Nitto RBW-51 Front or Rear Rack

Way back when Grant still ate flax seed, he was a master bread maker. Well, it was kind of a bread, granola hybrid. The bread had crunch, toothiness, traits only marginally attenuated by the prodigious application of butter.

Toasting the bread was a task best done with exceeding care. Using a Hanhart 7 jewel pin lever stop watch, a 1932 Toastmaster Single Slice, and of course, a deft wrist, one could toast the bread for exactly 49.3 seconds before it turned into a square of vesicular scoria. Slathered with Diane St. Clair’s Animal Farm butter, the toast turned into a glowing morsel that seemed to be made of the sun itself. Grant’s loafs were laborious and time consuming to make. There was the gathering of the flax, the oats, the chaffing of the wheat. The eggs (from Penny and Ronnie, who required a constant stream of Pablo Casals at precisely 31 decibels, only laid on Wednesdays) were a scarce commodity. As such, the bread was regarded as a rare treat, and was only doled out to RBW employees with exceedingly good phone manners.

The bread, of course, needed a safe way to be transported. Lacking the perfect ‘just enough, not too much’ rack, Grant set to work on the rack you see here, the RBW51. 51 of course, being the number of loaves he baked a year, with a week off for Penny and Ronnie. The rack’s shape mimics the footprint of the Grantloaf, which was carefully secured with an old guitar strap, ‘borrowed’ on the Slow Train Coming tour.

Now a’days, ‘course, Grant only uses the RBW51 to transport overripe eggplants and tetrapaks of Coconut water.

The RBW51 can be mounted on the front of a bike (provided you have the braze ons in the right spots) or ‘round back. It’s a light, minimal saddle bag support, ideal for loads under 15lbs. You could put a basket on it too, but stick to a 137, as the 139 encourages over loading, and the Riv Basket Rack is better suited for that sorta rowdy behavior anyways.

Made by Nitto, in Tokyo Japan, brazed by hand and nickel plated, and then sometimes sent off to be ceramic coated by us. Like 97% of what Nitto makes, it’s a work of art and craft.