(Not sure where this is supposed to go. It’s part grumpy kvetching but without enough bad words to make it go in the pit and part desperate plea for help with a recalcitrant piece of automotive/bicycle equipment.)
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’ve returned to the midwest from Manhattan. One of the things I looked forward to, coming back, was riding my bike again. A lovely Long Haul Trucker, suitable for riding cross-country if I’m so inclined; also perfectly adequate for toodling around the Columbus metropolitan area.
One problem: It’s currently in the basement of my parents’ house, down in Cincinnati. What I need is a BICYCLE RACK to put on my car! Also, it’d be nice to be able to drive it out to remote locations, and I do have dreams of mountain biking again. So I sensibly go to the Local Bicycle Retailer and buy the various bits and pieces of a roof-rack for my 'speed 3–Q-towers (designed by Q, for maximum frustration, I think), Q-clips (see towers), big long poles, thingies to put the actual bikes on. The salesguy asks if I’ve ever installed one of these before. This should’ve been a SCREAMING ALARM and FLASHING RED LIGHT, as he indicated it was somewhat difficult. (He suggested a six pack and an afternoon. A keg and a fifth or two of whiskey would’ve been more like it. Maybe.) But no, no, I’m confident in my abilities. I buy, I come back and pick up, I take home and clutter up my apartment with.
And then I finally decide to start putting together. Here the [del]fun[/del]frustration begins. There are four measurements that are of critical importance to the whole thing. The first one that I meet is the distance from one tower to the other. You have to set this within 1/8" of the value you look up for your car. Fair enough, no problem. Then you have to center the bar on the towers. Except that every time I try to move the bar, the towers shift and my measurement goes off. Cursing and sweating ensue. In about an hour and a half, I finally get the thing right! But there’s no way I’m going to take this out to try and put it on the car today, so it clutters up my apartment for a while longer.
A few weeks later, it’s a nice day, so I take the thing out to the car. This is where I learn that the first bit was actually quite easy. See, here the object is to achieve 'BALANCED TOWER TENSION. Yakima loves that phrase, BALANCED TOWER TENSION. I plop the rack on top of the car, get it more or less centered and the proper number of inches away from the windshield, and start to work on achieving BALANCED TOWER TENSION. The way you’re supposed to do this is open up the cam on one side, turn a tightening bolt one turn, close the cam (and put the system under unbalanced tower tension), then go around to the other side of the car, do the same thing, repeat until you have achieved BALANCED TOWER TENSION. There’s only one problem with this plan: Every time I close a cam cover, it moves the whole thing off-center. So I wind up with lots of TOWER TENSION on one side, and very little on the other. Not, I fear, what anyone would consider BALANCED. Rending of hair and gnashing of teeth ensue, with some incidental wailing. Not to be deterred, I take the thing to a local bike shop (not where I got it, which is down in Cincinnati). The local bike shop guy is as stymied by the damned thing as I am.
So now I’ve got a very expensive garage-clutterer (I’ve moved it out of the apartment) that is of absolutely no use to me because I lack the almost mystical skills (and patience, I suspect) to put it on. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do. I was thinking about posting on craigslist (Come put this rack on for me! $100 and beer!), but they don’t seem to have a category for this sort of thing. Alternatively, I can put it on craigslist (buy this thing from me! no guarantees on whether you will ever be able to affix it to a car!). I’ve been thinking of trying to take it back to the original bike shop and begging them to take it away from me and give me my money back and then taking that money to either the dealer (I think Mazda offers a rack as an accessory) or the local bike shop to get some stuff that they’re actually familiar with and able to help me install, if necessary.*
So, for the experienced, any advice, or should I just go invest in some sackcloth and ashes to go with the rent-hair/gnashed-teeth look?
*An aside here: I’ve noticed in looking at the roof of my car that it has these little thingies that look remarkably like slide off covers at about where you might expect a rack to mount. And apparently there are things called “fixpoints” and racks that take advantage of them. Racks that sound much more joy inducing than the one I have. Racks that do not demand you achieve BALANCED TOWER TENSION. I think I might need one of these racks.
