 |
I have been an avid participant in club rides since I moved to Michiga... |
|
The original issue is in the above IG link. I have this lovely, curated quartet of bicycles to meet every need I might have, but they straddle two worlds. Roadie vs Alt biking. Road riding gets the lion’s share of mileage I do, and the roadies have rubbed off on me with their suave technology. All their beeping and flashing has finally gotten to me and now I’m beeping and flashing alongside them with my computer and radar. I’ve managed to move over my plethora of handlebar stuff to create room for a sizeable Garmin (the Edge 1050, if you want to know) on all of their handlebars and I have been plotting ways to get the Varia 820 radar mounted on all of their rears.
You would not think this is hard, but Garmin really means for that Varia to be on the seat post, and if you have racks/bags/baskets, well…it’s not going there. Charlie can’t have his bag on the Brooks, so it’s on the bars until I find something better. The periwinkle fairy bike has a basket with a mount affixed, courtesy of my creative bike shop, and the raspberry bike has one on the end of its Nitto rack.
But the little purple Platy…there was no answer. No hole on the rack to put the mount, and the tab you can get from Riv blocks the radar from clicking into place. Line it up horizontal, but when you do that quarter-turn, it hits into the rack. I love this rack; it’s the mouse-trap Pletscher Riv no longer makes, and I want to keep it.
I posted the above IG link and a Hero From the Internet stepped out of the shadows and said, “I bet I can make you something.” Our hero is a CAD guy, and he whipped up some remarkably sophisticated drawings, and then I did a crumby job cutting them out and collecting his requested measurements. That’s all the poor guy had to work with. He set to work and a box showed up at my house with FOUR mounts, made of metal, each a little different in height. And he nailed it.
Beautifully executed, right? I mentioned that the dyno tail light would have to be sacrificed as it is not in view with the radar/mount there. And I was ready to live with it. Our Hero cannot be convinced that this is acceptable. “Who made this hack of a piece that is blocking the light?!” he said, in jest.
He is back to his lab (I don’t know if he has a lab, but this is my story and I like to imagine him in a lab) and working his magic with CAD and Photoshop while simultaneously refusing all forms of my payment. I’ll post the end result when it comes to me.
The bike world is a small one, and full of good, kind, brilliant people.
Are you all sick of my sad crash thread? Are you ready for something heartwarming? A little good news?