No car, no problem: rural life by bike

A few years ago, I traded the buzz of Utrecht for something slower — rolling hills, birdsong, and a silence I hadn't known I was missing. In the city, life without a car was effortless. But moving to the countryside brought a new question: what about the big hauls? Timber from the hardware store, bags of soil, flat-pack furniture? I was about to find out.

You'd think I'd start small, right? Just get a single plank and some screws and create a simple shelf. But no, I decided my garden needed a 6 meter fence. Most finished fences will not fit in a regular car, let alone on a teeny bike, so I decided to haul it in parts. Just planks and poles, to create one fence-part at a time. Okay, I would need to ride to the hardware store more than once (more than 10 times, it turned out...), but hey, at least we got this project underway, right?

My weapon of choice necessity for this project was an old no-brand bicycle trailer I had since I was a kid. It has tiny 16 inch wheels and measured just 70 cm in length, so I figured it would probably work fine for hauling poles of 1 meter 50 up the hills... Well, in the end the bottleneck didn't end up being the total weight of all this wood, nor my willingness to pull it up a hill with an e-bike motor that was designed more for flat surfaces: it was the under-the-saddle connection system that led to the whole trailer coming loose at the least practical moments. Like just when going uphill with cars behind me, or right when crossing a busy street...

More than once I've had to pick up the poles from the berm and re-assemble (always bring duct-tape!), but luckily the trailer only having two wheels meant that it immediately stopped in its tracks. No chasing a rogue bike-trailer on the opposite lane.

I persisted, and slowly but surely the fence became a reality, 1 meter of fence-width at a time. A funny thing then happened: even though the final fence looked a little rough-around-the-edges, I felt an enormous sense of pride and achievement. In small steps I had achieved something bigger than building a 6 meter long fence: I felt independent, self reliant and eager to see what more I could achieve with just a bike and a tiny trailer.