When I was a kid...sullen young teenish...my father got a cartop carrier for the annual week-long family vacation. The Saturday we left, he loaded it up, strapped it on the roof of the Oldsmobile, and off we went. As soon as we hit the highway, the carrier started sliding off the back of the roof.
Now, my dad is an engineer, and generally when he puts something together, it stays put. I'm not sure what went wrong with the cartop carrier. He reattached it on the side of the interstate, then instructed me to hold my arm out the window for the rest of the trip so that I could alert him if it started to move again.
It was Wednesday that week before I could feel my fingers. And I've not been keen on carrying things of the roof of a car since.
When I traded my sedan in on a station wagon five years ago I discovered that my bike rack, which strapped to the back, no longer worked on the new car. Victor convinced me to get a roof rack. I had visions of the bikes being destroyed by low overpasses or them coming loose and sailing away. I will say, though, that except for the fact that I'm too short and too weak to get the bike on the rack by myself, it has actually worked quite well.
Until yesterday.
Yesterday Victor put the bikes on the rack for a trip to the canal and we set off for the traditional pre-ride stop at 7-Eleven. Turning out of the neighborhood, we heard a thunk . I expected to see a Gatorade bottle come rolling off the roof, but when nothing rolled off, I was encouraged. Stopped at a light, Victor said "The guy behind us is laughing...I better see what that was."
He opened the door, popped his head out, and came back quickly with "Um, the bikes fell over."
One of those bikes is my brand new Trek, the one I'd ridden exactly once since my impulsive purchase in April. I didn't want the bikes mangled, but I didn't want us mangled if we tried blocking the intersection on a busy Saturday morning. When the light turned green I crept (I didn't know I could drive so slowly; a baby could have ridden safely on the roof at my speed) into a parking lot in the next block.
The bikes had indeed fallen over, bike rack and all. The failure was the car's original luggage rack, to which the bike rack was bolted. It was just, well, broken, ripped neatly apart on the front passenger side. We got the bikes down and, once we verified that they weren't damaged, it actually started to be funny. I really don't blame the guy behind us for laughing. For several minutes we sat in the parking lot coming up with increasingly complex scenarios for getting the bikes home without a rack, then common sense kicked in and we stuffed the bikes in the back of the wagon and continued to the canal.
Partway there I realized...I had my camera, I should have taken pictures. "To blog?" asked Victor. I was thinking for insurance claims in case the bikes weren't as fine as they looked, but yeah, this post would have been better with a picture.
I'll be shopping for a new rear-mounted rack. And after the front door lock breaking, and now the roof rack breaking, I'm starting to feel like I have some kind of curse.
Posted by Nic at June 19, 2005 10:01 AM