I’m three weeks into a new full time job. In order to get to work on-time, I need to leave the house by 7:45am. My son (who is about to celebrate his first birthday) goes to bed between 7:00 and 8:00pm, so the best time for me to exercise is before work.
I started running on weekdays beginning at 6:15am. I managed to get out on five days of each of the first two weeks, but I’m afraid of injury if I keep up this frequency.
I vastly prefer biking on a daily basis. The problem was that I had been keeping my Trek 1500 in the basement of my house, and my wife was dead set against me moving my bike in and out of the house before 7:00am.
The solution was for me to get a multi-bike stand for my garage. I chose the Delta Design Boticelli, a sturdy, free-standing rack with room for four bikes on it. The Boticelli was delivered by UPS yesterday, I assembled it in my garage last night, and I was out riding at 6:00am this morning.
This rack is seven feet (2.1 meters) tall when fully assembled. The stand has a two by three foot base (23 x 29″ or 58 x 73 cm to be exact), which leads me to believe that it will never tip over, even though the stand will only normally hold three bikes when it’s in our garage.
I think that the build quality of the Boticelli stand is very good. The stand came unassembled, but the installation instructions were very clear. Assembly was simple. All I had to do was put the powder coated pipes together and screw them together with eight hex screws. The package included the hex key that I needed, so assembly was an Ikea-like experience, although the instructions were clearer.
The Delta Boticelli is very compelling combination of space efficiency and clean design. It looks great in my garage. I’ll probably bring it into my basement during the hockey season when we don’t do much riding. The great thing about this rack is that it would also look fine in the living room of an apartment, if you were inclined to keep it there to show off your bikes.