Cross Country Day 3: A mishap in the morning, and our first casualties

On our road trip, some things went wrong. Nothing major, but there were a lot of little annoyances throughout the trip. The biggest of these little nuisances was the bike rack. For the first two days of our trip, we were constantly checking our mirrors and taking frequent stops to ensure that the bikes had not fallen off of the car. Something about the bike rack was not functioning properly. The straps would not stay tightened and the whole thing would sag down until the bikes were just about scrapping the ground. This led to us taking stops much too frequently, like every hour or two. To remedy this, we rigged up some bungee cords and ratchet tie downs to loop through the bikes and somehow attached them to the roof cargo carrier. We thought we were geniuses!

On the third day, with our new found freedom from constant cargo inspection, we continued on our drive through the big part of Texas. I must have dosed off in the passenger seat when I woke up to Tim driving side by side with this pick up truck. I thought, "Oh no, it's a crazy Texan trying to run our Yankee butts off the road!" Luckily, Tim calmed me down and told me that the nice man was just trying to tell us that something was loose with our cargo. Tim didn't seem worried in the least bit, but I knew that something was wrong when I looked into the side mirror and couldn't see and bikes.

When we finally found a spot to pull over, I hopped out of the car only to see that the rack had completely fallen off and the only thing keeping it on was our rigged up mess of cables. One bike was dragging the ground, tearing through one tire and flattening out it's metal rim. The other tire of the same bike must have gotten awfully close to the exhaust pipe, because it had been burned creating a lovely hole in both the tire and the tube. The other bike fared better, but had made contact with the back of the car and gouged some pretty deep grooves into the paint job. As angry as I was, it was too hot to stand there thinking about the best solution.

After pondering a few unreasonable options (such as leaving everything on the side of the road, or finding a post office and mailing the bikes to Portland), we decided that we would separate the bodies and rims of the bikes. We'd stick the rims on top of the car, and then maybe the bike rack could handle just the bodies. I had my doubts, but we hoisted the rack and gave it a try.

It was at this point that we realized our stupidity. We had put the bike rack on upside down. It looks almost the same both ways! There is no way that the little extra length on the top bar would make that much of a difference!  But it did! Apparently when you put the rack on right side up, it works perfectly and never needs tightening at all! For four more days we drove around and it never came loose!

It is a shame that we had to loose two good tires and that our car got all scratched up, but we did learn a lesson. Things go wrong, and in the end, there's nothing that you can do about it except curse really loud in the middle of Texas.

See that stupid bike rack on the ground there. It's stupid. I wanted to throw it in front of a truck. 

That is what the inside of a tire looks like. 

It burned so hot it cracked.

I don't think I can salvage it.

There was no room for them on this trip.
We left them beside R2D2 in the middle of Texas.