Building your own electric bike has many advantages over buying one. It’s cheaper: you can pick up parts from scrapyards or buy cheap off-the-shelf motors, and even a purpose-made conversion kit can be had for $400, a lot less than buying a new electric bike.

A home-made bike is also easier to maintain. Because you built it yourself, you know how to fix it.

But best of all is speed. To still qualify legally as a bicycle and not a motor vehicle, top speeds are typically limited to something around 15 mph, less than you can achieve with a good pair of legs. Strap an old truck starter motor to a beater mountain bike, though, and you can hit much more dangerous speeds.

The Firefly and Edison Trailer from Bryce Tugwell comes in at the classy end of the range. The bike itself is a simple conversion: a Bianchi Milano Citta, fitted with a 36-volt 700-watt brushless electric hub and powered by batteries kept in a beautiful hand-built box. But what really gets us excited is the Edison Trailer in the back. Made from the same wood as the battery-box, the trailer features a “drop-in Martini bar (vodka, gin, vermouth, shaker, ice bucket, lemons, limes, olives and 4 martini glasses).” I’ll take mine with gin, stirred.

Firefly & the Edison Trailer