As I mentioned last week, I’ve begun thinking my way thru the idea of a trike packing trip down the Hennepin Canal Trail.
What I’m looking at would likely be considered pretty modest by the standards of people who do this regularly - three days of riding punctuated by a couple of nights of camping. But for me it’s very new, and what I’m discovering, not for the first time, is that the idea of the trip, and the planning for it, makes it all fun even before I put tires to trail.
One part of that planning is figuring out how to carry everything along with me. I’ve been debating whether to try to get everything on to the panniers and rear rack of my Catrike Expedition, or to put it in a trailer to pull behind me.
I’m going to continue to explore the idea of using the panniers and rack, but given that I’ll be traveling down a pretty rustic trail with pretty limited resources, I’m starting to mentally lean towards using a trailer. This gives me a couple of options. I can use my existing, hand built flatbed trailer, or I can look at purchasing something new - such as a Burley Nomad - for the trip.
To that latter point, I’ve started to think about weight. I’m pleased with how my DIY trailer turned out, and it has turned out to useful for hauling a variety of things back and forth from town, it is not a dainty item.
Last week I estimated that it was probably in the 20-25lb weight range. It turns out that was a little optimistic:
Trailer on scale - 28.28 lbs
It moved around a bit, but it seems like it centered at 28.28 lbs.
I first weighed it by asking my Dad if he had a scale we could use for the purpose. It turned out he did - he had a fishing scale that goes up to 50lbs. But, given that it was a fishing scale, it was designed to be held in one hand while taking the weight. We managed to make it work (thanks Pop!), and got a weight - 26lbs, 14oz - similar to the weight on my own scale above. But once I’d seen the results I decided it was time to get my own scale, because it was clear I was going to want to weigh more stuff, and weigh it with more precision.
There are a couple of factors at play here. First, because my home built trailer is a flatbed, I will probably need to put some sort of container on it to hold and make weatherproof anything I’m carrying. That will compound with the original 28.28 lbs of the trailer itself.
For example, I have a couple of existing Rubbermaid Action Packer containers that I purchased several years ago to store camping gear. I bought them at the time because they are rugged and lightweight. I pulled them down, and two of them fit quite nicely atop the flatbed.
But while they seem lightweight when they are something you are hauling in and out of your outdoorsy motor vehicle, the scale tells a different story for this application:
Action Packer - yeah, it’s been in the rafter of the garage for a long time…
The container comes in at 5.3 lbs. This means that, where I to set myself up with two of them on the home built trailer I’d be pulling almost 39 lbs (38.88) before adding any actual cargo to it.
Obviously there are other possibilities. I could stack items on the flatbed directly and cover them with a tarp and strap them down instead of putting containers on it. This would lose the 10.6 lbs worth of container weight, but would leave things potentially more exposed to the elements. And it would still leave me pulling a 28+lb trailer.
An other factor is that the home-built trailer is… bouncy. The hitch hookup uses a flexible nylon connector, and it has a fair amount of give to it. When I am riding with the trailer on the road I can see the trike wobbling gently from side to side. This undoubtedly is distributing energy in a way that isn’t just directed at forward motion. It hasn’t been enough to bother me for the short utility rides that I’ve been using the flatbed for but I suspect it would be an energy drain on a longer trip. I’ve been aware of this since I built the trailer, and it could conceivably be addressed by using a different type of hitch connector. Still given the weight issue, I doubt that fix would change things enough make the flatbed an attractive option for this trip.
Long story short, then, I think my home built flatbed is out of the picture for the ride along the Hennepin Canal. Next question is whether I can get everything I need on the rack, or whether I’m ordering a fancy new trailer…