Bicycle Surreys

One of my favorite websites is Portland Ground, which like BeyondDC for this region, has a wonderful collection of large sized photographs. While looking at a link that Miles Hochstein, the site's webmaster, posted in a comment yesterday on this blog, featuring a photo from Portland's Hollywood neighborhood (it was on my list of places to go to when I was out there, but instead I went twice to the Hawthorne neighborhood and also to the Arts on Alberta walk (which was a helluva lot of fun, and more creative than the average such outing in DC), I found some more of his great photos, this time of a bicycle surrey.

Surrey Time: Emily's Sport Utility Vehicle. Photo by Miles Hochstein, Portland Ground.

Since I don't go to beaches much (instead I explore inner city commercial districts and historic residential neighborhoods), I haven't seen one of these contraptions before.

Here's the text from Miles' photograph:

Meet Emily Troper, my sister-in-law, seen here (right) as she drives her surrey at 38th and Hancock in Hollywood, with her infant in a sling, while my spouse Leora helps out and my daughter goes along for the ride. Emily uses her surrey to take her 3 younger children, and sometimes her teenage son too, to local stores and around the neighborhood. She has also been known to nurse her infant while she pedals. Emily says she stays fairly dry in the rain, but she needs to rig an umbrella for the front basket passengers. When the oil runs out maybe this will be your SUV too. If you want to know more about owning and using a surrey you can contact Emily. [Go to the photo to get this email address.] She's used to answering questions wherever she goes with this thing. Emily says this model is called a Ciclofan and she bought it from WheelFun Rentals.

Photo from Wheel Fun Rentals homepage.

I think a contraption like this would be a great way to get around certain neighborhoods and has tourist applications too. I am not really big on Segways for getting around, although I suppose that people are attracted to the sexiness of the technology. Despite appearances, a surrey would promote more group togetherness (see below) compared to a Segway.

Photo source unknown.

I don't know if it would help deal with my one problem with relying on a bike as my primary transportation vehicle--it gets in the way of dating as it's not a very glamorous way to get around. But I don't think that the world is quite ready for surrey dating... but maybe.

Photo from Ken's Site.

Index Keywords: mobility; bicycle; tourism