We finally got our bike rack up last week. It's actually a dinghy rack, but a lot of people use them for bikes as well, since bike storage is otherwise somewhat problematic here at Shilshole. There are plenty of bike racks, but they are all labeled "Day Use Only" (this somewhat incomprehensible dictate has led a fellow tenant to start locking his or her bike to the railing at the entrance to our dock instead of the perfectly good, and empty, bike rack six feet away, where it would be much less in everyone's way), and there are some small bike sheds which seemed expensive and awkward and quite possibly all taken, and then there is some sort of bike graveyard behind a chain link fence, where the bikes of absent cruisers go to die.
Since we are cheapskates and actually want to use our bikes regularly, we did what a lot of people do (and which the marina allows and apparently approves) which is to pay the extra $5 a month for the two vertically mounted steel tubes that go with fittings behind our dock box and buy a six foot pressure treated 4x4 to lash up between them and hang our bikes from.
The only real challenge was finding bike hooks for our purposes; we have two to hang, and need to have some separation so they are easy enough for Mandy to get down without tangling them together. We found a couple of fold-down tool racks at Lowe's that were just about perfect. I only noticed after we got them back that they have mount points that are closer to six inches apart than four... not enough room to put a screw in both holes when putting them up on a 4x4. The screws were sturdy enough that one would hold a bike pretty easily, though. I'll go back and screw a chunk of 2x4 in to the bottom of the 4x4 sometime later and secure them both top and bottom.
After getting the hooks mounted, it was just a matter of holding the 4x4 in place and trying to talk Mandy through some half-remembered Boy Scout campsite lashing techniques. In the end we got it secured pretty well, I think. At least, neither the bikes nor the rack have come crashing down yet (although out of paranoia I continue to attach the bikes directly to the crossbeam with their locks... if they do get dislodged they should wedge and hang there instead of turning into seafloor features beneath the slip). And Ballard, which is just a bit too far to walk easily or enjoyable, is now begrudgingly accessible.
2 comments:
Not a bad way to get around... except when you have to ride out to the stupid Valley at 9:00pm when it is about 25 degrees outside... then it kinda just sucks. Hypothetically. What have you done with your vehicles?
They are parked; we'll probably sell the car. But parking in Ballard sucks (as do so many things about Ballard) so it's easier to bike. Of course, it never gets down to 25 degrees over here in our rainy paradise, so that is obviously a factor in our favor.
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