We went on occasional day trips to an island called the Île Sainte-Marguerite. It was beautiful, of course, everything down there that has been left alone the last fifty years is heart-wrenchingly beautiful, but what interested me was the appearent absence of internal combustion engines. There were some electrical trucks. And a whole lot of these hand-pulled carts.
The design was pretty uniform, but the carts were obviously locally and individually made. They had different wheel sizes, slightly different proportions and so on.
Being the kind of horrid person who gets off on imagining what the world would be like without easy access to cheap oil, this seems like a whiff of the future. Hauling things by hand and using cottage industry-made idiot-proof technology by reusing materials lying around - the wheels were obviously front wheels of old bicycles.
But there will be no more quick trips to southern France, that's for sure.
3 comments:
That sounds like a great area, certainly the photo's are inviting! In Vancouver, I am seeing more and more people pulling carts on bikes, moving and hauling all sorts of different things. Its nice to see, and also I think, a sign of the future and not the past.
This looks and sounds like a great area, certainly the photo's are inviting! In Vancouver, I am seeing more and more people pulling carts on bikes, moving and hauling all sorts of different things. Its nice to see, and also I think, a sign of the future and not the past.
Makes me wonder why people think life would be 'worse' if they didn't have cars. That street looks a darn sight nicer than the main road in our village.
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