Ephemerica

New forks have been installed, and the front racks have been installed on both of the bikes. This is a picture of my bike, fitted with the Ortlieb sport packers. One thing (actually, I should say ANOTHER thing) I didn’t anticipate was how much trouble I’d have fitting the panniers on the front rack. We bought two sets of front panniers, the sport packers and the front rollers. The attachment apparatus was actually different on the two sets, such that the sport packers fit the rack and the front rollers did not. It’s times like these that buying stuff over the internet really sucks. Although I hadn’t used the bags yet, I was out of the trouble-free exchange range with the dealer (only 7 days). Rather than begging and pleading, and dealing with shipping, I took the front roller bags to Recycled Cycles, and asked them if they would exchange them with me for a pair of sport packers (in blue), which to their credit, they agreed to (minus a 10% restocking fee, since I didn’t buy them there). So now we have two sets of red bags, one set of yellow, and one set of blue–a nice mix, don’t you think?

The only other news on the bike front is that I managed to bend the rim of my rear wheel trying to get my tire off while changing a flat. Wha?!?!? How the hell did I bend the rim? Why are the stupid tires so hard to get on and off? I guess it mostly happened because I was putting pressure on one of the seams of the rim (where the circle gets joined). I took it to Recycled, expecting to have to cajole them into rebuilding the wheel, but they ended up just bending the rim back into place and saying, “Don’t do it again.” I can’t imagine that this is a good indication of the strength of these wheels. I think we may just have to keep our fingers crossed.

Posted by Matthew on November 12th, 2006 | Filed under: Pre-trip Planning