Last week the temperatures down here in southern Ontario
reached a whopping 20C/68F for a couple of days. For the middle of November that is truly a
gift and everyone who could used the opportunity to spend some time
outdoors. I packed away the garden
ornaments and furniture, raked leaves and waked the dogs. Benno thought that was a good time to mount
our bicycles to the back of the trailer particularly because we had received the
ordered bicycle cover in the mail a little while ago. The baskets for the dogs had to come off and
the saddles too. It took a bit of
fiddling and by removing the two outside pedals to prevent chafing, the cover
fit nicely. However, fastening the cover
with just the one string provided underneath would not do. During our boating years we had fabricated
several covers for all sorts of items out of canvas and Benno had become an
expert in fastening grommets into the seams for tying them up. Luckily we still had a box of spare grommets and
the tools to do this task and that came in handy now. He did
a neat job and with some sturdy string (yes, leftover from the boating stuff)
this bicycle cover is now a perfect fit that won’t come loose while we are
towing the camper. We were quite happy
with this arrangement until we read Rick’s blog of “It’s about time” where he
is describing his project of adding extra tail lights to his 5th wheel to be
better seen when his bikes are mounted at the rear of his rig.
That made us think of our situation and by looking at the
finished job of the bicycle carrier with the covered bikes on them; we realized
that we might have a problem there. You
could barely see the lights and license plate from the back and because of
this a County Mountie or State Trooper having a bad day could maybe give us a
ticket for obstructing the view to the tail lights and license plate part wise.
Of course there is also the possibility
that the driver of a following vehicle doesn’t pay close attention to our
signaling and braking lights and we might be in trouble.
So off came the bikes and the carrier. Benno thought by raising the bumper hitch adapter by 10 inches could solve the problem.
Paul, a friend living in the neighborhood is a retired
welder who had his own business; we gave him the job of making this hitch a bit
taller to mount on the bumper of our travel trailer. Paul had done other welding jobs for us and
always produced super good-looking items.
When he came back with the finished welding job of the raised hitch it
looked like it was factory fabricated or better. What a fantastic good looking hitch mount. Thank you, Paul. All that was needed now was for
Benno to put a couple of coats of paint on to protect the metal and we are good
to go.
I include pictures of before and after.
Did I mention we are happy campers? Well, soon I hope. It’ll be only a matter of
a few weeks when we are actually going to be on the way.
looking at the grommets
In addition, Benno shortened the factory-installed ladder,
which obstructed the view of the taillights.
