Readers of Team Lope Tyre Clubbe’s pages know well that I’ve been jiggering a coffee carrying assembly for work for like two years now. It’s current form is a pair of steel tumblers with long L-shaped handles, configured side by side and bound in a cardboard containment platter and secured by copious quantities of packing tape. This was intended as a prototype only: I adjusted the arrangement and configuration, tried different things, and sorted them out on different bikes. It was always with the intention of migrating the concept to a permanent material scratch built later. I even have parts! However, I found that the slight flex of these handles, when slotted over the bars of most of my bikes, and held onto and adjusted/buffered by my left hand, made for the best shock absorption. Because while riding one -handed with a coffee in your left (my left anyway) on the way back to the office is dodgy but effective, riding with two presents serious complications due to road shock. It gets messy. All the manufactured products of this type? Messy. My attempts to engineer a firmer assembly? Also messy. So the prototype has remained in use thereafter.

Today, I brought in Redbike to be my new work bike. It was intended as a city bike back when I was in SF, so maybe I could minimize giving away my previous other rides to thieves. Now that downtown Mill Valley IS city to me on a day to day basis, it just made sense. I ride another bike in most days anyway, and commuting on Redbike gets annoying because you can’t go fast enough. But for townie errands? SWEET. So, in the office it goes, and todayit began it’s new assignment.

And then it hit me, on the way out the door for a coffee run. I couldn’t put the coffee carrier prototype on here because of the (usually) three A-OOGA horns on the bars. But where… but where… SAYYYYYYYY how about resting on the rear fender, slotted onto the rear deflector braze-on? So I rode to Peets and it stayed on. So far so good. More importantly, I added a coffee cup and fund I could wedge it just so, so that the cup is held in place by the underside of my big ass seat. The cantilever action that adds destructive interference to the bounce of the carrier when normally held rigid and not buffered by my hand is gone. The bounce of my big balloon tyres adds some cushion. But the proof would be in the return journey. I figured I’d arrive with a slight mess, a big mess, a scalding hot leg, or no coffee at all.

To my surprise NARY A DROP SPILLED*

So, I’m quite pleased.
Carry on.

*I DO cap the lid with a Splenda

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1. The Coffee Carry Prototype
2. Coffee Carriage Cleverness
3. The Coffee Carriage Contraption, Part 439275