BU Bikes

My blinky didn’t come with a helmet mount and I didn’t feel like buying one that did, so I used a few spare zip ties and an old tube I had lying around to make my own. Two ties hold two other ties to the helmet which act as a clip for my blinky to hang onto. The small tube keeps the ties from chewing up the styrofoam and helps keep the blinky stay put:


The supposed advantage to having a helmet mounted blinky is that drivers will react more cautiously to a light that’s clearly visible on your moving head rather than low on your (laterally) stationary bike. I hope so too.

Last Saturday I smiled as I saw Louie chugging along in his Worksman Mover on the packed esplanade:

which reminded me of another utility trike I see parked around BU all the time but never ridden:

In fact, I’ve seen a lot of neat bikes and intuitive DIY bike mods around campus, like this DIY rear fender I saw outside the student activities center, made from a spliced PVC pipe and an L-Bracket:

And these tubes I saw in Myles Standish Hall tied to this bike’s front rack to hold stuff in place.

Several weeks ago I was biking deep within the MIT jungle when I spotted the perfect mixture of all of the above:

this sweet DIY Utility tricycle, welded together by hand and built to carry lots of stuff. My favorite part is the rebar used to make the handlebar. The icing on the cake was a DIY LED light array in the front to pronounce its presence.

Since the owner wasn’t around for me to tell him/her how awesome I though this bike was, I rolled up a printed copy of the official Boston Bike Map I happened to have on me at the time and stuck it under the saddle as a gift.

As you may have guessed, I have an obsession with DIY and utility cycling, but more on that later.