Review of our Trek bikes and two bicycle spare tire rack.

Unless you live in a larger city or an area where you have bicycle trails nearby, you will need to think about a way to transport your bikes. Once you purchased your favorite bicycles, it’s time to think about getting a bike rack. There are several options available, the roof rack, a tailer hitch bike rack or a spare tire rack. A Spare tire rack is made for cars, like the one you see in the photo, and gets attached to the backend.

A Thule bike rack is hard to beat!

We decided to go with the Thule bike rack since it’s easy to install and with the heavy padding it wouldn’t scratch out car. We had our Trek bicycles for several months now and feel qualified to give a Trek bike review.

Silke and I agree that we would never ride, let alone buy, another generic bike. There is nothing wrong with a $100 bike for most users, we just wanted a bike that fits our style and personality a little better. Spending the extra money on a quality bicycle like the Trek Navigator 2.0 has definitively been worth it. We both opted to go with the men’s bike because Silke preferred it over the women’s style.

The bike for men looks way cooler!

Take a look at our original Trek Bikes write-up

This particular model of bike is a hybrid between a

street bike and a cross-country bike.

We like everything about it! We haven’t been doing much off-road riding, since we’ve had Nick’s 8 year old son living with us all summer, but it’s nice to not feel restricted to where we can ride. The bikes ride very smooth and the larger than usual seats make it very comfortable for longer outings.

Living in Alexandria, Minnesota, we are very fortunate to have a well maintained bike trail. It is just a few blocks away and we have certainly taken advantage of it, besides riding around our neighborhood. By the way, riding your bike up and down the same streets every day is a good way to meet your neighbors.

At the same time we bought our Trek bikes we also purchased a Thule Bike Rack.

It is very light weight and easy to mount onto the trunk of our Ford Focus, plus we think it looks pretty awesome having matching bikes hanging off the back of our car.

Update 3 Years Later:

We still ride our Trek bikes as regularly as we can, luckily we still live near a bike trail. Other than a routine maintenance check we haven’t had any issues with our bikes. The little nobbies on the tires are long worn off, but the brakes are still in top notch condition and the chains seem to be working just fine.  We have to pump up the tires every once in a while and that’s about it.

The Thule bike rack has been a great asset. We just used it to take our bikes with us to a nearby camp ground and it’s so easy to attach and pull off that one person can do it. The bikes stay very secure on the back of the car, even in high winds.

Update 5 Years Later:

Our Trek bikes are in storage right now since we moved to Hawaii for an extended care taking position. We look forward to start riding them again when we get back to our own home in the fall of 2017. We have used the Thule bike rack on three different vehicles over the past 5+ years and have no complaints at all. It is still in perfect working condition!

Spare Tire Bike Rack

Do you have a favorite bicycle brand? Don’t be shy and leave us a comment below. We would love to hear from you.