My husband took our girls to Snowshoe one last time before season closing.
Packing the car always starts the night before departure so that they can leave at lunch on the day of. It’s family tradition for us to gripe and complain and make things difficult on him after a long day of work. But he is skilled at compartmentalizing and keeping focused on the goal to Get. To. The. Downhill. Park.
He always has a plan. This is how he handles packing multiple bikes on his truck in the midst of demanding work schedule:
-Install the pad. Check the fit.
-Load whatever bike will be in the bed of the truck.
-Lock the bike.
-Install the bike rack extender. (This is heavy and awkward and is a two person job. Typically it’s our son who helps with this task but since he’s gone to college…it will be my job).
-Lock the extender.
-Install the bike rack.
-Lock the bike rack to the extender.
-Load the bikes.
-Lock the bikes.
-Load the suitcases.
-He drives the truck to work loaded with locked racks and bikes to work the next morning. And they leave directly after the girls get home from school.
The Rivian truck has anchors for a bike lock. This is for the bike that is loaded in the bed of the truck.
This is basically a photo of the first three steps complete.
This is a photo of the lock that secures the extender to the truck.
The bike rack is on.
Last the bikes are loaded and locked.
I admire my husband for keeping his eye on the prize. He wants to spend time with his kids. In order to do that, he has to push himself to squeeze in the time to make it happen. It’s demanding physically but also emotionally draining to push the whole family to work together to load the car at night after a long day of work, school and sports practices.
Every family has its own quirks. Ours is bonding at night while we gripe and complain and drag and fiddle with locks. He ignores our griping and we ignore his griping and at the end, it’s a beautiful inspiring thing to see the family car loaded up and ready to go on a downhill family trip.
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