Cycle Jerk: Vacation Lessons: Breaking And Entering

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Vacation Lessons: Breaking And Entering

I have returned from a much needed beach vacation. There were many lessons to be learned from this, the first real vacation with my daughter. How to pack a weeks worth of baby paraphernalia into a 2 door hatchback. How to remove a hook from an angry stingray without getting the Steve Irwin treatment (RIP). The most important lesson I learned on this trip was to use caution when packing up a Yakima Skybox 16. For some reason after packing it up for the drive home, the locks on both sides of the box broke and I couldn't get the thing open. I called REI where I purchased it and pleaded my case. At first they wanted me to bring it into the store so they could check it out. I told the manager this was no good because I had baby gear in the box that I need right away. His solution was to go ahead and get into the box by any means necessary and bring in what was left of the box for an exchange. This was intriguing. I get to break the box open? Tee Hee!

With visions of circular saws, guns, crow bars, and small explosive devices dancing through my head, I hurried to the basement to choose my weapons. This is what I came up with.

After a few attempts with the mini crow-bar I realized the folks at Yakima wouldn't have designed this to be easily thwarted by a crow-bar. Next up was the Dremel Tool with cutting wheel.

The Yakima Skybox proved no match for the 14 year old Dremel. A few quick cuts around the top hinge rivets was all it took.

Now it's off to REI to get another one.

While at the beach we rented bike for the week so there was a lot of beach biking going on.

Single F*cking Speed.

Yesterday, on my first commute ride in over a week I was confronted with something wonderful, a 5 bike stack up waiting for the light to cross Connecticut.