ex-1

Fortunately I noticed the gap in the rack whilst shifting the forestays from the temporary (only employed for twenty months) P-clips round the seat stays to the newly-emplaced eyeletted seatpost clamp, not whilst removing the child seat from the rack or whatever. The child seat is mostly used with the newer rack on the other bike these days, despite the absence of the dynamo hub and accompanying lights and wheel-forming components, currently languishing in a box somewhere at Parcelforce's instigation. I'd always anticipated the weak point of this rack to be the left-hand dropout mounting-point, where it had been nicked by the hacksaw used to remove the bolts holding it in place when it was extracted from a knackered old bike owned by one of Nicky's colleagues, fortuitously just after we located a free seat on Gumtree which was of the type more commonly recommended by people and which specifically required this sort of rack. I fortunately have a spare (besides the other one on the sparebike) but shall have to pop to the Bike Station soon anyway to look for baskets. If forced to buy one new from a shop it will at least mean that I can finally get an EX-2, with the improvement of an extra rear member to keep things out of wheels, often a problem when forced to mount panniers as far back as possible to stop them getting in the way of the heels and which eventually required my current pannier to have to be stiffened inside with a bit of wood.