The Tax Man Cometh

As the title says, the tax man came.  Luckily, we paid only about $20 more in taxes than we owed, so a tiny refund was to be had. Even more thankful, however, is the tax credits we were able to take!  We won't share exactly how much those credits bagged for us, but suffice to say: it's Christmas in April!

Check out what we bought:

That up there is Heather's new bike, a Schwinn Cimmaron.

 

This is my new bike, a Schwinn Coronado. They were on sale at Dunham's, and that sale price was about as low as you can find them online.  They're made of aluminum, so they're a lot lighter than our old klunkers.  It's still a pretty hefty-gauge aluminum, however, so it's not as feather-light as some other (and much more expensive,) bikes I've seen.

So what's the deal with wanting a light weight bike, anyway?  Well, mostly because we bought two of these as well:

That picture isn't exactly the same as ours, but it's pretty stinking close.  It's a Burley 'Bee' tow-behind trailer.  It's got a capacity of up to 100 pounds, so one would have sufficed, but I certainly didn't want to get stuck hauling both kids at the same time, so we bought two.  Oh, and holy crap!  These trailers cost more than the bikes!  We even got them cheaper than available online at The Bike Shop here in Houghton. 

So that's the plan for the summer, anyway - biking into and back from work for all four of us.  We're gonna get buff.  Or have a heart attack.  Either way I'm sure we'll loose weight. Ha!  Man, those first few weeks are going to really hurt.  Especially the ride home.

Sorry for not having any of our own pictures, but we just got the bikes today, and the trailers have been sitting there for over a week now. As such, there haven't been any action shots taken just yet. 

My only complain that I have with the trailers (even before using them,) is that the mounting hitch that you attach to the back tire of the bike, is intended for bike's with quick-release back tires.  Our Schwinn's only have quick-release on the front tires, and the back tires are mounted with 3/8" bolts.  The hitch had a tiny dinky hole.

We needed something like this:

We got something this: (sorry, the picture is small, but you should be able to see that that hole is really dinky tiny)

I'm glad I didn't even look online because they want to charge you between $25 and $35 for that stupid bigger-hole hitch.  I had a much better use of that $25 : Buy some drill bits.  I have drill bits, but I didn't have a 3/8" bit that could cut metal.  So, off to the store we went and that's when I had to make a choice: Spend $10 on 1 3/8" bit (a very nice one, I might add,) or spend $22 on a set of 20 bits, which included that same, very nice, 3/8" bit.  Yeah.  I have a bunch of extra drill bits now.  Getting more tools is great. :)  Anyway, after that it was simply a mater of chucking that pig into the drill press and getting the hitch-dokickey secured into the vice, and tada!  Bigger hole!

Anyway...that's what the tax man brought.  Oh, well, and I guess he's probably bringing a new front door as well, and a bigger chicken coop, and maybe a new back door as well. (Yeah, Christmas in April.)