After the success of the "Shovel Rack" I decided to do a broom rack for sweeping off a few sections of trail that have broken glass, car parts, and light gravel. I still want to make some type of power sweeper but until then this is what I came up with.

Sewing and Plumbing- two things that do not seem like they relate directly to cycling. Well I guess they can because I used my PVC pipe and my sewing machine to come up with a simple, lightweight solution to the problem of getting a couple brooms to my work area. The PVC is 1" thin walled glued with general purpose PVC solvent. I didn't have any 1" end caps at my house so I used elbows instead. They do not serve any purpose other than preventing the need for a trip to the hardware store last night. The head of the push broom stores in a bag I sewed from some scrap fabric I had laying around the house. The broom head is in a 3 sided "bag" and there is a sleve that slides down over the broomstick to hold it onto the bike. The whole setup would only cost a few dollars even if you had to buy everything brand new.





You'll have to excuse my messy basement, I was in a hurry getting ready for work when I took the pics.

Now if you could make the rack pivot, and put a push broom in it, you could just drag it behind you.

All you need now is one of those small garbage cans to pick up the debris. They could easily be modded to pick up the stuff.

I actually built a PVC "structure" that holds a large trash bag open, but it seemed like overkill to mount it to the bike.

In most areas, the debris (mostly gravel) can be swept off the sides of the trail, but for areas where a lot of what is being swept is glass and plastic fragments I should look into a way to propperly dispose of the trash. The plastic bin idea is a good one but I don't have a spare trashcan to mount to the bike. I do have plenty of spare fabric so maybe I'll try to sew up a reusable trash bag. I like your idea though.

-Ryan the bicycle janitor

The elbows will come in handy if you ever ride in the rain... would hate to see (smell?) those tubes slowly filling up with muckwater ;-)

Nice little bit of accidental engineering!