It is the second and final rest day of Le Tour de Milk Crate 2011, and you need to know that it only gets harder from here. Mostly for you. Assuming you’re still with us.

We could give up now and call it good, but that would be quitting. We will press on, achy as we are getting. We just need to make it till Sunday.

So, there is this blog called Secret Republic. It’s about urban planning and such things and has the tagline: “Designing a better urban ecosystem.” They do a recurring post called “Beautiful Bicycle Mondays” in which they show a photo of some very sexy, jaw-dropping bicycle.

You might call it bike porn. Here’s one.

And then it hit me. How better to pass a rest day in Le Tour de Milk Crate than …

Cratie porn!

Which brings us to the age-old question: Front mount or rear mount?

Rear-mount craties offer speed and efficiency — along with the ability to carry modest payloads, of course.

But there’s something dear about the front-mount — also known unromantically as the missionary cratie. What it lacks in speed, it more than makes up for in beauty, in charm, in … je ne sais quoi.

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(DISCLAIMER: It should go without saying that all of the photos we present here in our coverage of Le Tour de Milk Crate are actual candid photos of actual innocent bystanders spotted in Eugene. No dramatizations or setups have been used, heavens no.)

Catch up on all of this year’s nonsense.