The Bike Rack...

We are makers.

We create out of compulsion, necessity and the sheer joy of finding ways to make an object better than one we could buy.

Here's an example...

We needed a bike rack to haul our gear. One day we were out for a walk. Next to a dumpster we came across a pile of twisted and broken square aluminum tubing. We recognized the tubing as the type of common pop-up canopy.
Here's a few images I found online...

image source:unknown web site

The guy is not Dave, but is a salesperson.

The trouble with this canopy was that it had been crushed; considering there had been a recent heavy snow and ice storm we can assume a tree branch was the culprit. Someone had set this out to be taken to a land fill seeing it only as trash. We saw a bike rack if we could only figure out the puzzle. Our brains went into overdrive...

That morning we had finally agreed to go to the hardware store to buy what we needed to make a bike rack because the ones available to purchase weren't quite what we wanted. Suddenly we had everything we needed if we could get the pieces to fit. After a few hours on a weekend we ended up with a very sturdy, lightweight, custom fit rack for out bike and the cost was around fifty cents because we used a couple dozen nuts and bolts we had on hand.

Final results...

Here's a shot of the top of the bike rack as the bike is laying sideways propped up on a homemade kickstand (more on that later...)

The rack is designed to hold our bulky gear as well as allow us to drape two custom made pannier sets over the back wheel. More to come on that as well.