Today was a real test of how well we can survive car-free in Ottawa.
The winter has finally abated and the snow is at last gone from our front and back gardens. This was quite an event this year as, at one point, we had over 14 feet of snow piled up in the front garden. A couple of weeks of warm temperatures finally finished melting it all.
The snow melting meant that it was time to do some spring gardening, clean the place up and make it look presentable for summertime.
We are not only car-free, but our garden is grass free. The grubs ate all our non-native grass a few years ago and so we replaced it all with Blue Rug Junipers (juniperus horizontalis wiltoni) and cedar bark mulch. It looks much nicer than the eaten grass ever did and we have no lawn to mow. Today's problem was that we needed to refresh the cedar mulch. It rots and fades and gets mixed with leaves and stuff and so a new layer is required each year.
Cedar mulch comes in 30 lb bags and we needed four bags, or about 120 lbs of it to do the job. So we set off very early on Sunday morning to beat the traffic. Home Depot is open at 8 am and we were there before they opened.
I had prepared the quadracycle for the trip by removing the 68 litre Rubbermaid Roughtote bin that usually goes on the back of our quadracycle, since we would need the space for the bags of mulch. That left the problem of the infamous and legally required "slow moving vehicle sign" (SMVS), because it is normally Velcroed to the bin. I made up some Velcro straps that would secure it to the cargo tie down straps on the way back. For the way up there empty I just duct-taped the sign to the passenger seat back. That wasn't the best solution, as it almost fell off. Duct tape doesn't stick to the vinyl that covers the seats very well, it seems.
Once at Home Depot all went smoothly. I left Ruth with the quadracycle and I got the mulch on a big cart. The bags of mulch were wet and heavy. I went through the check out and wheeled it out. A few gawkers had seen us arrive and asked me if I was going to take that large load home on the bike. I just said "yup". They actually seemed more impressed than contemptuous.
I loaded it all on the Rhoades Car. It all fit well and the bike didn't over-balance backwards, even with over 120 lbs of cargo on it and no one in the seats. I strapped it down with two 1" ratchet tie-downs, attached the SMVS to the back with the Velcro straps I had sewn up and we headed off.
I was concerned that the first thing we had to do was climb a fairly good hill over the railway bridge on Bank Street. The time was just after 8 am on Sunday morning so there was almost no traffic, as planned! Most of the day Bank Street is very busy and I didn't want to mix with heavy traffic later in the day.
We actually didn't really feel the extra 120 lb load on the back. We just downshifted and muscled it up the hill just fine, at about the same speed we would have done unladen. Once at the apex we coasted nicely down the other side. The route was pretty much flat the rest of the way home from there.
We off-loaded the mulch, slit the bags and spread it over the garden. It certainly was a lot of mulch!
When we had unloaded I decided that it would be a good idea to have a more permanent way of mounting the SMVS on the vehicle when we aren't carrying the bin that it normally Velcros to. The final solution I came up with was to use contact cement to attach some Velcro strips to the back of the driver's seat as an alternate place to mount the sign. That works just fine.
So mission accomplished! Once again the Rhoades Car 4W2PCP proves that it is a good replacement for our old truck. We are having a blast using it to get work done. We haven't found anything it can't do yet.
Price of gas locally today $1.203
Total quadracycling for 2008 so far - 25.8 km
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