Big boys just have bigger toys

The past few weeks I have been in the midst of a hard debate with myself.  I have long loved bike riding, just a year or so ago I would go on 20 mile bike rides for the fun of it.  Up here at DBU, however, there aren’t really what you could call safe bike routes.  So I’ve been searching for a nice bike rack that I could put on my car and get back into the habit of bike riding.

The only problem here is that the bike rack I really wanted would cost $500 just for the bare bones.  The basic gist of the idea is that I have no runners on the roof of my car.  Runner, of course, meaning those things that you see on mini-vans.  But this awesome company named Thule makes runners to install on cars without actually ripping up your roof to do it!  They just cost the afore mentioned $500.  Then it would cost another $100 for the bike adapter so I could carry around the bike on the runners I just bought.  So that idea was a no go.

The second option was a hitch mount.  Only, again I have no hitch on my car.  I could get it installed but that would put me right back up in to the $300 range and then another $100 for the bike rack.

The final solution is what is called a trunk rack.  It uses cords that attach to your trunk to keep it from swaying around.  It’s a great idea, and some are as cheep as $40.  The downside to this being that it usually causes paint damage to your trunk!  I finally decided that this was, however, the only viable method and bought a bell 2 bike rack from Wal-Mart.  It took me 10 minutes to set it up the first time and I realized, “Wow, that’s horrible.”

It was a cheep design, it lacked the straps necessary to prevent horizontal movement on the trunk, and it looked kind gaudy.  Plus, it lacked proper fasteners to secure the bike in such a manner that the bike wouldn’t hit the bumper of my car all the time.  I realized quite quickly that I could use this bike rack, but that it would demolish my trunk in the mean time.

Fortunately, earlier today, Amy and I had stopped by this wonderful (albeit slightly inflated prices) bike shop called Bicycles Inc.  A nice older gentleman showed me the pros and cons of the different trunk racks and after hearing the price tag, I politely turn him down.

Having set up the Wal-Mart bike rack, however, I quickly removed it, and sped with all haste back to the bike shop before it closed.  I arrived with mere minutes to spare, purchased the bike rack (which while being worth it still pained me to pay). 

It’s a Saris Bones 2-bike model.  It was a little difficult to set up the first time, but that was mainly because I was unfamiliar with trunk bike racks in the first place.  Once everything was in place, I tried to give it a little jiggle and was EXTREMELY satisfied when not only did it not move an inch, but it actually caused me to jiggle the car! 

Here are some pictures I took after driving it back to DBU.  You can see in the bottom picture that it doesn’t look like there’s a lot of room for a second bike to be placed without bumping the bumper, but I’m not sure if that’s reality or just a trick of the photograph. 

Ironically, After all the work I did getting this set up and making sure my bike was in shape, I forgot my helmet!  Oh well, I played some ultimate Frisbee for the first time since I got a grade 2 sprain of my ankle (playing ultimate Frisbee a year ago) and needless to say, my leg muscles aren’t too happy with me right now.  It didn’t really help anything that it was about 30-40 degrees outside from what weather.com says, but it was a blast none the less!  I look forward to getting to drive out to some bike trails in the area and start biking again!

Big boys just have bigger toys