My dad built a soapbox cart for me and my best mate to play on when we were kids. An old scaffold board, back wheels from an old kids trike that he hacksawed in half and bolted on, and front axle from (I think) a pram. The backrest for the seat was a bit of old table or desk top. Of course, my mate and I took turns to be driver or pusher.
The cart was supposed to be steered by a bit of rope (old hemp washing line) but we could never hold the steering straight enough, so it always ended up veering to one side or the other within about 5 feet of setting off on the thing.
So me, being the inventive type, had an idea. Move the backrest further forward, so my feet now reached the wooden crosspiece on which the front axle was mounted. Use my feet in conjunction with the steering rope to maintain something like a straight course. It worked pretty well going along the pavement out the front of my house. Sometimes we went along the front of the whole block from number 2 to number 36 without serious incident.
But not so, when I ventured down the alley behind the houses. There was a slope going down into the alley at one end, so it seemed a great place to try to set a new off-road speed record for the cart. The alley surface was mostly compacted dirt and gravel, but with a few broken bricks stuck up through the surface. My mate pushed me down the slope into the alley like a bobsleigh being set off at the top of The Cresta Run, but when the front axle contacted a sticking up brick the whole thing turned sharp left, despite the (foot) power assisted steering modification, jamming my ankle bone against the side of the cart and pitching me off into the dirt and gravel in an epic crash.
Of course, my mate was convulsed in hysterical laughter, and it took several weeks for my ankle to stop hurting...
This episode is one of those moments of childhood that I had completely forgotten about, until the memory was revived by this thread in Cyclechat. Thanks, guys, for letting me take a trip down memory lane, or down a back alley in Northfleet.
Aren't you a bit old for this sort of thing though?
