Commuting - Anyone commute with christmas gifts?

A coworker who also happens to be a family friend decided to drop off some presents with me for my parents, my baby and my wife. I always complain about my bike being heavy but this time I actually couldn't lift it. I had a crosswind coming home that was amusing. This thing steered like a heavily medicated elephant.

Always carry bungee cords.

NICE!
I'm too chicken sh*t to do that.. if it doesn't fit in my bag.. I don't buy it..

One winter I accepted a bowling ball at a bike shop as change on a pruchase. The owner, Portia Masterson, gave me some duct tape to hold it to my rack and I rode the 6 miles home. Maybe not Christmas but a wacky load none-the-less.

I took XMas gifts to the post office to send to a friend in Japan. But they all fit in my backpack with room for the bubble wrap.

Our club does a 'Toys for Tots Ride' every December. We all carry toys on our bikes, bodies, trailers, recumbents, trikes, trail-a-bikes and tandems. Quite the sight!

I took a few bottles of wine to the office for coworkers today, but nothing that dramatic.

I did one better than those pictures a few months ago. I coach a youth soccer team, and at the end of the season everyone gets a trophy. Without thinking about how I would carry them, I went on my bike to pick up 18 trophies. I got about half of them into my panniers, and the rest went in a large bloomingdales shopping bag hanging from my handlebars. It's tough to ride with something that big pulling on your handlebars. Plus, I was riding at night and the shopping bag blocked my headlight. But I lived to tell about it.

Ditto on the wine bottles for co-workers! I'm packing in $150 in wine tomorrow morning. I don't drink wine, but it's always a safe xmas present for coworkers :p

That picture reminds me of the good of days of trash hunting back in Providence, RI. I rode a cannondale touring bike that I loaded with anything that was bike, stereo, or art related.

One time I found two big stereo speakers, 1 whole BMX bike, a Schwinn Continental and a lot of odds and ends. I broke down the BMX bike and Schwinn on the spot and rigged the whole thing together using bungie cords. I felt very empowred every trash night.

I did most of my Christmas shopping by bike....

as far as delivering? naaaaaaaaa

Damn, nobody at my workplace gives wine for Christmas. I need to change jobs. All I get is cards. But, there is a shower 4 doors down the hall. When my wife got home she ridiculed me for almost ruining the presents with my "silly bike". She's cute, holds down a good job and cooks well, but she just doesn't get the bike thing.

man the 10 dozen cookies i brought in the other week were really not so much stuff....

nice job!

I rode home from work with the Christmas turkey my employer gave me in my back pack. Its bony little frozen knees stuck into my back the whole way. I was afraid that every dog in town would follow me home.

Merry jolly!

I rode home from work with the Christmas turkey my employer gave me in my back pack. Its bony little frozen knees stuck into my back the whole way. I was afraid that every dog in town would follow me home.

Merry jolly!

One of my dumber commuting moments was running to the grocery store to pick up a turkey. Ever ride with a 22 lb. turkey in your backpack? I won't do it again either. Luckily, it was less than a mile ride but it still sucked.

I took cans of food (in backpack) and a crock pot (strapped to rack) to work on Tuesday. I don't understand why motorists look at me funny sometimes.

I've done quite a bit of gift shopping on the folder this year. Today, for example, I took it into Best Buy, Barnes & Noble and Gamestop.

Ummm, I bought my wife a CD and some DVDs for x-mas. That fit in my pack really easily. I've carried stupid big loads twice in my life, which is mostly why I don't do it any more.
1. I moved apartments crosstown, but forgot to pack some stuff into the van. I carried 8 place settings of china and silverware, various pots and pans, assorted glassware and some canned goods in a 50L pack. Couldn't see left or right, could barely steer. I still don't know how I made it without getting hit.
2. I rode my road bike to a bike shop to pick up my mtn bike, which was in for major surgery. I forgot that I [as yet] did not have the ability to ride two bikes at once. I also only had a small shoulder pack that already had two texts in it. I had to take apart my newly fixed bike, including wheels, pedals, seatpost and strap it with whatever straps were hanging off my bag. It swung wildly all over the place, but all the cars gave me a wide berth.

I did the majority of xmas shopping on bike this year.
Biggest load was from Lee Valley Tools.
My dad will be impressed when he hears that I transported his mitre fence 13 km on the back of my road bike.

maybe this has been discussed before, but are those christmas string lights on your bike?

I did my entire gift shopping on the bike. 8 gift cards and 2 money orders $50.00 each. It took me about 10 minutes.

Yes those are $3 red christmas lights from Longs Drug store. Still needed 2 C batteries to get it going and the switch is pretty fussy but I get compliments and comments on them. The comments are usually from cagers and aren't entirely complimentary. Only real problems are that they don't blink and aren't in more colors. I should have left off the flash on the camera so they could be seen. They're mighty impressive.

One winter I accepted a bowling ball at a bike shop as change on a pruchase. The owner, Portia Masterson, gave me some duct tape to hold it to my rack and I rode the 6 miles home. Maybe not Christmas but a wacky load none-the-less.

OT for this thread but....
Portia Masterson came to my little college last year to give a presentation about a bike tour she did in Mongolia a few years back. She also gave a nutrition talk at a mtn bike class I was taking at the time.

The Mongolia trip was neat-o, but she was an interesting character....

Well I'm not all Christmas-y looking like the bike in the original post, but here's my bike after the ride home from Christmas with the family (don't mind the messy garage):

http://home.comcast.net/~joejackson951/bike/DSC00555.JPG

The Burley Flatbed itself was a Christmas present (I ordered it myself though) and attached to it (wrapped in a 55 gallon trashbag because of the rain) is my luggage from the weekend plus about 3/4 of my gifts. I could have fit everything if I spent a little more time arranging stuff but I'll be back there later in the week so I'll get the rest then. And by the way, I LOVE the new trailer.

What? No reindeer?

What? No reindeer?

If you saw me in my bright red, reflective-accented jacket along with my 10 watt headlight plus Cateye strobe going, you could have mistaken me for Rudolph. I could have used some extra reindeer power to pull that 40+ lb. trailer up the hills on the way home too.

Chajmahal:
I used to have a Centurion that looked just like yours only blue. Even had an ersatz Reynolds 531 sticker that said something like "gauranteed built with genuine Hi Tension steel". Don't see many of those long SunTour powershifters but I liked them & that bike rode well.

ollo ollo,
I love that bike. Got it for free off of craigslist last spring so I wouldn't have to leave my good bikes in front of the grocery store on the way home. Tore it apart over a month or 2 and put new grease in all the right places, new bar wrap, new tires/tubes, fenders, lights, folding basket and that's about it. Rusty old cables, rusty galvanized spokes, rusty steel rims, high tensile steel, tractor seat saddle with disintegrated cover. Total cost? $30 It's been taking me to work since June and paid itself off the first 2 weeks. The Powershifters were a pain in the rear at first but I finally dialed them in (turned the ratchet wheel the correct way around) and they haven't been adjusted since then. But damn it's heavy. Maybe that's why noone has stolen it yet.

That's a great price, I had to pay all of $9.95 at a GoodWill thriftstore for mine! It made a great rain bike during the first year I got back into commuting & nobody ever thought about stealing it either. Guy I work with overhauled another one for his son-in-law who lives in Seattle. He rode it to the U of W about 3 months before it was stolen off his balcony. Some communities just have more risk. I still use a couple other Centurions for commuting.