A
billy cart is a wheeled vehicle designed and built for
children to experience speed, danger, excitement, skinned knees and
occasional fractures.
There
are a number of features that distinguish a billy cart from any other
vehicle.
- The billy cart will generally have four
wheels, although that number can go as high as eight, depending on
availability. The number of wheels during use will sometimes go as low as
none.
- A billy cart is powered by gravity, and
occasionally by a push from somebody standing behind it. If it has
pedals, batteries, solar panels, steam, internal combustion or horses,
it is not a billy cart.
- A billy cart is allowed to make use of
fictional and/or non-functioning propulsion systems. Hyperdrives, jet
boosters, go go gadget arms, ailerons, racing stripes, rudders, pteranadon
wings, flux capacitors and flashing lights are all acceptable.
- Most billy carts are built of recycled
materials, although some new items are allowed. Ideally, the billy cart
will have wheels taken from at least two different sources. Popular
options include strollers, skateboards, tricycles and wheelbarrows.
- A billy cart may have steering and braking
options, however these should generally be improvised from rope and
demonstrate a deep and troubling lack of understanding of physics higher
than the middle grades.
- The building of a billy cart may have adult
input, but the bulk of the work ought to be performed by those willing to
test it, which usually rules out most grown ups. The best adult input for
a billy cart comes from uncles or grandfathers.
- While some braking mechanism is allowed,
suspension is absolutely forbidden, as are any speed limiting devices.
- Billy carts have no maximum passenger limit.
To
operate a billy cart, there must be at least one attached rope. The main uses
of the rope are for hauling the billy cart uphill, and hanging onto on the way
down. Ropes also make ideal steering controls, and can be used to tie
multiple billy carts together for maximum impact (I use the word advisedly).
The
best billy carts can be in use for generations, being built, rebuilt, improved,
adjusted and repeatedly wrecked for decades. As with a good wine, a billy cart
matures with age.
A
really good day out with a billy cart is as follows:
- 10% careening down a hill while hanging on
for dear life
- 1% landing on something unpleasant (prickles,
concrete, your sister) at the bottom of the hill
- 20% tinkering with the wheels because you've
just had a really cool idea
- 69% hauling it back up the
hill