On Mon, 10 Sep 2018 22:37:31 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 9/10/2018 4:43 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-09-10 13:26, jbeattie wrote:
On Monday, September 10, 2018 at 11:49:20 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-09-09 08:33, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 9/9/2018 10:44 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-09-08 17:27, jbeattie wrote:


[...]

I bet I haul more stuff out of my yard on a more regular basis than
you haul wood pellets and fire wood. I hauled off an entire 40' blue
spruce and an equally tall fir, both of which I cut with a chainsaw
here in suburbia. I hauled that off with a Subaru wagon and a utility
trailer. Another good part about having a utility trailer is that you
can fill it up and leave it, unlike a pick-up. I filled mine up again
this weekend.


No space for a utility trailer. Sez SWMBO :-)

Your wife married a wimp. And/or someone who is insufficiently ingenious.

My utility trailer takes up about four square feet of floor space.
That's because it's stored on its tail in a far corner of the garage. My
wife likes that, and thinks its clever. However, she never complained
when it was stored conventionally parked in front of a car.

We both know who wears the pants in this family.


The main issue though is a lower back problem because a lot of
lifting while bent is required, something that can really ruin
my day.

You have to pick up a bike to put it in a pick-up truck, unless you
have a ramp, and then you have to pick up the ramp.


Ramps are easy. That is exactly one of the tools one uses when there are
lower back issues.

OK, show us, please. One of my very good friends is a lady even more
elderly than I am. She's an avid cyclist despite significant health
issues. She's thought hard about getting an ebike, but says its weight
would make it impractical for her to get it into the bed of her pickup.
Her tailgate is something like three feet above the ground. How should
she push a heavy bike up a ramp and into the bed? Where would she stand
to do this? How would she keep the bike balanced on the ramp - and would
she be able to do that as she climbed up into the bed to roll the bike
all the way into the bed?

I'm not saying it's impossible, but it seems tricky at best. Got a video
or photos of how you do it?

What you do is lean a plank on the pickup bed and ride up. And of
course back down when you get where you are going :-)

And before anyone says it is impossible I have done it (once). I rode
a 74 cu.in. Harley up a 12 inch plank to load it into a furniture van
to haul it, and me, from Valdosta, Georgia to Hendersonville N.
Carolina and when we got there I rode it back down.

My only excuse is that I was young and foolish and it was terrible
cold to a bloke from south Florida, in a pair of levis and a flannel
shirt.





And how is it that you're hauling loads of fire wood with a bad back?
Are you bringing it in one stick at a time?* One pellet at a time?
If you need a big bad pick-up truck for all the gnarly stuff you do
in Cameron Park (way out in the country, five minutes from the
nearest SuperCuts), you must be awesome rugged, a big strong bear of
a man -- certainly manly enough to pick up a bike. How do you put
your bike on the inadequate municipal bus racks?


Anyone with lower back issues who wants to stay active develops the
requisite tricks how to lift. Never ever bent over, like you have to do
when stacking bikes inside a station wagon or SUV.

I don't believe lifting a bike two feet to hang it on a car's rear rack
is any different than lifting a bike two feet to place it in a bus front
rack.

For heavy stuff such as large oak or pine rounds I carry a board upon
which I roll them up into the SUV.

OK...and you roll it up the ramp while never bending over?

Inrerestingly, my back spasm bouts or pain where I couldn't even get up
from bed have dropped to almost zero since I started mountain biking a
few years ago. I guess that is because more core muscle develops.


Cars are far superior to pick-ups unless you use your pick-up to
pick-up things every day.* As actually used, pick-ups are just
passenger cars with ****ty interior storage capacity and bad gas
mileage. I see the suburban cowboys out in Clackamas County with the
spotless, giant, chrome festooned F-five-zillion trucks with duals
and naked lady mud flaps -- driving around and puking diesel smoke
for nothing but show.* They're driving to the local supermarket.* And
with mini trucks, you don't have any interior room for anything.* The
cargo goes into the bed to get blown around, rained on, bounced
around, etc.* And when it snows, you end up hauling snow.

We think differently about pickup trucks here.

You probably use more chrome plating. When cruising the Cameron Park
shopping plaza, you want lots of shine! ;-)

Frank: My SUV gets 25mpg with California gas, 28mpg with gas from Nevada
or Oregon.

So I beat you by over 40%. Brag on, Joerg.