Prius Bike Rack and Mountain Biking

Bought a bike rack for the Prius. It's a Saris Bones 2. Before buying, I did some searches and found lots of discussion on Prius bike racks. The Prius community is very active on the interwebs. Here at Priuschat.com, there's a fairly lengthy discussion about bike racks. There's a lot of concern about gas mileage and some discussion boards feature a lengthy debate on roof rack vs tow hitches vs trunk mounted racks. I've always preferred the roof rack, but won't do it with the Prius, mainly because I've got about $500 of roof rack parts from the old Subaru sitting around gathering dust. Most of the parts are incompatible with the Prius, and I don't feel like throwing down that kind of money on another roof rack. I'll just wait to buy a car that's compatible with the old rack.

It took awhile before I broke down and bought a rack for the Prius. It got old taking out the car seats and folding down the rear seat to make the Sport Utility Prius conversion, and I could only hold one bike. Decided I'd get Carter started on mountain biking and realized, I'd need a rack to carry both of our bikes and him in the car seat.

Yesterday, we made our first mountain biking attempt. What I realized is that Oahu is severely lacking in beginner MTB trails. The few places I've ridden have serious hills, roots, rocks, mud and are pretty much no fun for a beginner. We started out in Waimanalo on the Maunawilli Ditch Trail. I seriously overestimated the suitability of the trail for a 4-year old on a BMX with 16" wheels. The initial climb was no fun, so we packed back up and headed to Bellows. There was a short multi-use trail that is fairly sandy, but well-packed, has few roots and loose rocks. Most importantly, the trail is flat. He did well there, so we did a couple loops for a total of 5 miles.

In Beer news, went to the Yard House last night and tried a draft Maui Brewing Co's Big Swell IPA. A decent IPA, not as good as the SN Anniversary Ale...rates a B+...I like my IPAs to be a little hoppier. For the 2nd beer, went with an old standby, the Franziskaner Hefeweizen. Sonya had the Maui Coconout Porter. I wasn't impressed with the first taste of the Porter...something odd about it. I'll need to pick this one up in the can for further investigation.