Palm Beach Bike Tours

Ken Steinhoff spent more than 40 years in the ink-slinging newspaper business where he had a license to be nosy. Palm Beach Bike Tours renewed that license in his retirement years. The blog is ostensibly about cycling, photography and using GPS technology to figure out where you're going and where you've been. It's really an extension of his lifelong effort to tell the stories of "ordinary people doing ordinary things", which sometimes turns out to be pretty extraordinary. If all that sounds like something in which you might be interested, please sign up for the PBBT RSS feed to keep in touch.

When I tried to use my Swagman hitch-mounted rack on my 2000 Honda Odyssey minivan, I had to be careful to keep the bikes from dragging.

I debated having an extension welded to the upright, but decided to take a less destructive approach. I went to a local trailer store where I bought a short hitch with a drop / rise. Normally it’s installed to lower the mounting ball on vehicles with high bumpers.

I needed it to work in the opposite direction: to raise the mounting point on a low hitch. I mounted the hitch upside down, so it was higher than the original hitch. This picture shows a comparison between the original hitch and the new one. The extra height made a big difference.

I eventually replaced the traditional trailer ball with a bolt that was easier to tighten.