Originally Posted by
colleen c
That would be a neat idea, but unfortunately here in the Bay Area, I may have to cross to the other side of the bay to get those bargains which mean taking the train and getting a second bike on the train would be interesting.
Had one experience when I got a bit of flack over something similar. I had gone kayaking on the bay and was heading home on BART with my bike towing a trailer with the kayak. It was late in the evening so the train was pretty empty and there wasn't any problem getting on. But when we got to the Colliseum station it was right when an Oakland A's game had finished and there was a mob rushing onto the train. I got a few dirty looks from folks looking at the amount of room I was taking up with my bike and trailer.
Originally Posted by Clifton
This is where the Xtracycle would be handy: I've seen people's build-ups for 2nd bike carriers. Usually a fork mount bracket bolted to the rear of the snapdeck so you can trail the 2nd bike, and stash the front tire in the sideloader.
No need for an XtraCycle for that. I've used the fork-mount attached to the regular rear rack on my road bike to attach a second bike. The front wheel gets bungied alongside the main triangle of the towed bike's frame.
As for giving someone a ride - just spend a little time in downtown Amsterdam or similar European cities and you'll see lots of people hitching a ride by sitting on the rear rack of a friend's bike. It's pretty routine there, but frowned upon in the US (and technically illegal although I'm not sure how much enforcement there'd be).