12.18.2009

Looking outside the Bike Rack!!!

The other day I made a quick stop at REI to pick up an order which is always trouble since I walk out of there with something that was NEVER on the list, it is a kind of love hate relationship with that store. I LOVE to go in but my bank account HATES it when I leave.

It just happened to be the same day as their Scratch and Dent sale and even though I came late in the afternoon, there was still some little treasures to be found. If you have never been to the REI Scratch and Dent sale you are missing out. Don’t get me wrong, there is a ton of crap, used clothes and many other broken things that you would never want. Seriously, there are some pairs of shoes that I wouldn’t put on my feet even if I was the one to make them look like that. But you may just stumble upon a little diamond in the rough. In my case that is an awesome bike rack.

As I was checking out the bike rack, to see if it was something that would work, the REI employee came up and asked if I wanted it because they needed to pack it back up. As I played the game of ‘ahh, I don’t know…hummmm…maybe’ the guy grabbed his pen and decided to reduce the price from $50 to $30. Good thing he had no idea that I was going to buy it anyways but hey an extra $20 off, can’t be that. Plus, there are crazy people who wait in line for 2 hours to get first dibs (yes I have done that), but sense I have been channeling my inner Ninja, I was in and out of there in 20 minutes...

The only problem with this bike rack is that it had a 1 ¼” hitch, aka in truck owner land a ‘what the heck are you going to haul with that tiny little hitch'. If that makes no sense to you, the common truck has a 2” hitch. So as I am looking at the potential awesome new bike rack, I begin to rack (pun intended, cuz I am just that funny) my brain to see if there is any way I can make this work on my truck.

The REI guy made a mention that they sell adaptors that will make it work on my truck but not one to take the easy way out, I decided to make a little project out of it.

My new Bike Rack:)


After a few hours and using some of my master metal cutting skills, I had all the pieces to make my new bike rack work on my truck. You probably are expecting me to weld it all together with my mad skills but unfortunately I can't do it all and had to down someone who could. So now I have a pretty sweet $30 bike rack that is worth 10 times what I paid for it. Plus I don't really trust those little hitch bars anyways.

2" Hitch...SWEET!!!


So take a chance and look outside the box and maybe you can make use of something work for you and if not, just give it to me, I am sure I can…

4 comments:

jessithompson said...

I have one word for you... McKever.

Tiffany said...

Oh god, I can just hear you when the guy told you about the adapter, "I bet I can make one of those!" Nice work McKever! :)

p.s. I like the new look of the blog!

Matt said...

nice work!

Nat said...

Is it okay to kind of hate you a little bit, since I bought the same rack in June and it cost me $400? I'm happy for you and glad you made it work, but still a bit jealous!