty sure it's going into the canoe before launch. :)

Okay, went to the river yesterday afternoon to try this thing out. Now, I've towed a trailer behind a bicycle before, but nothing like this. This sucker is looong and heeeavyyy. :eek:
But then I suppose it would be with a 74 lb. canoe, 54 qt. cooler w/20 lbs. of ice in it, a boat bag containing a Type III and a Type IV, a kneeling pad, an anchor and all the safety gear, my pack with all that stuff and fishing tackle, 2 casting rods and a shotgun.

Other than that everything went pretty well. Breaking things down to load in the boat took longer than I expected, as did getting it all out of the boat, put back together and loaded up. But that will go faster with practice.

Got checked by a State Wildlife Officer, a guy I hadn't met before, somewhat unusual for me. It went well. The first thing he checked was my life jacket. Then asked if I was hunting or fishing or both. I was doing both and he asked what I was hunting. Ducks and coots. He said he thought so when he saw my shotgun and the plastic box of shells in the bottom of the boat. He asked to see my licenses and I whipped out my Military Sportsman's Gold. Said he'd never checked one of those before. It's a new thing this year here in Florida. He saw my name and asked about my brother, a Federal Wildlife Officer that transferred from here several years ago. We shot the breeze a little bit and then he headed on up river and I continued down. He never asked to check my cooler, even though I was sitting on it at the time and didn't have anything in it but ice and a few Chek Diet Colas. The only safety gear he checked was the life jacket, even though I had everything required and then some. He did kind of act like somebody hunting and fishing at the same time from a canoe with a bicycle in it wasn't all that common.

On the Ramp
http://static.flickr.com/33/66345500_567ea701da.jpg

In the Water
http://static.flickr.com/33/66346067_3be7429a77.jpg

Couldn't get a picture of the manatee and missed a bunch of bluebills that flew by while I was trying. :mad:
Thought it was a little late in the year for the manatees to still be around, but apparently there's at least one that doesn't think so.

Got a few fuzzy shots of this guy on the way back up to the ramp.
http://static.flickr.com/31/66345912_a6c9ee80eb.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/29/66346302_061ac98251.jpg

Coming home I noticed that to say Lower Bridge Road is pitch, black, dark at night is quite the understatement. :eek: Fun though. :D

What's coon taste like. what's the common way of serving it?

THe bicycle sticking up like that may give you trouble on a windy day while paddeling.
Otherwise cool setup!

What's coon taste like. what's the common way of serving it?
Tastes about like bald eagle or spotted owl. ;)

Really, I don't know of many people that eat it. A friend of mine used to slow cook it in a Crock Pot with BBQ sauce, and that was pretty good, but I don't think he does it anymore.



THe bicycle sticking up like that may give you trouble on a windy day while paddeling.
Otherwise cool setup!
Yeah, that's one little thing I ran into yesterday. Had a long windy stretch on the river. The bike sticking up like that acts like a sail if there's much wind and the profile is just too big for jump shooting ducks from the canoe. I may have to lock the bike up at the ramp when I want to do that. Seems to work okay for fishing, though. Just can't fish straight ahead.