Every summer I leave for five weeks or so. I drive across the country to our home states and spend that time with our families. Our kids get out of the desert and get to have lake life and grandma time and run wild. I have a Saris Freedom 4 bike rack, and I can/might take my Clem, my Platypus and the boys’ Clems. We get a lot of riding done up North, and with temps 110 in Vegas in the summer, I relish that riding time. Hassle though it is, I’ll bring our Rivendells. Four of them. 🙄
But which ones? I can remember last year as we journeyed out of Yellowstone, we thought it would be great to take the Beartooth Highway out of the park. One moment we were enjoying views from the top of the world and the next, we were in a June snowstorm that barely allowed visibility 20 feet in front of us. I worried for my dyno hub, and also that we’d be rear-ended. When we got to Billings, those poor bikes suffered through the most torrential downpour I can ever remember driving through. My son’s Brooks B17 Select still bears the scars (yes, it had a Randi Jo saddle cover). And then there’s the theft risk (we u lock them to the rack overnight on our drive), and maybe it’s higher in the Bicycle Shortage of 2020 and 2021. Oh, and the risk of being knocked over by exuberant little nieces and nephews as we jam our bikes into family garages… The struggle is this. I don’t want to leave my most favorite bike ever behind for 5 weeks. The Clem is just not the same, and though I plan to bring it, I would really, REALLY miss my Platy if I ONLY took the Clem. But if tragedy should befall me, the raspberry Platy can’t exactly be replaced. There’s only one. Should I just take my chances because high risk, high reward? Suck every last drop of joy out of it and stop worrying, because after all, it is a bike, and it’s meant to be ridden? Or should I protect it, keep it safe like Gollum and his Precious? Just ride the Clem and pine for the Platy? I have hand-wrung about this for weeks. I decide, IT WILL BE FINE JUST BRING IT and then back to JUST THINK OF HOW YOU WILL REGRET IT IF YOUR PLATY GETS HURT OR STOLEN. We leave Friday and the pressure is mounting. Who has an irreplaceable bike and can relate and would offer an opinion? Thanks! Leah -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/ae89b285-71b3-45fe-a7ec-b99dcd10e598n%40googlegroups.com.
