Stick it to ya

I’m up entirely too late tonight for embarking on a series of rides early tomorrow morning.  However, although I would rather not have to use them, I needed to get my sticks strapped onto Lowly (my Catrike 700) as there is a high probability I will have to get off the trike and walk around for the festivities and rest stops during the Worst Day of the Year Ride, tomorrow.

This is the second go around with the sticks tagging along, the first was a couple weeks ago when I when I rode down to Rose City Recumbents to have them do some work for me (I’ll get to reviewing them, for now I’ll just say “They are great!”).  They are also next door to TerraCycle (will have a review for a couple of their products I use and love as well), and Pat Franz, the owner of TerraCycle, came over and did some brainstorming with me for different ways we could mount my sticks on the trike.

Pat has some great ideas, and I’m sure I’ll have another brainstorming session with him about this, for now however, I’m sticking with my quick and dirty solution,  Well, solution 2.0 is slightly less dirty, the first go around I used numerous lengths of hook and loop (also known as velcro) strips, and strapped the sticks to the frame.  This worked, actually, very well, however it was a bit of a pain to find the ends of the strips to release the things when I needed.  Still wanting to keep a solution that left no permanent hardware (I’d rather not have the sticks along for a ride when possible, I have enough weight already), I went to the helpful peoples of the internet at the BentRider forums with my query.  Relatively soon, one of the members suggested the Hurricane mini pump straps from Performance Bicycles.  Brilliant, I stopped by my local Performance Bicycle store on the way home from work on Friday, and bought them out, was hoping for 6, unfortunately they only had 4, so, now I have two on each side, in the more difficult places, and the previous hook and loop strips for the last mount point.

Sometimes you just have to suck it up and do what you have to, I suppose.  I try to tell myself that the more weight I have strapped onto the trike, the more I’ll have to work, then I’ll be even faster when I get to leave the sticks at home for the next ride.  Optimistic thinking there.

Anyways, to give a visual representation of my setup, here’s some late night shots for you.