3-day bike trip, NYC to Provincetown. On day two, our group split up and I was riding with a close friend. 15 miles into the 100-mile day, we got our 3rd flat. We had only carried 2 spare tubes.
We had barely pulled our bikes onto the sidewalk when a woman in a sedan slowed down to ask if we needed help. We said yes and she quickly pulled over. We piled our bikes into her car, trunk open, and she drove us to the nearest bike shop.
Turns out her family member ran the shop.
Truly saved our day. We made it to Provincetown and 15 years later still remember her so fondly and are so thankful!
Carry a patch kit now?
I lived off-grid and did all of our laundry, a family of four (including a baby in cloth diapers), by hand, even in the winter (below -20F).
You know what works as well? A wash tub and a stick. Or a bucket and plunger. Or a posser if you're really fancy. I used a 30 gallon garbage can and a hand-carved posser. In mild or hot climates you can just stomp on it.
Same principle: Draw water, add cleanser, agitate for a couple of minutes, let it soak, return at some time in the future, agitate again. Remove laundry and let drip dry while you draw fresh water (mangles and spinners speed this up and are more effective, but not necessary). Squeeze wet laundry at lowest point where water has gathered. Repeat entire process with clean water, then lay it out in the sun prioritizing any sides with stains.
The secret sauce of clean laundry isn't how you agitate the laundry. It's just time and chemistry.
Water access, cleansing agents, and patience are fundamentally more important than providing "revolutionary" contraptions. It's the same difference between teaching people about no-knead bread and giving them hand-cranked stand-mixers. One solves the need for intensive manual labor and the other doesn't, but introduces a new point of failure.
And even importing enzyme-containing detergent is unnecessary. Plant ash (a source of alkali) and aged urine (a source of ammonia) are all you need to create what's known as bucking lye which cleans just as effectively and uses byproducts that they themselves produce by default. Residual stains are removed via UV from sun drying.
There's absolutely no need to complicate this.
So much is possible if you just look at how nature, in one way or another, can do the work for you. No knead bread (or, better, periodic stretch and folds over the course of a few hours) is a perfect example. Or making a composting toilet/latrine by just adding sawdust, ash etc. Or simple and cheap rocket stoves that burn the smoke. Or cover crops and cultivating soil structure and microbes. Etc
The key for what you shared (and, i suppose this machine) is how little agitation you actually need, and how there's plenty of ways to do it with no fancy equipment. Can you share more about your experience, or even share some links, about the amount of agitation needed, how "cleaning" actually works (you said time and chemistry - but how?), and how to make effective, low-cost detergents anywhere?
Thanks!