Tricking out the Bike

The Laundry Bucket Bicycle Pannier If you're the ecologically-minded kind of person that I am, you buy your laundry soap in big buckets and ride a bicycle as much as you can. I decided to combine those interests by making a pannier with one of the many laundry soap buckets around the house. All it took was four holes drilled in one side and two bungee cords. The only problem was that with the soap logo and text on the sides the pannier looked cheap and tacky. No problem. I came up with a little rocket ship picture that would go well with the blue lid and the white sides. Printed the picture onto some heavy paper, cut the pictures to 6"x8" , glued them to three sides of the bucket with spray adhesive and then coated the pictures with a waterproof spray-on substance. Got some thin foam at Spins'n'Needles and cut out star shapes that I sprayed with reflective paint. Glued the stars to the bucket. And voila, a flashy pannier that doubles as a stool. Kathy A and Dave T tell me that riding around with a bucket pannier with cartoon spaceships makes me look eccentric or kooky. And that the option of saying that the pictures were drawn by a nephew or niece would only work until people find out I have no nephews or nieces. Then I'd look creepy too. So best to go with just being kooky. As we get older, we're heading for either good kooky or bad kooky anyway. I say, this is good kooky. Camouflaged Toolkit See that extra water bottle on the bike in front of the bucket pannier? The one with the flat top. It's a toolkit. Wrench, multi-head screwdriver, can of oil, a rag, two Allen keys. So far, nobody has stolen it. [Author's note: although yesterday, a Scribbles reader who saw my bike said "I feel like stealing that water bottle."] Addendum If you are wondering how to arrange the bungee cords on the bike pannier, here is the arrangement I used.