Kuat Alpha Rack – Not Sure if Worth It

The Kuat Alpha Rack – Different Point of View

I came across a recent review of the Kuat Alpha bike roack on the Mtbr Forum.  This is a relatively important topic for many biking enthusiasts as transporting the bicycles is a task I have been looking into for a number of years.  I started with trunk mounted bike racks.  Those turned out too tough to use with more than 1 bike  – still possible with 2 bikes — but progressively difficult, to impossible as you attempt to put on 3 bikes or more…

So then I graduated to the roof mounted bike racks.  That appears to be working well except the process of placing the bikes on the roof of the car on the trays / bike rack, is not for the weak 🙂  You need plenty of upper body strength and potentially a step stool — I kid you not…..

Then I started looking into the next alternative — hitch mounted bike rack.  Here we have two options:

a) Hanging type bike rack on the hitch

b) Tray racks that attach on the hitch 

I personally believe the Tray Racks are the way to go.  Why?  Because the issues that I have with the hanging type rack remain the same no matter whether you are using a trunk mounted hanging rack or hitch mounted one.   The geometry of the new bikes we all use is such that the triangle of the frame of most bikes does not allow for more than 2 bikes to be placed on the hanging bike rack.

I saw the review of the Kuat Alpha Rack — see below the tree options they offer for hanging bikes.  I believe 

            the 2 bike version will work OK, but the other — with 3 or more won't be a joy to use at all — in my experience the bikes will be into each other's way and will be very tough to mount them on the hitch safely.

I personally think the tray loaded options offer better / easier loading and operating solution (albeit more expensive one) — here are a couple of options:

            

Well, I would like to hear your opinion on the matter.  

 

Bike Ride in the Beautiful McKinney Falls State Park

McKinney Falls State Park

Last Fall I posted on my initial experience on the bike trails of McKinney Falls park located on the outskirts of Austin.  Here is a quick link to that posting.   Two weekends ago, I decided that I need to leverage the good weather to the fullest, got the bikes on our car and made it to the park for a second time.  This time around we were able to not only have a great time biking the Homestead trail and the paved park trails but also shoot some good video and photos of the abundant wild flowers.

The result of that experience is now posted on-line and you can see here:

So check it out and drop me a comment.  Here is the link to the State Park official Web site