Auf Wiedersehen meiner Hinterradkorb!

After something like 7 or 8 years the bicycle shopping basket finally, totally ist kaputt. It held up admirably through all the inevitable tipovers of my Marin Sausalito hybrid which it has faithfully served. But after the last couple tipovers the bond attaching the mesh bottom piece and the sides finally started to give way.

Actually the mesh on the bottom was starting to go a couple years ago and I’ve had aluminum tape patching it for that long.

Maybe a glue gun or something could have mended the bond, but I decided that the basket had simply been through enough and finally needed replacing. But I have to say that aluminum tape is an amazing product for patching things and holding them together.

Here it is pictured after I took off the bottom mount piece and managed to separate the mesh bottom piece from the sides of the basket before crushing it. The idea of throwing things away appalls me. Hopefully the disposal company will processes it correctly. Their extensive propaganda notwithstanding, I don’t have a lot of faith in them to correctly recycle it.

The replacement basket, which is identical, arrived yesterday and it was exciting to put it together and place it on the bike.

It is a shopping basket made by Pletscher in Switzerland specifically to fit on their Quick Rack Athlete-System bicycle rack.

I considered getting the Deluxe or the Deluxe XXL model but, after all this time, the standard model has worked very well and has almost always fit everything I needed. It can handle two gallons of water plus my small backpack jammed with food, or else a ton of veggies and fruit from the farmers market packed to the top. For anything bigger, I can always remove the basket and use a bungee cord to strap whatever item directly to the rack.

With all the bicycles I see in this city, I am shocked that I never see bicycles with standard rear-baskets like this. Why? For multiple reasons.

First, because I would think that more than a few people would have been to Germany (or presumably similar other countries) where virtually every bicycle has a rear basket on it.

Second, because it simply is the most convenient, efficient, and safe method of transporting goods on a bicycle. If you are going to actually use your bicycle to go shopping, you need one of these. Front baskets are not as convenient and are totally unsafe because they destabilize the bicycle. Rear baskets actually help to stabilize the bicycle.

Third, I don’t know, but there probably are good third, fourth, and fifth reasons also why these baskets should be used.

But no, no one uses them. In years and years I think I might have ever seen a couple rear baskets on all the hundreds or thousands of bicycles I’ve seen. Puzzlingly, no bike shops sell them either. I had to order mine from the USA distributor in Indiana.

As I mentioned, when I was in Germany all I saw were bicycle baskets. Here’s a German online store with baskets for sale. [Note: in German they are called Hinterradkörbe (pl.) = Hinter (rear) + rad (from Fahrrad, bicycle) + Körbe, pl. of Korb, basket]