(well, the bike rack that is)
After a few false-starts, I think we can safely say that it is 'riding season' again! Of course, riding season is really just the point where you think you're brave enough to bear the cold weather whizzing past you. For some folks, biking season never ends.. I'm not quite that weather-resilient. I like to at least know that I'm not going to hit a patch of ice and kiss the road.
With this season, my family and I are christening our new hitch-mounted bike rack that we got as a gift. Its been looking at us for two months, wondering when it would come out of its box, and this weekend was finally that day. We had to get a hitch mounted to our Hyundai Santa Fe to receive the new rack, but that was pretty painless. This is a picture of the rack 'in action' as seen before we did a nice little 6.0 mile ride through Bur-Mil park on Sunday.
The rack is a "SportRack 4EZ" that fits into a 2" box receiver hitch. The rack as you can probably guess holds 4 bikes, but since there are only three of us I only added the parts for three bikes. It is quite sturdy and although a little heavy at around 65lbs, it can still be installed and removed by one person. It can be left on the vehicle, if needed, as the vertical posts swing down easily to allow rear vehicle access.
Assembly was fairly straightforward, although there were a few errors in the parts list (making me think that we were short-shipped until I looked at the assembly diagrams). I would give this bike rack a 4.5 out of 5.0, taking a little off only because it is a little pricey.
