Rack 'em up!

   Before I get into the main theme of this post I wanted to make a quick Tour de France comment. It’s good to see French cyclists picking up where they left off last season, winning three of the last four stages. Thomas Voeckler, who wore the yellow jersey through nine stages in 2011, and Pierre Rolland, who won last year’s Alpe D’Huez stage, have been somewhat expected winners, but young Thibaut Pinot was definitely a surprise. He won the 8^th stage with a well-timed attack and, perhaps inspired by the win, has been impressively hanging with the big contenders the past few days in the Alps. After several years with very little to cheer about, the French fans along the road have several national heroes, and a hopeful future, with riders like Rolland and Thibaut (pictured below) both in their early twenties.

   Sue and I learned several years ago that having a simple way of accessing our bikes certainly helps our attitude when contemplating getting out on the road. Some days just facing the pre-ride prep of getting dressed, applying sunscreen, stretching and collecting supplies can be a drag. Being able to just grab our bikes and sling them out the door helps to put us in the right frame of mind setting off to exercise.

   With our collection of bicycles for different types of riding, Sue and I were looking for a way to store them and eliminate trips down to the garage or basement. We have a side room that really isn’t in use very much of the year because it is mostly walls of windows and not very well insulated, making it usually very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer. Sue had decorated it years ago, intending to use it as an escape room for herself, but jokingly admitted that it is only pleasant in there in April and September.

   We had occasionally stored a bike or two in there, but mostly just as a temporary arrangement. With some furniture located in the room, and an unfortunate accumulation of storage boxes, there really wasn’t room for more than two bikes leaning up against two opposite walls. We decided to remove unnecessary items from the space and come up with some sort storage method to put four bikes in the room.

   There was really no need for the vertical storage racks that are commonly advertised, since we don’t need to conserve the room space for other use. Sue noted the racks that are provided at triathlons, where the bicycles simply hang by the saddle from a crossbeam, and thought this would be a good solution. Buying a section of this type of rack, made of metal pipe, turned out to be more costly than we expected, and an alternative design of PVC pipe just looked kind of crappy. I came up with a similar rack made of wood that works well and, with some stain or paint, will look pretty good.

   We cut two eight-foot 2 x3 studs in half and assembled them in a “picnic bench method”, making two big letter Xs. This wasn’t really a technical operation - I pretty much eyeballed a configuration I thought would be stable and used some masking tape on the floor to make sure the two pieces were identical in dimension. We had predetermined from my saddle height that about 41 inches would be adequate hanging distance from the crossbeam to the floor, so this was the height I considered for the notch at the top of the X during assembly.

   I connected everything with wood glue and screws, because our unit is permanent, but I would think some pivoting arrangement for collapsing and removal could be easily worked out. I also added permanent cross braces to stabilize the X frames, but again some temporary type of hook/pivot method could be constructed for this instead. A 1-1/8” dowel was cut slightly shorter than the width of the room, set atop the Xs and secured with four curved metal straps of the type used to secure plastic electrical conduit.

   Pictured are our respective cyclocross and road bikes, with Sue’s on the left. The dowel does appear to sag a bit from the weight of the four machines, but the straps can always be loosened and the dowel rotated to compensate for any bad warping in the future. We considered a pipe for this part, but weighed its stability against possible damage caused to seatposts or paint from constantly bumping into the metal and thought wood would be a softer alternative.