The best thing about carrying snowboards on the bike are the wisecracks:
“You on your way to go shredding?”
“Off to the snow now?”
“It’s a long hike to the mountains!”

Nope, I just dropped them off to get waxed. I’ve done a little bit of biking in snow, but I prefer my snow an hour’s car drive away.

The kids and I dropped them off at evo on Monday, a short mile and a half away. There’s a snazzy bike rack out front–here’s a picture I took of the day they put it in six months ago:

However, the service department is around back, accessed by two narrow driveways with cramped parking lot. I could have squeezed against the wall, but I took the empty adjacent parking spot.

For drop-off day I put the two adult snowboards horizontal on one side–the bar end/foot peg worked well to aim them out and away from my pedal–and the two kid boards vertical on the other side so I’d have a bit of room for kid gear in the front of one of the bags. I was a bit worried about the big boards tilting down and scraping the ground, but they stayed put.

I put my Xtracycle WideLoader on for pickup yesterday so I could fit groceries on one side of the bike and all four boards on the other.

I don’t own a LongLoader and my pedal bumped the boards as I tried to wheel out of the parking spot, but bunching up my jacket and shoving it next to the boards did the trick.

Check out that clearance!

And to assuage my fears of the boards tilting out the back and scraping the ground, I cradled them in my cargo net.

Now there are simpler ways to carry snowboards. We saw a guy on a regular bike with one snowboard strapped to his backpack. It took quite a few bell dings before he looked over to see us waving at him, so he had probably experienced his fair share of snow wisecracks. I didn’t think to shout, “Hey, we’re carrying snowboards, too!” and I’m worried he didn’t notice. There’s a lot to notice about my bike at first glance.

It’s a shame we didn’t wait until today to pick up the boards because we had our first in-town snow of the season.

The streets were white with snow when we first peeked out the window, but by the time we hit the road, hail had washed most everything away.

Next snow (if there is a next snow), I plan to have us tool around on separate bikes. I’ll probably opt for my mountain bike with knobby tires.