Thread by @shagbark_hick

Remembering the days when I was building bicycle-towed mobile homes and living in them about 10 years ago. I was obsessed with the idea of living a totally mobile, rent-free, mortgage-free, gas-and-insurance-cost-free lifestyle.

I spent nearly a year living in these.
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I was 18 years old and had utopian visions of buying plots on which hexagonal structures built from stuccoed rigid insulation would serve as 'common areas' for a legion of bike trailer dwellers. Each wall would have a 'loading dock' into which a trailer could 'plug in'.

I wrote a zine and widely disseminated it, seeking a 'hard core' of early adopters who would 'revolutionize housing' and kick off a movement toward a 'new anthropology of contemporary nomadism' on the Erie Canal bike trail.
None came, I was (perhaps rightly) dismissed as a crank.

Others have conceived of similar ideas; Brian Campbell's housebike in Portland OR comes to mind. This guy was a little unstable, but a brilliant builder. He swore that his pedal-powered moped wheels and 100+ gears could get him to do 65mph on flat ground.

"Jeff", builder of the 'Luma Dilla' in Willits CA is another one. He's apparently taken this thing from Willits all the way to Sacramento.

And Paul Elkins, a retired Boeing engineer and Burning Man attendee in western WA was a big booster of this idea. Him and I corresponded via email at length about perfecting our designs.
His youtube channel 'ElkinsDIY' is still pretty neat.

Later, I would begin experimenting with 4-stroke engine belt-drive systems for recumbent tricycles. Some had a futuristic 'wind fairing' for efficiency. I rode from Las Vegas to Mexico on one. Sadly, I never got around to building a mobile home for a motorized recumbent trike.

All in all, my bike-focused days were wild times. Some days I still dream of trying again to build the perfect gas-powered high-efficiency ultra-low-cost nomadic bike dwelling. Maybe I will try again in the summertime.
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