Sunday we ran errands, so it wasn't a fascinating day. Still we did get to the Witte Museum (free, because we used our ASTC Travel Passport again). Emma seemed to like the Texas animal exhibits best.

We also researched the bike rack problem. Here's the short version: Yakima no longer recommends ANY bike rack on the Nissan Armada. That's a change in their policy, since we bought our rack. Presumably the problem is the flexible factory crossbars that allow bikes to wobble too much.

Thule offers a very weird solution that is essentially a set of their crossbars mounted to the factory crossbars. This provides a rigid base and probably solves the problem, but it looks like a Rube Goldberg invention and raises the height of the rack a couple of inches, which would make mounting a bike even harder than it already is.

On their website, Nissan recommends a Yakima rack that is discontinued. No help there. I doubt it would have worked better anyway.

A few readers suggsted putting on a front receiver hitch. Unfortunately, nobody makes a front receiver hitch kit for the Armada so far as I can tell. Trunk racks don't work for us because they force us to remove the bikes everytime we need access to the back, which is often.

Another reader suggested dumping the bikes and rack and getting a pair of folding bikes. But folding bikes are expensive, and we'd take a huge hit on the bikes we already have (which we just bought last September). Plus, the folding bikes would end up in the trailer or the truck, which is what we are trying to avoid. Interior space is at a premium.

That leaves us with putting a receiver hitch on the rear of the Airstream, for a receiver-type bike rack. It can be done in some cases. In the 1970s Airstream sold a bike rack option for their trailers, which I have seen on rare occasions. It was bolted to the sides of the bumper compartment and carried two bikes. However, the 1970s plague of "rear end sag" on some longer rear-bath models put an end to that. People got paranoid about overloading the rear, and legitimately so in some cases, where the trailer was heavy and the frame was light. Those 70s frames couldn't take the shock load ("moment arm") of the extra weight when it bounced over a bump.

But not all Airstreams are made the same. In our case, we are lucky that the Safari 30 is built on a Classic frame, meaning that it is very strong. We believe that we can put a receiver hitch on it and be safe as long as we keep the overall added weight to <100 lbs, including the hitch itself. But clearly more research is indicated. I'll continue looking in to this to see if we can get away with it. If so, I think this would be the best long-term solution.

Sign of the week:

"Seen" at the Pima Air Museum, Tucson, AZ