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On Friday's ride home, I though of assorted titles for this post, and I had a bit of time for that, as it wasn't an especially quick ten miles. Here are your choices:
1. You have too many bikes when...(continuing with, "...you have to ride more than one at once.")
2. My eyes are bigger than my panniers.
3. Just Say No!
While I acknowledge my eventual, late, appreciation of larger wheels, I still love the nimbleness of smaller hoops, and while it's hard to find long, slack geometry in old 26" frames, the step to more modern 27.5" is quite small (The 26 standard is really 26.5".) so that seems to offer a nice compromise for me. Plus, the size seems to be fading out of favor which makes it a bit more apt for someone with my lack of sensibilities.
Hampshire Bike Exchange had up for grabs most of a department store 27.5, in size large no less, pun, while not intended, certainly appreciated. But no fork meant no piggybacking it onto a rack with a front hub, as is my default modus operandi. Fortunately, no fork also meant less clearance issue, so using the panniers straps, I lashed the headtube, loosely, to the side of the bag. Yes, it flopped and crabbed a little bit, but I figured to go part way home then stash it in the woods for later collection with a trailer.
HBE is very near the Norwattuck Rail Trail, with lots of woods alongside, so that became my target after a quick "design" viability check looping around the back parking lot. It stuck out a foot or so from my ride & rolled more on the side knobs of the tire than the center, but my intent wasn't perfection, merely passable functionality, and it was within the limits of my side marker pole, so I was just as passable by vehicles as usual.
Up to the rail trail, I discovered, pleasingly, despite the angled crabbing, the bike still had a foot of margin from the centerline, and it was a low traffic midday weekday, so why stop? For the first mile, all path traffic I saw, and for which I provided some amusement, was traveling the opposite direction, but then, even at my dawdling pace of coaxing along the load, I was drawing up behind a pair of people with a third in a stroller walking, as seems often the railtrail standard, two thirds across the trail.
No problem, I anounced myself with a friendly hello and let them know I'd be passing on their left. Often, with that, people will single file to give more room, but often isn't always, such as was the case then, so in my trying to be polite during my atypical trail usage, I went far enough left that the rear tire of the load dropped the couple inches off the pavement edge, but it was still stable enough to complete the pass and regain the paved surface.
With some shifting of the lashing, however, that's where stability ended, and the pulled bike found a resonance which had it wagging back and forth, unsettling my steady progress. If you don't know of it, go back to the titles up top and watch the link of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. A reach back and nudge with my hand? Nope, no improvement, so I pulled over to reattach and say hello again to the trio with the stroller as they regained the foremost position.
Wiggle, wiggle, nudge, nudge, tighten straps, and I was once again rolling with a semi steady load, and this time, as I once again neared the fellow trail users of substantial width, I let them know I'd pass walking so I could more reasonably squeeze past without putting anyone or any load stability at risk. Nope. It seems those people just made the trailered bike nervous, or I'm just an unsteady strider, for it started to shake and shimmy once again as soon as we passed!
Well, I'd been fast enough to pass on foot, so rather than continue swapping the lead, I simply continued on foot for a half mile, building a big enough gap for time to put another taut bungy strap between the two bikes, thereby changing the resonance frequency enough to cancel the wiggle, even once again riding! Alas, if only the Washington State DOT had known to use roadside found straps, they could have saved millions.
To the end of the railtrail and a new goal: ride up the not busy secondary road, a hundred yards on Bay Road, a short stint through a neighborhood, then I could stash the bike alongside the cut-through trail for later collection with a trailer, merely a couple miles from home, but nope, this time in a good way! Yes, I walked the bumpy half mile of trail, but to my surprise, it was a wide-enough section of bumpy trail that the whole debacle and I fit!
From there, the couple mile roll down the hill might have felt anticlimactic if I wasn't so pleased that my half-arsed cobbled together design and strap modification worked. I thought of my old adage of the most important things to pack on a bike tour: flexibility, ingenuity, and resilience. And yes, in 2015, I did finish the last forty miles of my return trip from Charleston, SC with a second bike strapped to the side of my rack, but that one had a front wheel, which actually made the mounting more secure, at least until I mount a fork crown and steerer on the back of my rack for moving forkless bikes. Hmm....
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