mr,grumpy 

My son VASTLY prefers his trailer to his bike seat so when my friend needed it to haul her toddler around I gladly gave it up. Now, I really, really REALLY want to take the bike to the Hardware Store but the idea of dragging the trailer through congested down-town New England streets scares the bejeezus out of me.

DAME

I have the same feeling. I stick to the sidewalks in those scenarios (gasp!). My son doesn't care and I feel safer.

mr,grumpy 

I'm not even sure that there is a route with sidewalks all the way there. I know that my preferred route doesn't have them.

JoeyBike

I had a good friend in college (circa 1979) who commuted to school for a few miles on a hateful, narrow, busy, 2-lane, twisting, redneck infested highway and arrived at our first class frazzled every day. The road he took was the only sensible distance possible for him to cycle. A real dilemma for him. Then just by accident he found a discarded baby seat at the side of the road with someone's trash. He was tired of wearing a backpack full of books and school supplies and figured the baby seat would make a great backpack carrier. (See where this is going?)

So he attaches the baby seat, straps in his backpack, and heads down the Highway to Hell. Can you guess what happened? Everyone passing him gave him a mile of room, waited their turn, stopped cutting him off, throwing things at him, and blowing their horns. Yes, you should get that thing back from your friend and use it for carrying everything on your errands.

mr,grumpy 

Excellent story and great idea! People DO drive up on the opposite sidewalks to go around us when he's in the trailer. MOST do that is. It's the non-most ones that I worry about!