Last Thursday I went to Budget with the same sort of feeling as in buying a new computer -- I was going to get spend a relatively lot of money on something cool, but something that seems extravagant and maybe, just maybe, unnecessary. All the rationaliation was there, specifically, if I'm going to be riding the tandem a lot, I need a rack that can handle it easily. Otherwise I'm at the mercy of whoever has a van I can borrow, or the kindness of other drivers as I haul the tandem around with both ends sticking out, and bouncing up and down.
So Gary and I got the pieces together, he asked me all sorts of questions I'd never considered because I'd never thought about such things, like which side of the roof should it be on, facing front or back, yadayada. I tried to contribute to the conversation, but mostly asked questions or watched for cues. About an hour later I departed, the rack -- I felt anyway -- an ostentatious ornament. As Mei later pointed out, with the rear bike rack and the roof rack on the CR-V, it looks like we are real outdoorsy peope; I wonder how many of the numerous racks and similar appendages on 4-wheel drive vehicles here are actually used more than a couple times a year?
Of course, to use the rack one must remove the front wheel. Which of course meant that I had know how to take it off. But disc brakes don't have a quick release, or, it turns out, any release. One simply pulls the wheel down and away, "being csreful not to bump the pads." Now those are the sort of words that send fear down the spine of us ungeeks, almost like an invitation to bang the wheel around just to, you know, get a feel for the parameters -- or, more realistically, an ominous foreshadowing of problems to come. How much simpler Rocinante and the rear rack were. But methinks I'll get used to this, as well.
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