Alice’s Restaurant

You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant

There are Christmas songs, of course - we are about to be inundated with them ad nauseum in every store, restaurant, and colleague’s office. Hell, Christmas is sort of a black hole of holiday music, even pulling non-holiday, winter songs like Jingle Bells and Let It Snow into its irresistible gravitational pull.

There are Halloween songs as well, of a sort. Monster Mash comes to mind, and as a child of the ‘80’s, Thriller follows close behind. Jonathan Coulton’s Creepy Doll and Re: Your Brains definitely belong on that list. And if you are somewhat liberal with your definitions, this list offers a number of other options.

But what about Thanksgiving? It sits there, nuzzled in-between the two, a paragon of dietary excess masquerading as a harvest festival cum national heritage celebration. But it’s like a red-headed stepchild in the music department, lyrically and melodically unloved.

But not entirely. Enter: Alice’s Restaurant

This epic musical experience by Arlo Guthrie is the answer to anyone looking for a real, true Thanksgiving song. Well, sort of, anyway.

To be clear, it is absolutely a thanksgiving song. The pivotal events take place surrounding a visit to the titular Alice on the Pilgrim holiday, and the fact that it is a holiday is a causal component of everything that transpires. But the "sort of" comes in because it’s also a little like giving a pig a pancake - one does not fully appreciate what can happen when you give a folk singer a pile of garbage until one reaches the end of this 18-minute adventure.

I don’t remember who told me about Alice’s Restaurant. It may well have been a colleague from the brief period of time in college when I worked at the radio station, in answer to the question above: "why aren’t there any thanksgiving songs?"

I do remember when I first heard it, however. This was all back in the day well before streaming music services, before google or search engines or the World Wide Web. I’d mentioned my interest in finding and hearing the song to MLW and, on a visit with her over a college break, I found it waiting for me on CD in the bedroom in which I was staying. She had made a special trip to a private, non-chain record store (kids - go watch the movie High Fidelity for reference here) to ask about it and then order it for me. I was a very lucky young man.

What I discovered that day was an 18-minute long talking song that details Arlo Guthrie’s real-life experience of being arrested for littering, and culminating in his later encounter with the draft board.

Yes - those two things are directly related, and all told in a sardonic, tongue-in-cheek fashion that is just delightful. You just have to listen to see.

It’s a talking song, but with a sung chorus that occurs multiple times through the tale:

You can get anything you want At Alice’s Restaurant. Walk right in, it’s around the back, Just a half a mile from the railroad track. You can get anything you want At Alice’s Restaurant.

My little family will be listening to this at least once, if not twice, on the way to Thanksgiving dinner. And everyone will belt out the chorus each time it comes around.

It’s really the only thanksgiving song, or at least the only one we know. But it’s the only one we need.

Now I have to go and load up the family bus with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction...

Harvest Roads

Here in Northern Illinois the harvest season is well underway. This means multiple changes to the landscape - both figuratively and literally - from a cycling perspective.

Country backroads are a boon to cycling because they are typically quiet thoroughfares with minimal traffic. As a bonus, in my area at least, they are mostly paved, and so offer that solitude of cycling without having to contend with the evil of gravel. But when the corn and beans start to come down things change. These once quiet byways become busy, occupied with trucks and machinery as farmers go about plying their trade.

And when I say trucks and machinery, the and is somewhat important. On most days out my way you’ll perhaps occupy road space with a full-size pickup or the occasional box truck (think UPS or FedEx). But this time of year you may also encounter a variety of farm implements - combines and tractors pulling grain wagons, along with the grain trucks themselves - that are not typically present the rest of the year.

If you think you feel tiny cycling by a full-size pickup, a couple of minutes riding side-by-side with a combine or tractor with wagons in tow is a real eye-opener. And I say “a couple of minutes” because they aren’t fast-moving vehicles. When they pass you it takes a while. It pays dividends to simply slow down and let it go by more quickly.

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The composition of the roadways changes too, in a way. The process of harvesting produces a lot of botanical detritus that often ends up scattering across the roadways. Mostly this is in the form of portions of corn cobs, husks, and stalk that eventually just blow away in our prevalent prairie wind. This year, however, it’s been unusually wet - both rain and our early snow for the year - and so the detritus mixes with the prodigious amounts of mud pulled up and then dropped from the treads of machine tires. This makes for some new challenges...

Each time I come up to one of these sections I am very pleased to have fenders.

The rest of the changes are in the literal landscape. What has been a world of roadways walled with corn interspersed with breaks of pasture and beans and occasional houses is now mostly open rolling and flat. For a brief period of time the cornfields, in particular, look to display the aftermath of some great battle (which, in a way, I suppose they do). The world is now open and, from some angles, virtually endless off to the horizon.

These changes also change the nature of the wind patterns. For a substantial portion of the summer and early autumn you can count on the stands of stalks to function as a windbreak from some angles, and as a channel from others. Now, as they get cut away, the wind is increasingly diffuse and ever-present.

One of my favorite parts, visually speaking, is the in-between time. As the combine starts cutting its way through there are suddenly openings, apparent pathways through the corn that, however, briefly, give the impression of new worlds to find if one were just to follow down them.

(One does not, of course, because one does not wish to become a farming accident. It’s interesting and momentarily a little romantic, but you gotta live in the real world...).

These patterns of change are part of the joy of riding out in rural roadways here in the midwest. Every time of year has something to offer, something to see.

Now - time to ride and see what’s different today...

Rural Bike - Part Two - my Candidate

So - a couple of weeks ago I laid out my thoughts on what the criteria were for identifying the ideal Human-Powered Vehicle (HPV) for rural life. If you are starting here, you may want to go back to that post. I will admit, tho, I got a little lost in childhood nostalgia and youth shaming, so if you are looking for the TL:DR on the criteria, they were:

• The machine must be capable of covering long distances - 10-20 mile round trips - comfortably on open secondary roads.
• It must be a human powered vehicle. It’s fine if it’s amenable to electric assist, but it cannot rely upon battery power.
• It must be able to contend with varied weather and road conditions. Generally this is going to mean:
  • Some type of effective fender system.
  • Being stable and functional with a load under high wind situations.
• Be capable of carrying cargo - the Bike Design Project specified their urban guidelines around a gym bag or a single bag of groceries, which makes sense for their purposes. For a rural lifestyle, a larger carrying capacity would be needed - I’d say the ability to manage 3-4 full paper grocery bags (or equivalent volume), with those groceries including at least one full gallon of milk. The machine should be able to manage that load on all rural road surfaces, including gravel, dirt, and hills.
• Be capable of remaining stable and upright under load. This criteria is borrowed from the Bike Design Project, but it makes intuitive sense to me. Your machine has to be able to stand safely on its own if you have to get off of it when it’s fully loaded. Otherwise you’ll break your eggs, have to chase your oranges down the road, and cry over your spilled milk...
• Must be capable of a reasonable average speed over flat(ish) terrain when operated by a rider who rides regularly. Here let’s say reasonable is an average of at least 10-12mph. I think any slower and it risks even dedicated riders avoiding use in favor of a car.
• Be a durable machine capable of many years of use with basic maintenance.
• Be capable of using aftermarket lighting and visibility systems for effective forward and rearward visibility.
• We are looking for a type of machine here, not a specific brand or new design. What sort(s) of HPV meets these criteria?

At the risk of offering up an early spoiler, I’ll freely admit here that my candidate for meeting these criteria will likely be unsurprising to regular readers:

The Recumbent Trike

"Oh, well of course," you say. "You see here, Martha, I told you last time that’s the way it was going to go. He set this whole damn thing up to justify his love for those gorram three wheeled contraptions."

"You did say so dear," Martha replies. "You did say so".

"Harrumph!" you say. "That’s it. It’s clear now: He’s in the pocket of big trike."

Ok - first, good on you for pulling out an actual "harrumph!" That’s a word that really doesn’t get its due nowadays, and deserves a comeback.

Secondly, I am not in the pocket of big trike. I’m not actually sure that such a thing exists, and if it does, I am quite noticeably not in their pocket. Noticeably so because I’d happily jump into the pocket of big trike and roll around in those lovely big trike dollars. Hello? Anyone out there in the great trike conglomerate listening... anyone...?

Ahem. Anyway, yes, my response is somewhat predictable, but let me defend myself. First, I want to clarify and add some detail and distinctions. I wrote "the recumbent trike" above, but what I really mean to say is:

A Recumbent Trike with a Trailer

There, see? It’s a lot different now. Right?

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The thing is, although it may seem somewhat like I’m leaning towards the thing I’ve already chosen, the reality is that rural transportation was a big part of what I had in mind when I chose to get a trike. As I mentioned last time, I grew up riding around the countryside, and when we moved back a decade or so ago I realized that, while I enjoyed riding my road bike around the area, there were a number of factors for which it was not ideal. This came into clearer and clearer focus particularly as I began to expand my riding "season" into a year round enterprise. You only have to have an upright bike disappear out from under you once or twice on a January morning before you realize that, although you rode all over the place as a kid, you only did it in the summer, and that you didn’t need much carrying capacity to bring home a half-dozen comic books.

Taking a look back in my journal verifies that this has been on my mind for quite a while. I wrote about the Evo and The Bike Design Project back in August of 2014. While that work was specifically for Applied Life, it really got me thinking about the rural bike question. Three of the four subsequent entries in my journal touch on this topic (yes, I also write about cycling for myself. It’s a thing, ok? I’m not proud...). On August 3rd of 2014 I wrote:

The demands for country and small town biking are certainly different than they are for urban settings... On first blush, frankly, I think something like a tadpole trike with a trailer would likely be ideal - essentially the pickup truck of the biking world.

And a week later, on the 13th, I wrote:

The more that I consider it, the more useful a trike and trailer seem to me for the type of transport need rural biking presents.

Why am I taking you down this trip thru my journal entries? Mostly because these were from 2014 - three years before I actually got a recumbent trike.

We moved out to our Homestead in the late spring of 2009. By summer 2014 I’d been riding as an adult out in the hinterlands for five years, and been thru my first year of winter riding. I’d had a fair amount of riding time on an upright across the open prairie to consider against for thinking thru what might work better out here. And of course, I’ve been testing that idea over the past two years or so.

So - all that said - here’s my rationale against the criteria to explain why I think a recumbent trike (with a trailer) is possibly the perfect rural HPV approach:

Long Distance in Comfort

I’ve been riding most of my life, and I’ve ridden a lot of different types of diamond frame bikes. I spent most of the decade prior to getting the Catrike Pocket riding a 1987 Cannondale SR400 - an aluminum road bike.

The furthest I ever rode the Cannondale in a single outing was just under 27 miles, and that just once. Otherwise rides were more typically in the 8-15 mile range, with occasional jaunts in the 18-22 mile territory. I started tracking mileage with Cyclemeter in 2011, and my best year with the Cannondale was 2014, where I managed 752.47 miles over 69 rides, with an average distance of 10.91 miles per ride.

My first year with the Pocket - 2017 - I rode 937.51 miles; 83 rides with an average distance of 11.30 miles per ride. To put that in perspective, I got the Pocket in early June - nearly halfway thru the year. 808.31 of those 937.51 miles - 86% - are on the Pocket. I rode further on the Pocket in its first seven months with me than I’d ridden for the entirety of 2014, my best year on the Cannondale.

I loved - and still love, at least in concept - the Cannondale. It’s a sleek and elegant machine; it’s lovely, lightweight, and fast. It’s also beastly uncomfortable, and has become progressively more so as I’ve gotten older. This includes both the creeping pain on the backside during the ride, and the tension across the back of the neck that would start on the bike and continue for the following day or two. That factor absolutely limited my riding time.

For a while I thought it was available ride time that was limiting me when I was on the Cannondale. Longer rides - 20-30 mile and further jaunts - can eat up a couple of hours on a precious weekend day and really cut into the time available for other things. But that limitation seems to have just dropped away with the recumbents. The Pocket is slower than the Cannondale, and yet I started to routinely ride further. I think to some degree I was kidding myself that the discomfort wasn’t an issue.

I’m certainly not the only person who has reached this conclusion. Matt Galat at Ja Yoe! writes and talks about comfort over time being a primary factor in his choice of a trike for his world tours.

I think sometimes we have a tendency to set aside comfort - when it comes to cycling we may feel like we should be willing to sacrifice that for the other benefits. But the reality is that when the activity is less comfortable it becomes less desirable, and as a result we tend to engage in it less. And the purpose for this thought experiment is to look at using the machine for at least semi-regular transportation in rural settings. Rural riding for transport means distances, and particularly choosing to cycle rather than to drive. Cars have a lot to offer here - choosing a less comfortable option to ride out of misguided principle is likely to result primarily in just choosing to drive.

Contending with the Weather

Rural riding often means contending with less than ideal weather conditions. Here I’m not talking about rain - we can probably all agree that, if it’s raining, the rural transportation cyclist is going to opt for their car. But the reality is that in much of the world, and especially in the US Midwest, rural means wind.

Drive through the rural midwestern countryside for any length of time and you will repeatedly come across stands of white turbines, pointed into the breeze, propellers spinning slowly, but inexorably. It’s a view I’m very familiar with - I can see it from every window in my house.

Though I have, believe it or not, had people ask me whether the turbines make it windy, the reality is that there’s a reason there’s so much focus on wind power out on the prairie and plains. It’s always been a little surprising to me that harvesting wind power didn’t start sooner out here. Of course, the impact from the cyclist’s perspective is that, as delightful as it is to have a 15 or 20 mph tailwind, it’s a bitch-kitty when you are riding into it headlong. If you are riding for purpose - to the store, say - the extra weight of your cargo and the oppositional press of the wind will seem to have a multiplying effect against your effort.

While the wind doesn’t go away when you are riding a recumbent trike, the lower profile of the machine does make a difference. What’s more, the stability of having three wheels under you means that there is no risk of falling over when the wind brings speed down to a crawl; and equally so, little to no risk of blowing over when dealing with an oppressive side wind. Dealing with the wind like this was a key factor in Maria Leijerstam’s choice of a trike for her successful ride to the South Pole, a ride in which she started after two competitors on upright bikes, and arrived ahead of them. She also cited the stability of the trike allowing her to successfully manage a shorter, but steeper route than the other record hopefuls - she didn’t have to worry about falling over.

Being in a lower profile to the wind is also just more comfortable most of the time, especially when it’s cold. I detailed my own experience with the difference between riding upright and recumbent in the cold and snow a while back. Getting down out of the wind, relatively speaking, makes for a warmer - or at least less cold - ride in chilly times.

Stability

That reference to snow brings up the other important advantage - stability regardless of conditions. While it’s not for everyone, there are absolutely people who ride year round. When the ground gets slippery - whether due to rain or snow or dirt or gravel - three wheels are going to be more likely to stay under you than will two. I’ve ridden both upright and recumbent in the snow, and read the accounts of many other like-minded souls. There is virtually no one who rides on two wheels in the white stuff who hasn’t had the experience of a bike just... disappearing out from under them. For just a moment you are like Wile E. Coyote, right after he’s run off the cliff - you hang there in mid air.

...And then: pain.

Fat bikes and winter tires make that better, but they don’t eliminate the issue of falling the way that third wheel does. I’m not saying it’s not possible to wipe out on a trike - I have it on good authority that it can be done. You know, from... other people. But it’s still more stable.

Carrying that Load

The relative stability makes a difference here as well when conditions - weather or hills or weight - cause the going to be slow. On an upright machine, when the speed drops below a given speed it becomes harder and harder to keep the bike vertical. Maintaining balance is a non-issue on a trike. This can become vital when hauling things - remember, our criteria is to be able to carry four full paper bags worth of groceries, including at least one gallon of milk. The jug of cow juice is eight and a half pounds all by itself, and a paper grocery bag can supposedly hold up to 25 pounds, so those four bags could conceivably come out somewhere near 100lbs of groceries.

I don’t think for a second anyone is actually going to fill those bags up to a full Benjamin, but the reality is that the weight, particularly when combined with hills, wind, or both, will potentially slow things down considerably. The tripod position, combined with the very low gearing most trikes have on the bottom end, can make the distance between continuing to pedal up the rise or falling over (or having to get off and walk it).

I had a little experience with this without the use of a trailer earlier this year, hauling an empty LP canister into town and bringing back the full exchange. A full canister comes in around 34 or 35lbs, and my trike managed it well. I’m not saying I couldn’t have done it on an upright bike, but I suspect it would have been considerably more challenging.

Speed

I set a minimum speed criteria for this thought experiment because I think its a relevant detail - if the trip to and from the destination is too slow, I think folks are going to go for motorized options. Trikes aren’t the speediest form of HPV available, to be sure, but I am certain there are models that can meet the 10-12 mph average I set here - when I hauled that LP canister back and forth with my Expedition I had my slowest time ever on that route, but my average speed still came in over 13mph. Would an upright cargo bike be faster? Maybe, but I think there’d be some question about that when dealing with a full load.

But there are limits. Just as there are trikes, there are quads out there, and they would also have many of the advantages of a trike - stability and comfort, for example. But I suspect the additional weight would risk bringing such a machine in below the speed criteria.

The Other Stuff

The first four points - comfort, weather management, stability, and ability to manage load - are ultimately the reasons I look at recumbent trikes as being the ideal candidate for rural human-powered transport. It is also important that the machine chosen be something that is durable and can be expected to last many years with basic, and the trikes that I own and have looked at seem to fit this bill. They are more complicated than a standard diamond frame bike, to be sure, and there are areas you need to attend to when owning and riding them. These are not significantly more complicated than with an upright machine, however, and well worth the trade off in capabilities.

The one primary difference out in rural areas - and admittedly a potential limitation - is that if you have a local bike shop, odds are that they have limited experience with trikes. You will want to learn a thing or two about bike maintenance under those circumstances. However, I suspect this is ultimately a reality of rural cycling in general. My "localest" bike shop is twenty miles away. The folks there are great, but it’s an hour round trip to have them work on my machine. I’d imagine a lot of other folks in rural settings are in a similar situation.

In terms of lighting and such, most trikes provide an abundant number of locations for placing such equipment and can be made to work with standard bike items with little to no effort. The wider frame, particularly in the back, arguably provides a more visible profile to attach lighting to, and provides the option a more varied lighting pattern for motorists to see.

Rearward vision is different on a trike. You have to have mirrors to see behind you - you cannot just look back and easily get a gauge on what’s behind you. However, for rural riding on an upright I’d argue that you really need to have mirrors as well. Looking back is uncomfortable even when you are up in the wind, and I found I felt much more aware of my surroundings once I put a mirror on my road bike back in the day. This is doubly the case for the trike.

Disadvantages

There are a couple of potential disadvantages to using a trike for rural transport, though I think they are limited. Probably the biggest thing is that they are more challenging to move around and park. They are sometimes heavier, and always bulkier than an upright bike, so it’s harder to simply pick one up and move it around. They take up more ground space, so they don’t easily just plug into a standard bike rack and you can’t just lean them up against a building or post. It takes some creativity to figure out how to securely lock them to things.

These same factors do affect storage, and while many rural folks have a fair amount of space to keep things, those who do not will have to be more creative in that respect.

However, none of these things are insurmountable, and I don’t think they take away from the overall advantage of the platform.

Summing Up

So there you have it - my candidate for the ideal type of rural human powered vehicle, or, more colloquially, rural bike. As I’ve said, I’m certain regular readers will not be surprised where I fall on this, but the reality is that rural riding is a large part of why I got a trike in the first place (the rest of it was because I thought they were really cool).

Others, I’m certain, have other ideas for what works best and/or their own thoughts about why I am wrong here. There are certainly other styles of cargo bikes out there, often with a rakish, military-look to them that can certainly be attractive. But this one is my choice, and one that I’m finding works well for my version of rural transportation.

Ok - time to ride...

Winter Cycling Unpreparedness

The introduction of November has been pretty chilly for us here in Northern Illinois. Over the first weekend of the month I was riding with snow accompanying me along the sides of the road:

The irony is that, looking at the weather conditions that accompany that ride on Cyclemeter, it was about 51° while I was out and about. The snow, in the relative protection of the ditch, hadn’t quite gotten the message.

But the reality is that most of our days over the first third of the 11th month have been in the unusually cold category. This doesn’t stop the cycling, of course, but it does mean some changes have to be made in terms of gearing up for the rides.

And there lies the struggle.

Now begins the time when I realize that I may not be fully aware as to the location in which I stored all of my cold weather riding gear. I mean, I’m certain that at the end of the last use I put them in a perfectly logical location to make them easy to find the following season. Unfortunately, November Erin is not in the same mindset as April Erin, and I think that guy might have been a bit squirrelly anyway...

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So then comes the internal discussion: did you put your balaclava and gloves in with the rest of the family gloves and hats? That would make sense, right?

But one pile of hats and gloves on the floor later, and they are nowhere to be found.

"Perhaps" you say, "perhaps you left them in a pocket or a sleeve of your winter coats or vests". And then you nod knowingly: "perhaps April Erin didn’t put them away at all". Because that guy can sometimes be a bit of a slacker.

And this can be kind of interesting because you then realize that you have cool and cold weather items that you had forgotten about in the intervening months:

"Yup - gotta break out that light leather jacket while it’s still in the reasonable temperature range".;

And:

"Oh - I forgot about that down vest." And then gaze admiringly at the color.

(Yes, it’s orange - specifically burnt orange. No points for guessing that one).

All of this to finally think "is it possible I just put them on the closet shelf with my other cycling gear? Could it be that simple?"

Yes, dumbass, it’s that simple. Heaven only knows why that wouldn't have been the first place you’d look, but now at least you have a mental inventory of all of the rest of the winter gear for the house. Because you needed one of those. For some reason...

The struggle continues, a bit, with what to wear when. It’s a tenet of cold weather riding that you want to be layered and, if possible, vented, so that you can open things up and/or remove them as you get warmer. But there are areas where that’s harder - particularly your feet. And so I’ve had one outing over the past few days where I decided to go with wool socks and sandals - committing a fashion crime to split the difference on foot warmth. As to my level of success, well, I’ll report back when I can feel my feet again.

All kidding aside, once it’s all out and I start using it regularly, there really won’t be any difficult with it. But fall in the midwestern US is an ongoing struggle where what was appropriate clothing this morning is too much by afternoon and simply inadequate by night. That effect is amplified when riding.

But, regardless, now that I’ve finally found my stuff (dumbass), it’s time to ride...

The Nemesis

I love riding through the countryside - the majority of my time cycling is done on rural thoroughfares, viewing the grass (yes - and corn and hay and soybeans) of the open prairie. But there is one part of rural riding that I simply cannot bring myself to love:

Gravel.

When I was young many of the roads out here in northern Illinois were gravel, including the one upon which our homestead currently sits. As time has gone on, however, gravel has progressively moved aside in favor of tar and chip, resulting in fewer rocks thrown, fewer dusty cars, and fewer bikes disappearing out from under you due to an errant stone.

It’s that last part that has always been the primary problem with riding on gravel for me. As a kid I had a friend who lived about three miles away by gravel, and the challenge was always getting myself to mentally work past the fear of struggling with the treacherous rock surface in order to get there. Most of the parcels are about a mile square, so after a while I solved this by riding the other way around the block to his house (hey, I was a kid - give me a break!). It was technically further by about a quarter mile or so each way, paved, and so far more comfortable, and likely faster, because picking your way around the rocks is usually very slow going.

As an adult I’m riding longer distances and can, with some recon and the help of mapping software, lay out routes that avoid the gnarly substrate. And typically this is exactly what I do. About the only time of year that I routinely embrace the gravel roads is in the winter, when their evil has been rendered impotent by dint of a layer of fine white powder. But there are times, on a few routes, when brief bits of gravel figure in and I have to weather my way through the stone. I typically avoid those routes, but it’s nice to add in the variety from time to time.

The challenge of gravel was somewhat tamed with my transition to primarily riding recumbent trikes. One of the primary difficulties - the sudden vanishing of the machine - is eliminated with this change. And that does make it more pleasant. While the ride is still rough, and the going is slower, a route with a mile or two of gravel connecting one point to another is often workable.

But there is one exception. Not far from my home is a mile or so of gravel that is, quite possibly, the most hateful bit of pathway in the tri-county area. This mile of jagged rock and stone is the Sauron to the simple orcs of the other chipped stone byways.

Yup - that’s an actual picture of the road right there.

Ok - so no, not really. This is an actual pic of it:

There are two factors that make this road stand out. The first is that the surface seems to be made up of unusually large and rough stone. I don’t know if this is just the first surface they treat and so it gets the extra-large substrate off the top, or whether this is just so lightly traveled they don’t think anyone will notice.

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The second factor is the hill. There are a couple of them on the road, but the one at the East end, just before it rejoins the pavement and the twentieth century, is relatively steep. Now it’s not that I mind climbing a hill or two when I’m riding - this generally just adds to the challenge, as any cyclist knows. But the combination of the angle and the very loose gravel means that it’s extremely challenging to maintain purchase with the rear wheel. This would be a problem on an upright bike, where your back end would be slipping sideways out from under you, risking a topple. It’s a slightly different issue on the trike. The couple of times I’ve ridden this road on the Pocket what I’ve found on this hill is that I end up sitting there in first gear, functionally immobile while my rear wheel spins free in the rock. Sometimes the rear wheel throws away enough stone that it gains purchase for a move forward of, say, six inches, before then repeating the sequence over again. Each time I’ve tackled this on the Pocket I’ve ended up getting off and taking the ignominious step of walking the trike up the hill.

So, you might ask, if you hate it so much why would you ride on it again? And I would say that’s an excellent question, and one that could probably be answered by the simple admission that I’m a bit of an idiot. However, not wanting to make that admission, let me now try, perhaps a little to hard, to suggest that there are reasons:

• First, taking this road alters two of my favorite routes by cutting the longer one shorter, and adding distance to the shorter - it makes for a 25-mile ride while going longer would be 29, and shorter would be 20; and sometimes 25 miles is the distance you want.

• Second, the quality of gravel roads changes with time and wear, and I was wondering if this road had perhaps now been used enough to make it less hateful.

• Third, while this mile or so of stone demon had been a severe struggle on the Pocket, I’m now riding my Expedition, which has a longer wheelbase, wider track, and bigger wheels. I wanted to see how the new trike tackled it.

Ok, if I’m being honest, it’s 98% the third option there, and 2% of just throwing in the other two so that I could make a list and seem a little less dumb. The Expedition is a different machine. I’ve ridden it on less severe gravel roads and gotten through just fine - I wanted to see how it managed this... thing.

This section of the highway to hell essentially constitutes mile 23 of the 25-mile ride I have laid out. That means I’ve already expended a fair amount of energy once I get to it. I could reverse the route and tackle this very early into the ride, but that erases the challenge of the hill at the east end, and that was part of what I wanted to learn about for the new trike, so there we were.

The first thing that I realized when I pulled on to it is that it hasn’t worn down since the last time I saw it.

It’s still full of large, blocky stone, with very little by way of tire ruts to offer softer purchase. There are only two houses on this stretch of road, and one of them is just off the pavement, so I suspect there’s just very little traffic here to make for that wear and tear. Good for the road crews, but no so much for me. I did briefly wonder, just as when I was a kid, how bad, really, I wanted to do this, and considered whether just going another four miles or so around it wouldn't be better. But no, dammit, this is what I’d come to do.

The fIrst clear impression I got from it was that it was just going to be painfully slow going. The resistance from the rock and tire slippage, along with the jarring nature of the ride, meant that I was going to need to pick my along in low gear even on flatter portion of the road. And that lack of wear and tear meant that, although you could see evidence of automotive travel within the stone, tire ruts were very shallow, and still mostly covered in rock. They helped where they were present but not, you know, a lot.

And slow it was. On Cyclemeter’s speed graph you can see the portion where I seem to have slipped into a pool of molasses:

The slow pace really does a fine job of prolonging the agony and allowing a person to reconsider their choices in life. Not just the choice to take this section of road, mind you, but all of their choices. Because it took me three and a half weeks to traverse this mile of roadway. Three and a half weeks! Or about 15 minutes, but I swear it sure felt like a lot longer than that.

I’d like to tell the hero’s tale of how I persevered through grit and determination here, but mostly I just felt sorry for myself as I pressed on, working my way up to that stupid hill so I could see if the difference in layout would make a difference in climbing up it. And more than once it occurred to me that I could have approached from the other side, just ridden down the hill, and then ridden back up it to answer the question. I didn’t have to ride the whole distance.

Of course, it occurred to me in the middle of the ride down that road. Because I’m an intrepid explorer. Or an idiot.

But here’s the deal: when I got to that hill, I was all prepared to find myself needing to dismount and shamefully walk my trike up over the rise.

But I didn’t.

The Expedition, in its lowest gear, crawled its way up that slippery hill and crested the summit. (Yes, it’s still northern Illinois and no, there aren’t really any summits, but come on - it was a lot of work - allow me some creative license here).

I was pretty pleased and duly impressed. The difference in geometry, and maybe the fact that the pannier bags are directly over the rear wheel as opposed to in the frame like they are on the Pocket, seems to have made the difference.

So what this means in practice, I guess, is that I don’t have to have quite so much trepidation about approaching the average gravel road. If the Expedition can pick it’s way successfully along this detestable behemoth of a “road”, it should be able to handle the other, far less problematic sections that I encounter on my other routes. I’d already seen a bit of that, of course, but until this I couldn’t be sure about the more problematic surfaces in the area.

Gravel riding is a thing, now, and some people just love it. Gravel bikes are out there, and there are various ways to fit out machines to make them more suitable for tackling the rocks. For myself, having mostly moved on to machines of the three-wheeled persuasion, there are fat trikes out there and many brands of trike can have their wheelsets converted to allow for this. For my part, I encounter gravel infrequently, and so I’d rather not deal with the trade offs - heavier wheels, slower machines - that come with specializing in gravel. Instead, I prefer - and am pleased to find - that my primary machine be suited to the road, but be able to manage the rocks on rare occasion. Fortunately, as this otherwise painful ride has shown, it seems to be up to it.

Okay - Time to ride...

Rural Bike Part 1

The ideal urban bicycle is a recurring theme in the overall cycling world. Comb through bike magazines and websites and you will see it come up periodically. Generally the discussion and debate centers around the features that a bike needs for the urban cyclist who will be using it as their primary means of transportation. There has even been a contest or two towards designing such a machine. I put forward my vote on that front as well.

You can understand why this comes up with respect to urban settings. Traffic congestion paired with a growing interest in alternative transportation makes the question a poignant one, and the needs of the urban lifestyle offer an interesting puzzle to solve in this respect. For example, because the inner-city cyclist may have to carry their machine up multiple flights of steps you want the machine to be relatively lightweight, but it still must be durable enough to manage the reality of city streets, and ideally not be constructed of a material that will make it costly to build or repair. And, of course, that’s just one bullet point; there are multiple other factors to consider.

Back when I became aware of the contest and this theme in general I began to wonder about the other side of this: what makes for an ideal rural bike?

It’s not a question that comes up in magazines or on websites often, and I suspect that’s for a number of reasons. Rural areas don’t have the traffic congestion issues that urban travelers contend with, of course, nor the population strain that suggests impending limits on the use of motor vehicles. Travel down any city highway during rush hour and you can see that we really are approaching our limits - if we haven’t already reached or exceeded them in practical terms - for the ongoing use of independently owned and operated automotive travel in those areas.

But out in the country? There’s no rush hour. I mean, sometimes you have a stack-up of traffic while you wait for a train or get behind a tractor, and sometimes you end up with two or more people at the four-way stop at the same time (gasp! - who goes first? Think, think, mentally pull up the rules of the road book...), but otherwise it just isn’t a thing.

There’s also the realistic question that I suspect many people would ask: is it even practical to consider cycling as transportation in rural areas? The distances are longer, of course, and the travel is often for different purposes. The urban cyclist may ride to the store or market to get groceries, but the store is probably only a few blocks away, and the proximity means they can shop frequently for a smaller volume of product, making cycling a practical alternative. The rural counterpart is going to want to purchase things in larger amounts due to distance (I can tell you for a fact that no one out in the hinterlands ever allows the toilet paper to get down to a single roll in reserve...). And given all that, isn’t everyone living out in the boondocks just going to get a truck?

Well... no and yes.

Unlike city living it’s really not the case out in the country that you can go without owning some type of automobile. In urban and suburban areas there are multiple alternatives to draw on, from traditional taxis and buses to Uber and Lyft and car sharing services like Zipcar, when a self-propelled, weather protected option is needed. Versions of those services might eventually find their way to the remote climes, but they generally aren’t there yet (tho I did see a ZipCar in Dixon, Illinois this past summer, so maybe...). There are just times when the weather, or the mission, will make for the need to have a motor vehicle.

Still, that need for an automobile doesn’t mean that it wouldn't be possible for a substantial portion of routine travel in rural areas to be made via an HPV (Human Powered Vehicle). In fact, I can verify that when I was a kid my friends and myself did it all the time. Up until a certain age it was the only way to get around if your parents weren’t able or willing to take you. And they often were not:

Me: Mom, can you give me a ride to Matt’s house?

Mom: You’ve got a bike don’t you? Get on it. And anyway, why are you inside? Go outside, and don’t come back in until the sun goes down.

(I love ya, Mom!)

For you younger folks this may seem perplexing, so let me help you sort it out. Have you seen Stranger Things)? Of course you have. You know the part where the girl moves things with her mind and where monsters come out from the upside-down? - that’s fiction. The part where the kids ride absolutely everywhere on their bikes? that’s real. I know it doesn’t seem that way because your parents drove you all over the place, including to the school that was four blocks away, but I assure you it was absolutely true. I know - I essentially grew up a few miles outside of Hawkins Indiana except, you know, in Illinois.

And that was how it worked: Want to see a friend? Ride two or three miles down the road. The two of you want to get a coke from the elevator? Grab a couple of quarters (yes - 25¢) and ride another mile or so over to get one for each of you. Finished with the coke (or Fanta - they always had orange Fanta...)? Let’s go play in the creek (that’s pronounced "crick", incidentally) a couple of miles away.

And of course, eventually you had to ride home, ideally getting there before dark. All in all it was quite possible for us to ride 10-15 miles in a day from spot to spot, and most of that riding time it was on single speed bikes with coaster brakes and banana seats. We really didn’t think much about the distances, just the destinations. The bikes were freedom.

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Eventually I had a five speed Schwinn road bike with a light and dynamo on it, so then darkness wasn’t even a limitation. At that point I was a little older, and was allowed to ride into town, which opened the world up even further - I could go shopping for comic books and stop at The Kitch-Inn for a grilled cheese and a chocolate malt. I can verify that it is possible - though extremely inadvisable - to read a comic book while riding your bike back home. Hell - it was my primary motivation to learn to ride hands free...

Before I get too far down the nostalgia rabbit hole (I know - too late...), my point to all of this is that there was a time where neither we kids, nor the adults overseeing us, found the idea of purposeful travel across the rural countryside via HPV either impractical or unusual. That perspective, pervasive though it is, is an artifact of a much more recent sensibility.

It is true that distances to reach anything are further than they are in urban settings, but further doesn’t necessarily equal far. In the upper Midwest of the US, at least, the word "rural" doesn’t just describe houses sitting out in fields, alone. Rather, rural areas are a combination of country houses and fields and pastures and small towns, most of which offer some level of provisions - gas and food at least, and often an array of other services. Based upon life experience and a quick eyeball of the map I’d say most towns in northern Illinois are within 10-15 miles of another town, which leaves country residents always within +/-10 miles or so of supplies and, if they are lucky, within similar distance of their work (tho I suspect this may be getting less common).

So - while I’m not about to argue that people in these rural environs should move to a cycling only life for transportation, I would argue that self-powered transport is an option some of the time. I might also argue that, with the right type of machine, cycling could likely be an option for more of the trips than one might initially expect.

All of which leads us up to the question: What would the right type of machine be? What are the features that make for the ideal rural cycling machine?

Setting Criteria

As discussed initially, the urban bike contest identified a number of factors to be considered by contestants when developing human powered transportation for city settings. Some of the criteria for a rural bike may overlap, but there are definitely differences in the needs for a rural cycling machine. I would posit the following criteria:

• The machine must be capable of routinely covering longer distances - 10-20 mile round trips - comfortably on open secondary roads.

• It must be a human powered vehicle. It’s fine if it’s amenable to electric assist, but it cannot rely upon battery power.

• It must be able to contend with varied weather and road conditions. Generally this is going to mean:

  • Some type of effective fender system.

  • Being stable and functional with a load under high wind situations.

• Be capable of carrying cargo - the Bike Design Project specified their urban guidelines around a gym bag or a single bag of groceries, which makes sense for their purposes. For a rural lifestyle, a larger carrying capacity would be needed - I’d say the ability to manage 3-4 full paper grocery bags (or equivalent volume), with those groceries including at least one full gallon of milk. The machine should be able to manage that load on all rural road surfaces, including gravel, dirt, and hills.

• Be capable of remaining stable and upright under load. This criteria is borrowed from the Bike Design Project, but it makes intuitive sense to me. Your machine has to be able to stand safely on its own if you have to get off of it when it’s fully loaded. Otherwise you’ll break your eggs, have to chase your oranges down the road, and cry over your spilled milk...

• Must be capable of a reasonable average speed over flat(ish) terrain when operated by a rider who rides regularly. Here let’s say reasonable is an average of at least 10-12mph. I think any slower and it risks even dedicated riders avoiding use in favor of a car.

• Be a durable machine capable of many years of use with basic maintenance.

• Be capable of using aftermarket lighting and visibility systems for effective forward and rearward visibility.

• We are looking for a type of machine here, not a specific brand or new design. What sort(s) of HPV meets these criteria?

I’m excluding a few of the other criteria from the Bike Design Criteria. For example, they wanted their designs to incorporate anti-theft systems and built-in lighting systems. From my perspective there are multiple versions of both items readily available on the aftermarket, so it seems superfluous to require them here. I’d also worry about any such system that was incorporated into the machine in a specialized or bespoke fashion. One of the contestants for that competition had USB ports for charging lights, etc. To me, that’s a high tech solution that is really just built in obsolescence - cycling machines last for years, and USB-A is already on its way towards being replaced...

I’ve also not included the idea of being amenable to being carried up stairs. One of the things that rural settings generally have in abundance is storage space. Folks out in the country are likely to store their machines inside, but certainly not in the house. We can expect a garage or shed to be available.

Finally, you’ve seen me use the word “bike” here interchangeably with HPV and “cycle”. That’s intentional. I see no reason to artificially limit the number of wheels to two if there is a better option. Two-wheeled bicycles might be the best option for urban settings because of flexibility of movement and storage, but most of that advantage is irrelevant in rural settings.

So that’s it. Obviously I’ve got ideas of what might be the best candidate to fill this bill, and I’ll plan to let you know my thoughts about what and why in this space next time.

In the meantime, tho, let me know what HPV’s you think best meet the mark through the comments either on Facebook or thru Twitter. If you’ve got pictures of a specific machine I’d love to see those, or if you just want to describe it that’s great too. Maybe you’ll change my mind and, if there are enough of them I may take those suggestions and put them together in another post for everyone to learn from and enjoy.

Ok - time to ride...

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I write about cycling a lot here on Applied Life, but it’s not the only topic here. I also consider broader issues on the topic of transportation, discuss the effect of science and technology on daily life, and periodically review or discuss books and music. Very occasionally I just write about Things That Actually Kinda Suck. I also live in a 150-year old farmhouse that my Great Great Great Grandfather built, and periodically I and My Lovely Wife write about updating the house and about country living in general over at Prairie Homestead.

If you enjoy reading these posts please feel free to check out the others. If you want to know when new posts go up, please feel free to follow me on Facebookor on Twitter: @ErinJWade

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Death Growl

I love Heavy Metal.

When I write that, however, I’ve come to realize that I don’t really know what the reader will take away from the term “Heavy Metal”.

Growing up as I did in the 1970’s and 1980’s it was a clearer, or perhaps just simpler picture. I was introduced to this particular genre of music by a friend from around the corner - Chris. He loved it, and he his older brother Jeff, who also happened to be in a band, had what seemed to me at the time a voluminous collection of music, almost entirely in vinyl (as was the fashion at the time). And what appeared in that collection were bands with a characteristic set of sounds. Found ensconced in that music library was the likes of Judas Priest, Ozzy Osborne, Iron Maiden, Sammy Hagar, and Mötley Crüe, among others.

This music immediately spoke to the early-teenage me. Hard driving guitar work and pounding drum lines gave direction to an otherwise unfocused (and unfounded) adolescent male need for rebellion and and conflict. This was further bolstered by lyrical content that was often focused on themes of science fiction, fantasy, and historical events that spoke to me in ways far more relevant at the time than the vacuous topics of love gained, lost, or unrequited that dominated music played on the airwaves.

Those stories were typically told in a voice falling in the tenor range - first tenor, to be specific - often with an emphasis on the operatic, often wailing heights those tenors could reach. Consider, for example, Rob Halford and Judas Priest in the title track of Screaming for Vengence:

Or perhaps Geoff Tate and Queensrÿche on Queen of the Reich:

But in the intervening oh, say, 35+ years there have been changes in the heavy metal format, particularly in that vocal approach. Here I am specifically referring to the emergence of the _Death Growl_. This is a vocal approach that is now apparently prevalent enough to warrant its own Wikipedia page, and which is the auditory equivalent of listening to an octogenarian try to clear out half a century of backed up phlegm while also trying to sing (not that I have an opinion...).

Wikipedia suggests that the Death Growl is primarily associated with death metal, and this makes sense to me stylistically. It would also be fine with me, as far as it goes, because that’s a sub-genre of metal I have no need to delve into. The problem is that the Growl appears to be spreading like an itchy rash.

I am a regular user of Apple Music. This is, of course, Apple’s offering for a music subscription service in the vein of Pandora and Spotify. When I set that service up it asked me what my music preferences were so as to offer suggested songs and artists. At that time I included heavy metal among my choices and looked forward to getting recommendations for artists similar to those mentioned above; anticipated discovering the next Ronnie James Dio, as it were.

Apple Music offers up a weekly new artists playlist that appears to be modeled, more or less, around those specified preferences. It’s a mixed bag, within that algorithm, of stuff that I find I really enjoy, and other things that are utterly unlistenable. And in that last category is where virtually all of the new heavy metal it sends my way falls.

Virtually everything that has a true, hard pounding baseline and guitar crunch that Apple Music offers up to me has the non-melodic, throat destroying grunting within it. If I’m lucky it occurs right up front, within the first few seconds of the song, allowing me to dismiss it quickly. Sometimes, tho, it’s hidden away, saved for the chorus. I’ll be sitting there, banging along with the pounding bass line and starting to groove along with the lyrics and then... BAM! Hit in the face with a guttural slap.

Now, I understand that a fair amount of music appreciation is subjective, and just because I don’t find vocalists singing in a style of a 17-year old student post voice change trying too hard at his German pronunciation to be a desirable thing, I’m sure that others do. My objection here is more directed towards Apple Music’s insistence on continuing to foist these examples on me. I can assure you there is virtually never an example of a song with a growling vocal in it that, when appearing on a recommended list, I don’t give a thumbs down. Yet they still continue to appear.

This also occurs, incidentally, with songs that use detectable auto tune - each and every recommended song with this is routinely and summarily rejected (as is indeed right and salutary), and yet that effect also continues to pervade my recommendations. It’s like Apple thinks I really haven’t given these vocal variations enough of a chance and that, like a dry red wine, I just need to develop a taste for them.

In actuality my fear is that these vocal abominations are simply becoming so pervasive that Apple Music just doesn’t have anything else to offer me in the way of new music. In which case, I’d frankly rather simply be given a shorter list.

What I’d truly like to see is a list of options on Apple Music that actually screens out specific features of music. On that list I would obviously check off the Death Growl and Auto Tune, and I wouldn't mind having buttons for obviating pedal steel guitar and anything on which Mick Jagger sings.

Sadly, there does not appear to be a way to revisit the choices made when I first set up Apple Music, and Apple’s support on this topic suggests my only means of input is to either love or "dislike"a song.

Incidentally, "dislike" is not the opposite of "love", by a long stretch, and not nearly strong enough to adequately reflect my feeling about these songs. Still, it’s better than the change for iOS 13, which jettisoned "dislike" in favor of "suggest less like this". Apple wants to know what you "love", but clearly would rather not invite the expression of any negative opinions or ask why I’m disliking or (or asking to "suggest less" - and we’ll set aside the fact that it should be "suggest fewer").

Ugh.

All of which suggests it will be a cold day in hell (or, in new Apple parlance, a cold day in some place other than heaven) before I see anything like the options I’m suggesting.

But hey - a guy can dream, can’t he?

Trike Storage Revisited

Back when I first got the Catrike Pocket I fairly quickly realized that I would have to re-think storage. As I mentioned then, for my uprights I’ve long relied upon the basic and traditional hang from the wheels method. That approach has a lot to say for it. It’s extremely cheap and easy to set up. A couple of lag hooks from the local hardware store, 30 seconds with a drill for a pilot hold, and a minute or so with a hammer using the handle to screw the hooks in. Bam! Bike storage.

I adapted this approach for the Pocket and it worked well for me. Yes, it did involve doing a clean and jerk with the trike to flip it over and lift it up, but it’s only 33lbs and, to be honest, it spent the overwhelming majority of its time in the back of the car. I didn’t have to hang it up much.

Part of the rationale behind getting the new trike was because MLW was interested in riding. At about 5’1" tall she’s the perfect size for the Pocket, and so it made sense to pass that on to her and order the Expedition for myself. But while her height fits the Pocket well, it also means that she can’t even reach it when it’s hanging up on its hooks, much less get it down. If she was going to be able to use it whenever she wanted it needed to be stored in a fashion that wasn’t oriented explicitly towards an almost-average height American male.

For a large chunk of this past summer that just meant that the trike sat down on the garage floor to keep it accessible. That’s fine, as far as it goes - for much of the summer if the choice is between protecting the trikes or protecting the car, well, the trikes are going to win. But as the weather turns more crisp I begin picturing the act of scraping windshields, and while I love being out in the winter weather, that particular activity is not one I treasure. I needed to be able to get the car into the garage. It’s not a large space, so that meant the trikes had to be able to be stored _up_, above the cars. But it had to be stored in a way that allowed MLW to get her Pocket up and down without gaining 7 inches in height or developing a talent for Olympic weightlifting.

The old setup just added the Pocket to the existing bike storage in the garage:

This approach reflected the idea that I was adding the Pocket to our existing stable. I imagined, at the time, that I would be alternating use of the trike with my Cannondale, and perhaps occasionally using MLW’s mountain bike when the situation called for it, as I’ve done in the past. The reality turned out quite different, and I pretty much rode the Pocket all the time. In addition to that, some time ago MLW had indicated that she no longer found her upright bike comfortable, and the little Specialized hanging there belongs to my child, who has since outgrown it. It seemed that some rejiggering was called for.

We have a large machine shed on one corner of the property, and I relocated all of the uprights, except for the Cannondale, out there. I suspect I’m mostly being sentimental about the old girl, but I’m telling myself that I’d like to keep it at hand because it is the machine I ride when my trike is out of commission.

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Once the old guard was retired the next step was to sort out how to hang up the Pocket in a way that MLW would be able to get up and down. At the risk of being somewhat unoriginal, I decided to look into bike hoists. I have seen other people hang up their trikes using these, so it seemed likely it would work for us. The trick was getting one mounted high enough so that the trike wouldn’t be a noggin knocker for people when doing other work in the garage.

Now, I’ve referred to the hook system that I’ve typically used as being cheap - inexpensive - and it is. Lag hooks usually run less than $1-$2 or so at your local hardware store here in the Midwest. But it’s been a long time since I’d priced bike hoists, so I was surprised that our local-ish big-box store had them for less than $10.

To accomplish the height I built a mounting frame out of 2x4’s and attached it to the top of the garage ceiling joists. This raised the height of the hoist by about 3 1/2", and of course would raise the rest of the trike that same amount relative to just attaching it to the joist. While assembling and mounting the hoist itself is somewhat more complicated than putting in a couple of hooks, it’s still pretty straightforward: measure the distance between mounting points and set your pulleys at that distance apart (and make sure you have leave enough space between the pulley and the wall for the wheels and/or boom).

Determining mounting point was a bit of a question. On an upright bike the mounting points are generally going to be the handlebars and the back of the saddle. The hooks that the kit comes with are sized for that approach, and so equivalent positions on the trike have to be identified, and they have to be far enough apart for the trike to hang stable. I used the horizontal crossbar on back of the seat and the center of the front crossbar as the mounting points. I had considered the possibility that I’d have to do something to widen the front mounting point - e.g. set up a rope or similar across the handlebars but decided I’d try its without first. I could always add it later.

(I used the Expedition in these shots to make the hooks easier to see - the orange provides better contrast than the blue on the Pocket)

Mounting the hoist and getting it ready to lift was a matter of setting the two brackets at the measurement between the two mounting points, and then threading the rope through the pulleys. When I started screwing the brackets in to the 2x4’s I think I discovered why the kit was only $10 - the mounting screws it comes with looked substantial, looked like they were made from hardened steel, but might as well have been constructed of cheesecloth and spit. After I snapped the heads off of two of them I switched over to my own supply of screws.

Once it was all put together and mounted overhead I gave it a test run with the mounting points I selected. As might be expected, it does sway just a bit from side to side when being hoisted up and down, but the movement was easily manageable, so I left it as is, mounting to the front crossmember.

The additional height of the frame I built proved to be enough to get it over my head. Substandard screws aside, the hoist works exactly as advertised, including the vitally important catch and lock system that means when you stop pulling on the rope, the trike stops moving up - it just locks in place. The pulley system makes it little physical work to raise and lower - it’s not just doable by Olympic hopefuls. Probably the only caveat is that, I think because the pulleys are attached to the trike at different vertical locations, it doesn’t want to come down level, and so you have to periodically correct it so it doesn’t come down boom first. It’s a little fiddly in that respect.

I originally figured I would use the hoist for the Pocket and perhaps move the Pocket’s old hooks around a bit for the Expedition. However, with this working so well for the Pocket, and with the kit coming in at less than $10, the prospect of doing a clean and jerk with the slightly heavier and more considerably more awkward Expedition suddenly seemed considerably less attractive. I went back and bought a second kit and repeated the process (though I just went ahead and used my own hardware this time). So now what we have is this:

(If you peek in the back, you can see that the Cannondale was narrow enough to hang in a space against the garage wall. That narrow profile is a true advantage of upright bikes when it comes to storage. Which is good, because it’s likely to sit, stored there, for quite some time).

I’m expecting the Expedition, like the Pocket before it, will ultimately just spend most of its time in the car. But now both of the trikes can be stored up out of the way when needed, and the car can be put back inside ahead of scraping season.

Ok - it’s time to ride... (my trike).

An Experiment Ends

When I ordered my Catrike Expedition this summer I decided to give clipless pedals and shoes a try. Although I’ve been cycling off and on for most of my life, I’d never used them. I have a personal resistance to specialized cycling gear (clothing, specifically) in general, as I’ve discussed here a time or two before. Still, you really cannot judge a thing until you’ve tried it, so I ordered up some Shimano SPD sandals and decided to give it a go.

This weekend finds the end of that experiment, at least for now.

I ordered a second Terratrike Comfort Pedal Conversion Kit for the Expedition (I already have them on on my Pocket) a few weeks ago in anticipation of the change in season.

I ride year round and, although my feet absolutely run hot, I knew there would be a time in the not-too-distant future where even committing the fashion crime of wearing socks with the sandals would not be enough. Part of that personal resistance to specialized gear is that, were I to continue to use the SPD side of the pedals, I’d need to buy at least one, and probably two additional pair of cycling shoes to get through late autumn and the winter. That can get spendy in a hurry and, frankly, I’m somewhat skeptical that I’d be able to find winter cycling boots that would be sufficiently warm for riding on the open prairie.

I’m also finding that I’m getting knee and ankle pain with the SPD setup, which is not an issue I’ve ever had before. I’ve tried some adjustments in the length of the boom to alleviate this, but without success. I suspect that the static position of the foot is part of the issue there for me. We’ll see if that resolves with the switch back.

I’ve found that, for whatever reason, every time I’ve looked for the heel slings on the TerraTrike site they are out of stock. When I purchased them for the Pocket I got them from Bicycle Man, and went to do so this time, but they also did not have them in stock (they are in stock there as of today, however, if you are looking). So I looked and was somewhat surprised to find that they are also available on Amazon.

I described in detail the process of installing them on the standard Catrike pedals back when I put them on the Pocket. The biggest part of it is realizing that you will not be able to use the little backing plate that comes with them - it does not fit on the Catrike pedals. You can get nuts to replace that plate however, and then it works fine. Being aware of that this time made putting them on a lot faster (and a lot less frustrating). I also sorted out a way to do it without removing and leaving off the inside Allen screw on the pedals. I was able to block off the nuts sufficiently with a screwdriver blade to hold them still while I tightened them.

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The TerraTrike heel slings are designed to be used alone, but I push and pull on pedals when I ride, and the design doesn’t support that. On the Pocket I used inexpensive Velcro tie wraps, and I’ve found them to work quite nicely for that purpose. This was my plan this time as well (the Velcro tie wraps come in big spools - I’ve got a lot of them), but when I was looking up the slings on Amazon, one of the related products was a basic toe clip - the Evo Double Quick Strapless Toe Clip (I’m not sure what quality is supposed to make it "double quick"...). They were less then $10 bucks for the pair, so I figured they were worth a try.

The reviews for the toe clips on Amazon suggest that some people struggled to install them on their pedals for different reasons - sizing of the clips, or length of the hardware. I did not find any of those difficulties applied for the Catrike pedals. In fact, the only challenge was the same one you get with the heel slings - the otherwise very cool double-sided pedals give you a tiny space to work in when it comes to putting nuts on to bolts inside the pedal space.

My trick for this included a couple of things:

• I put the heel slings on first, which meant that the weight of them kept the pedal upright while putting on the toe clips. I’d like to say that I made this choice because I am a brilliant strategist, but it was just simple serendipity. But being upright held the pedal in the perfect position for installing these.
• I put the nut in the box end of a hand wrench, which was small enough to hold it in position while I got the screw started. I say held in position - I didn’t turn with the wrench - there’s not enough space for that. And only to get it started - if you screw it all the way in you won’t be able to pull the wrench out.
• I did the same trick with the screwdriver blade inserted between the nut and the side of the pedal to hold the nut still while I screwed it in the rest of the way. I really wish this had occurred to me back when I was working on the pedals for the Pocket...

The end result is here:

The design is a little less elegant, perhaps, than using clipless pedals and shoes, but now I have a foot retention setup that will work with just about any pair of kicks. They are easier to get the foot into than the setup using the Velcro cross straps because I can rotate my foot into the clips sideways. The cross straps require you to reach forward and put them on by hand. An initial test ride - about a quarter mile down the road and back - suggested they work more or less like you’d expect, including supporting pulling back on the pedals in addition to pushing.

I was a little concerned that the clips might not allow enough room in the toe area for my big winter boots, but that was a question easily tested:

The clips stretch a bit with the boot in them, but the give allows them to fit. Probably the only remaining question will be whether that give still works when it is very cold out - plastic can get brittle in winter. I always have a spool of the Velcro tie wraps in the pannier bags on the trike (they are useful for so many things!), so I’ll have a backup if they break.

I’ll be trying this setup out over the next several weeks to see how I like them, with the maiden voyage likely to occur a little later today. Details to come in the future.

Now it’s time to ride...

The Good Old Sounds

Almost two years ago now I was pining (or whining) over what to do about my old Onkyo audio setup now that it had been functionally replaced by my iOS devices and a set of headphones. As predicted in that post, I’ve spent much of my time since then simply listening to music in my headphones and letting the receiver sit, collecting dust.

That is, until recently. A month or so ago there was a convergence of factors that led to my reapproaching this issue.

The first was the death of my Apple Thunderbolt Monitor. This is a 27” monitor that was connected to a Mac Mini that is used for work. I went to fire up that device one day and it just did... nothing. Which is to say that while the Mac Mini was running fine, the thunderbolt monitor resolutely refused to respond.

I have backup systems for this - I can (and usually do) work on the Mini thru my iPad using Screens. This works a treat, and means that I’m not chained to a desk while doing the work. But the death of that monitor changed the landscape - somewhat literally - in my office.

It’s large, if elegant device, that monitor, and it occupied a lot of the acreage on the credenza upon which it sat. After I verified that it wasn’t going to mystically rise from the dead I took it off the credenza. And after a little while I realized that this provided open space.

Open space that could be occupied by something else. Like perhaps speakers...

I dug them out of the spare room and brought them in to the office. My immediate first impression was primarily centered around their size. These are Advent Baby II’s, and they are - or were - considered bookshelf speakers. This, I suppose, in contrast with the taller floor speakers that used to be a common part of sound systems (I have a pair Yamahas that meet this description stored away in a closet). But bookshelf or no, they seem big.

They are much larger than the types of speakers we commonly see nowadays. Whether attached to a computer, or surround sound system, or the common varieties of Bluetooth units out there, the general presentation of speakers is now typically much smaller. Part of this, I suppose, is a conceptual difference about how one will relate to these items. Back in the day, your stereo system - and particularly the speakers - were a part of the decor, a thing to be proudly displayed. While there are exceptions, the rule for the current era seems to be that a speaker is there to be heard but not seen.

To make this work I dragged an Apple Airport Express back into service. For those who are unfamiliar, the Apple Airport Express is from the era when Apple made WiFi routers. The Airport name reflected the full-size home routers, while the Express was conceived more or less as a WiFi network extender. The other feature that differentiated it from the larger model is that it has an analogue audio output that allowed you to hook up to audio systems like my Onkyo receiver. An additional bonus is that the Express connects to devices over WiFi, so you don’t have the issues that can come with Bluetooth.

I had considered using an older Apple TV (the original hockey-puck size design), but that model only has digital audio out, which requires an adapter to interface with the analogue inputs on the Onkyo. I _do_ actually have an adapter for this purpose - occasionally I’ll find myself ordering aspirational devices like that on Amazon - but the adapter requires its own power source (taking an outlet space up and so on). Given all of that, I opted for the simpler approach of the Airport Express - and besides, it was otherwise unused, just occupying space in my drawer-o-technology.

My Airport Express is a post-2012 model, which looks for all the world like a white Apple TV. It’s a small, low-profile device that sits quite nicely and unobtrusively on top of the receiver.

Once the speakers were plugged in and the Airport Express hooked up to the network and jacked into the back of the Onkyo (I connected it to the CD inputs - odds are against my ever having a free-standing CD player needing that spot in the future) it was just a matter of connecting my iPad to the Airport Express to get the music playing.

And this revealed the problem.

No - not any problem with how it hooked up. The equipment all works perfectly. Despite the fact that all three components - Airport Express, Onkyo receiver, and the Baby Advents - are old, and respectively more so as you move down that list - it all just works as designed. I first got the Advents when I was an undergrad, buying them used from another student who was looking for some cash. I was, I think, a sophomore when that purchased occurred, making them somewhere in the neighborhood of 28 years old. I’ll admit that I did have them refurbished several years ago by the folks at Sounds Classic in Rockford, but that was also, you know, several years ago.

The problem, such as it is, is that they sound great.

I mean really good. Rich, deep bass, a warm, pleasant midrange, and yet able to play distinct highs without being shrill. This setup, frankly, puts all of the modern audio equipment I own to shame.

Back when I first wrote about the idea of putting this back into service I mostly figured that all of the effort would be pointless because it really was better to use my headphones:

And yet, here I am, myself, listening to my music on a set of Bluedio Hurricane headphones that I purchased for less than $30 on Amazon, when I should be setting up that audio system and listening to it that way.

Shouldn’t I?

I had not considered, either then or now, the possibility that it would make my other audio equipment feel, well, less adequate (I’ll stop shy of saying inadequate here).

This doesn’t change the fact that most of the time when I am listening to music I am not sitting in my office. But it does mean that now, occasionally, when I’m working I can have very high quality - one might even say high fidelity - musical accompaniment. And while it’s low on convenience, listening to music on this system is akin to having an occasional glass of a fine, dry red wine. It’s something that you should treat yourself on occasion if you can.

Practicality with a Side Order of Good Luck

As I’ve mentioned here a few times before, I really enjoy it when I get an opportunity to use my trike for actual transportation - for a practical purpose. There’s nothing wrong with riding for pleasure and/or exercise, of course, and that’s what I do most of the time, but there’s a special, bonus level of satisfaction when one can achieve that exercise and enjoyment while doing something that actually needs to be done. One of my more frequent ways to do this is when the opportunity presents to ride to my PO Box. This is especially true because the box is often empty, or just full of junk mail (does anyone want the penny saver paper any more?), and when that occurs, I can at least feel like I got some exercise out of it.

I was gearing up to take advantage of this very opportunity when a thought occurred, a realization that maybe, just maybe I could stack up that practical ride accomplishment by killing two birds with one stone!

Ok - it’s the little things, right? That, or maybe I’m just a little dull...

But bear with me. A weekend or two ago I ran out of gas for the grill. This is one of the firstest of first world problems, I realize, but it was my problem to solve nonetheless. As you’d imagine, this typically involves throwing the cannister into the car and going into town to one of the half-dozen locations that allows you to do an exchange. And it’s been a couple of weekends since it happened because I keep forgetting to grab the empty and put it in the car. But maybe, I thought, just maybe, I could take it with me on the trike...

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There were a couple of potential problems with this idea. First, I’d have to figure out exactly how to attach the canister to the trike. If I had a trailer for the trike that would be a simple thing. But while I do plan to have a trailer for my trike, my progress on that project has been somewhat less than rapid. So I’d have to find a different way.

The other problem was that I wasn’t actually 100% sure there would _be_ a place by the post office to exchange the canister. When I mentioned taking it into town above, I was referring to Mendota - a small town, to be sure, but a big enough place to have a grocery store, a few gas stations, a CVS... you get the idea. But that’s not where my PO Box is. It’s in a little slip of a village that’s considerably smaller (but where the post office offers 24-hour access to the PO Boxes so, you know, a dork on his trike doesn’t have to worry about arriving before it closes).

I decided this second problem was a minor one - if I came up short on LP opportunities, and least I’d have had a ride; and, in fact, I’d have a ride with a bit of extra weight to enhance the workout.

So I set to strapping the tank on.

A 5-gallon LP tank doesn’t seem like a very big thing, really, when you are just setting it in the back of your car (even when that car is a Honda Fit). But like a moose, they are bigger than you think. I used the three strand elastic strap that comes with the Utah Trikes rear rack, supplemented it with a couple of additional bungee straps, tied it all to the rear rack on the Expedition, and headed out.

Shortly into my ride I realized that I had not brought along my wallet. However, I do always try to bring along a small amount of cash so that I have options if, say, I ride past an interesting looking location that offers adult beverages. It’s usually about $20, so I mentally crossed my fingers and kept pedaling.

Thomas Jefferson apparently did not say "I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it", but I’ve always identified with that saying because it’s typically rung true for me - as a general rule if I just strike out doing nothing but hoping for the best, I generally just strike out.

Which is to say that I was expecting to find either: A) No LP tanks available at my destination; or 2) that the price for 5 gallons of LP was somewhat north of my $20 budget. Not to mention: iii) the very real possibility that my tank attachment arrangement might fail and leave me pedaling furiously trying to catch up to a runaway canister...

But I kept pedaling.

There’s a general store (yup - rural Illinois) a couple of blocks down from the post office, and sure enough, they had the telltale cage of cans out in front of the store. I double-checked the existence of my $20 bill and there was Andrew Jackson staring back at me (probably contemplating acts of oppression). So I went in and asked the young man at the counter how much I’d have to give for an LP exchange.

The price: $16.99

So I had enough, even with tax, and got a little change back too. The young man and I chatted briefly about the trike - he’d never seen one of them before - and the fact that another man in town has a Tesla, which also wasn’t anything he’d expected to see. And then I strapped the new, full canister to the back of the trike.

According to this site, an empty 5-gallon LP tank weighs between 17 and 18 lbs empty, and between 34 and 35 lbs when full. I could absolutely feel it over the rear wheel - there was a mild wobble to the back end that isn’t typically present. As you might expect, the additional weight slowed me down a bit as well - Cyclemeter tells me I brought in my slowest time for this route ever on the Expedition.

But I wasn’t trying to set any speed records - practicality was the name of the game for this ride. And there, I feel like we have a winner. The rack on the Expedition absolutely worked as designed, and the trike dutifully lived up to its name. I couldn't have been more pleased with that or with my luck for the day.

Well, that’s not entirely true. There was one more thing:

As I rode up into the driveway it started to spit just a bit of rain. And after I pulled the trike into the garage it started to pour.

So: bonus luck!

Thing is, I’m a little afraid to leave the house now, because I’m worried I may have used up my entire allotment for the year...

Terracycle Adjustomatic Bottle Mount

It goes without saying that the design and layout of a recumbent trike is different than that of a traditional diamond frame, or DF, bicycle. Many of those differences are exactly what the Tri-cyclist is looking for - different (I’d say better) seating arrangement, reclined position, lower profile to the wind, no need for a kickstand - and the list goes on.

However, while it does seem that recumbent trikes are gaining in popularity the reality is that DF bikes are still by far the majority. This means that while the cycling accessories world - which is massive, to be sure - predominantly develops its products for DF bikes, and that’s what we have to work with. Often this can be ok, but at other times it involves compromises. One of the more glaring examples of this that one encounters early on in the trike experience is the water bottle cage.

The cage in repose

The boom is an obvious location for the water bottle cage - it’s easily accessible, it’s visible, and it’s wide enough for the mounting point. But (you knew there’d be a "but", right?) it lays the water bottle down at something like a 5° angle - not perfectly flat, but close enough to it that a full water bottle with a drinkable spout is inevitably going to leak.

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This isn’t really a problem on most DF bikes, where the cage is put inside the frame either on the upright seat post portion, or on the forward front bar, which is at an angle, yes, but far more acute and thus less prone to bottle weep (and really, as we look forward, could we make the term "bottle weep" a thing - I think if we try it could really catch on...).

That angled position also means that the bottle cage is not suited for carrying other types of containers at all. For myself - though it may seem sacrilegious - an early-ish morning ride is made much better when accompanied by the presence of a nice cup of coffee. But if there is a travel mug out there that won’t leak precious brown liquid when laid at a 5° angle, I haven’t found it. And once you add cream and sugar to your beverage you have A) a delightful beverage, yes, but 2) something you really don’t want drizzling all over your machine.

I cannot recall whether I’d first seen the Terracycle Adjustomatic Bottle Mount on the the Terracycle website, or in a Facebook group (Facebook overall is kind of a dumpster fire, but the groups - especially when well moderated - are a relative shining light), but I know that I’ve seen pictures of trikes using this product. At $45 it certainly isn’t as inexpensive as just laying your bottle down at an angle, so I’d put off purchasing one for quite a while. Still, as I rolled toward the Farmondo this year, presenting (for me) an extended distance ride, it seemed a more justifiable purchase because it also allows for mounting two bottles or containers instead of just one.

The product itself is CNC machined, black anodized aluminum, and it looks just as good and sturdy as that description would suggest. It literally bolts right on to the bottle holder mounting point on the boom with little to no difficulty. All the bolts needed come with it, so you just have to supply the 3mm Allen wrench. There are multiple mounting holes on both sides for the cages, so you can choose the height that works best for you. The hardest part - and it isn’t very hard - is setting and deciding upon the right angle for mounting it. It has three preset points, or you can simply choose any angle you like. You can order it with bottle cages from Terracycle, or simply use your own. I’d purchased a pair of black plastic cages from Amazon back when I’d ordered my Expedition, so I used those.

You do want to be sure that you get the set screw for the angled portion set tightly - I was apparently too gentle the first time out and it came loose and started to lean. I’ve since tightened it and have had no further difficulty.

It works exactly as designed. I installed mine a few days ahead of the group ride, in early September, and have been out several times with it since. It holds my Kleen Canteen in an upright position so as to minimize issues from the aforementioned bottle weep, and does, in fact, do a fine job of carrying a travel mug. It rained for almost the entirety of the Farmondo this year - a low-level, but persistent drizzle - and it was comforting to have hot coffee at hand to warm things up a bit. It will be a nice addition to my winter riding as well.

I have clipped it - or rather the cage attached to it - a few times with my foot while getting on the trike. Because of the way it sits and where, I have to take more care when stepping into position to sit down. This has not been a hard adjustment to make.

As I noted above, the device does have multiple holes on each side, and the Terracycle site suggests that other things could be mounted to them - they note that they might be offering a computer mounting stub that would fit (though there is no link, and I don’t quickly find such an accessory on the site). I can easily see the more creative folks out there finding multiple additional uses for what device. For my part, it does what it is designed to do quite nicely.

I am slightly fond of orange…

Farmondo 2019

For my third consecutive year I decided to enter the Farmondo - the group ride put on by Tempo Velo bike club, based in Sterling, IL. The event is three separate group rides of different distances - 20, 43, and 80 miles. Each year I’ve participated in the 43 mile ride. It is not a race - not technically - just a group ride where you are timed, your time is rank-ordered against the other riders, and the information is then publically posted for the world to see.

I was excited for the ride this year because it’s my first year with my Catrike Expedition. I have been finding that the Expedition is faster than the Pocket that I’ve been riding the past couple of years, and I wanted to see if that would hold true over a longer ride (43 miles is the longest I’ve ridden thus far, and so far I only go that distance once a year - in this event), particularly over the hilly terrain that the Farmondo covers (if there is a hill around Sterling, they’ve found it for this ride).

So it was with that in mind that I headed out last Sunday morning with the trike in the back of my Honda Fit.

Knowing that there was rain in the forecast, and that the event ran regardless of weather, I’d purchased rain gear the day before and packed it up in the pannier bags. I also spent time the day before getting all of my lights on to the charger and setting up a new battery mount for my phone since I would be using it to track my ride stats and to listen to podcasts or audiobooks on the ride (in one ear only, of course).

Things did not go as planned.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

It’s about 45 minutes from my home to the starting point in Sterling. I gave myself plenty of time to get there, or so I thought. But while I was riding through Dixon - about 35 minutes from home - I realized that I had not taken any of the lights off of the charger. They were sitting at home, happily sipping electrons off the grid and, most importantly, not on the trike or in the car with me in any way, shape, or form.

After a bit of self-flagellation I mentally set this aside - nothing I could do about it at that moment; I certainly did not have time to go back - and continued on course.

When I got there I looked at the immediate weather, which was a light mist, and looked at the radar, which seemed to be offering more of the same going forward. I made the executive decision not to put on the rain gear (though I did keep it in the panniers), reasoning that I would get damp, but not so much so that I’d be uncomfortable, and not nearly enough to justify the trade-off against the bulk of the rain gear.

Then I hauled out the trike and started to get things set up - flag on (I almost always just keep that in the car, so I had it along) and went to hook up the battery for my phone and found that it was, well, also not there.

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I’d thought that I had put it in the mounting position the day before, but I must have set it aside while working on prepping other things. I say "must have", because finding it "not there" led to a search of the car to see if it had just fallen off, if I’d set it somewhere else, etc. But it was simply not present.

This offered up an interesting problem, given that it limited what I could do with the phone. I’ve got an iPhone XS Max, which has pretty good battery life, but GPS is a battery hog. I’d been doing longer rides without the backup battery tho, and it had come thru when I left the screen dark most of the time and just checked in on my pace periodically. This is what I determined I would do.

But processing that threw me a bit and, more importantly, slowed me down. So I found that, as I was walking the trike up to the starting line in the parking lot, they announced "riders ready?"

I was not.

I pulled the trike up to the side of the group and mounted. I did not have my helmet or gloves or glasses on yet. I reasoned thru my options, put on my helmet and clipped in, and put everything else in my sweatshirt pocket, figuring I could put them in as I rode. Because I was to the side and not in the pack, I let the entire group go by - I didn’t want to cut anyone off - and took my position in the absolute rear of the pack. It’s a timed event, so this didn’t seem like a problem. I’d be compared against my start and stop time, not my position in the pack.

All good, right? I rode forward down the first straightaway, just behind the rest of the group. I rounded the first corner, rode forward another hundred feet, and heard a "click" on the pavement.

I think anyone who rides regularly can tell you that you become accustomed to a certain array of sounds as a part of the experience. There is the sound of tires on water as you go through a puddle, of stones as the come up against a fender or the frame, and all of that occurs against the backdrop of the mechanical sounds of the machine.

The "click" was not a familiar sound.

I knew the sweatshirt pocket was not an ideal location for storing anything, being open on the sides. It’s not ideal in general, and even less so in the reclined position of the trike. But it was only going to be for a short time, right? Well, it was clear that I’d dropped something, though I wasn’t sure what.

I turned around and rode back. I passed the truck that brings up the rear of the group and said "dropped something" to him as he went by. Another couple dozen feet and I found my reading glasses (stoopid middle-aged eyes) there on the asphalt, miraculously undamaged. I picked them up and turned around and started pedaling back the other way, now behind that pace truck.

The beginning part of the race in Sterling crosses a four-lane section of Route 2 at a stoplight-controlled intersection. The police actually cordon that off for the riders. Unsurprisingly, however, when the pace truck went thru - visually signifying the end of the group - one of the two patrol cars, the one dealing with traffic to my left, or closest to me, pulled away. This left me stopped at the stoplight, and falling further behind.

The other officer had remained and saw me. After a cycle of traffic he very generously stopped and directed traffic to get me through the intersection ahead of the changing light and got me on my way (my enduring thanks to him!).

I was now far enough behind now that I could no longer see any of the group. After the stoplights they make a left turn through the neighborhood, which took them out of view. I’ve ridden this ride twice before, so I knew that was the case, but I honestly wasn’t sure which left turn the route took, and I’d been watching the traffic, not the group, while I’d been sitting at the intersection. That uncertainty actually caused me to briefly wonder if I should just pack it in and call it a day, but I took my best guess at it, and about four blocks later came across the pace truck, patiently waiting for me (my enduring thanks to him as well). A block or two later and I could see the tail end of the group having turned right at Challand Middle School and followed them. I felt much better actually having people in view.

I was also breathing pretty hard at this point, since my pace was a little higher than it might otherwise have been this early on, trying to make up for lost time and catch the group. And I don’t care how many times you tell yourself that your position in the group doesn’t matter because it’s an individually timed event, you still want to catch up to (and pass people in) the group. Plus, you know, I’d lost actual time by turning around and by sitting at the stoplight.

The Rest of the Ride

Once I got past that comedy of errors, everything started to level out and work just fine. To ensure sufficient battery life for ride tracking I opted not to listen to any audio on the ride. This made the ride a more meditative experience in some ways. I ride that way sometimes outside of this, but this was a long ride, and I usually like some entertainment as a part of things.

That decision allowed me a little extra battery life for some video and pics along the way:

The video is from mile 7 of the 43-mile group route. I’m probably going 14 or 15 miles an hour in that segment. And importantly, I think I’m gaining on someone (!).

If you like the scenery of the Illinois countryside (and I do) this is a lovely ride overall. It’s also interesting to me because your ride takes you past at least four cemeteries - one in the town of Sterling (where you turn left to stay on the route, I gambled, and turned out to be right, thankfully), and the others mostly tiny rural affairs that dot the countryside out here.

It did rain for the majority of the ride - you can see that the sky is steel gray pretty much throughout. My executive decision on the rain gear turned out to be a good one. I wore linen pants for the ride as well as a rash guard. Both sets of items have the benefit of drying quickly (linen is a great material for warm weather where you want to cover up rather than using sunscreen - I prefer it to spandex for riding). The only fly in the ointment was my cotton sweatshirt, which got very hot about four miles in, but I didn’t want to stop and lose more time taking it off. The upside to that was that by mile 10 it was so thoroughly drenched that it was no longer warm, so it ultimately worked out.

Aftercare

The folks at Tempo Velo always have a spread out for the end of the race - tacos made on the spot, beer and soda available (and the beer is always interesting - I had a Harp), and this year they had custard from Culver’s in the mix as well. It was a smaller group at the end this time, most likely due to the rain, but those who came and rode got to eat and drink well.

Results

After the ride the results get posted online. It takes a little while for this to all get done, but once it is, it’s there for you to consider. My goal this year, and every year, is to do better than last. And as I mentioned, I also wanted to see how much the Expedition seemed to contribute to increased speed/decreased time.

Obviously, my muck-up at the beginning had an impact on my time. I turned around, I got stopped at a stoplight that the event timing expects you to simply be able ride through, and I spent the first several minutes of the ride futzing around with getting gloves on and such, which is not an ideal path towards increased speed.

So here’s the deal: I was faster than last year.

That 3:17:53 for this year compares to 3:20:46 last year. I’ll grant that it’s not a lot faster, but it’s still an improvement of nearly three minutes (2:52), all with a series of unintentional self-induced impediments along the way.

In terms of how much of it is due to the new trike, and how much is due to me, I’m gonna chalk most of it up to the trike. I did condition my way up to the ride distance this year, but my training was fairly similar to last year. My average speed for the ride, however, was up from 13.09 mph last year to 13.29 mph this year (according to Cyclemeter), and I was definitely carrying more weight in terms of both the trike (which is two lbs heavier than the Pocket) and the rain gear in the bags.

And despite all of the chaos, Cyclemeter, which tracks stopped time (the race timing does not - it’s all event time) finds that I was sitting stopped for less time this year than last. I didn’t purposely stop this year or last, so all of the stopped time both years was in situations where traffic required it - e.g. waiting at road crossings and such. So apparently I did have some good luck in there, even tho it didn’t feel like it in the moment.

All in all, and the comedy of errors aside, it was (and always is) a fun event. I was once again the only trike rider in the 43 mile event, but I was not the only trike rider that day. Another gentleman, with a Villager he’d rode in the 20 mile event, and I met and chatted for a few minutes afterward. It was good to see and touch base with a like-minded soul.

And good to put this ride down in the books.

Rainy day cycling

Today is the Farmondo in Sterling, and I’ve woken up to steel-gray skies and wet ground. The radar shows rain across the region, including Sterling, where the ride begins and ends.

But the ride must go on.

This was forecast - not a surprise - so I purchased rain gear yesterday in preparation. It’s packed into the panniers on the Expedition and I suspect the fenders are going to earn their keep today.

It does look like the weather will clear in an hour or two, so fingers crossed on that. Either way, I’ll report back.

Des Plaines River Trail

Sometimes traveling for work offers up cycling opportunities. This past week I found myself with the chance to try out the Des Plaines River Trail.

This is a relatively long trail, as far as it goes - 56.2 miles, according to the TrailLink app (from which that screenshot is taken), covering an impressive stretch of territory across Lake County and into Cook in the northeastern corner of Illinois. Surfaces listed on the app include asphalt, crushed stone, dirt, and gravel. The section I rode - a 7.82 mile stretch from just north of Route 132 to Route 173 in Gurnee Illinois - was predominantly crushed stone.

As the name implies, this is a lowland trail. It runs along the Des Plaines River, and includes multiple backwater marshes in direct view of the trail. The surface is well cared for - in my experience, many lowland trails in Illinois - paved or otherwise - struggle with the obvious combination of water erosion and limited maintenance budgets - there are often potholes and ruts due to wear and water undermining. It had rained earlier that day and portions of the trail were a little soft (I was glad to have the fenders on the Expedition - first real test of them), but it was otherwise in excellent condition - no holes, no washed away sections, and any undulating sections were minimal and avoidable. I was honestly impressed with the condition of the trail. I will note that it was probably too soft to be comfortable riding on a road bike, and it was definitely slower going even on the trike.

It’s a winding affair, and it passes thru multiple parks along this section. One of my first views as I came around a curve into the early part of my ride was of high tension power lines, and I thought "well great" (drip some sarcasm on that), but my fears that I’d be spending a lot of time in the company of electrical transmission were quickly allayed, and much of the ride is lovely, with an interesting variety of scenery given that it runs thru a river valley.

There are, of course, the marshes and wetlands periodically dotting the trail

And I saw multiple white egrets on the ride. They were shy, and difficult to catch on camera, though I did glimpse this specimen thru the trees:

He’s far away and hard to see, but a little editing brings him up somewhat closer:

According to my Peterson Field Guide for Birds of North America this fine fellow could either be a snowy egret or a great egret. Differentiators would size and the color of the bill, but I didn’t catch those details in person, and the picture doesn’t resolve enough to tell.

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Portions of this section of trail run along railroad tracks, and they are absolutely in use. During my 80-minute ride three trains went by - one Amtrak and two freights. Anyone who has lived near trains knows you can hear them from a considerable distance, so you’ll know when they are there, and you will briefly be within 20 feet of the tracks.

The trail sometimes winds tightly enough to allow for some fun on the curves, sliding a bit on the crushed stone.

There are also brief sections of rise and fall - an unusual feature, in my experience, for a waterway trail.

In addition to wetlands, portions of the trail are open prairie...

...while others are fairly heavily wooded (and some of the wetland areas are in the woods as well). The trail cuts its way thru County and Sterling Lake Forest Preserves. I was riding at the end of the day, and working against sunset as I returned to the start.

The impending darkness is why I stopped at Rt 173. This was where I’d planned to ride to, offering up a 15-16 mile round trip that I could get in before complete nightfall. And I did manage to reach that point before dark.

However, on the way back the wooded sections were dark enough I switched my headlight from flashing to steady in order to light my way.

This is a fairly heavily populated area, and there were others on the trail - cyclists, hikers, and at least one runner (and it’s also an equestrian trail; I saw no horses, but I did see... evidence of their passing) - but it was not crowded. Since, as I mentioned, I was there at the end of the day, it may be busier at other times. The trail does have several road crossings, some of which are relatively busy, so you do want to take care. The signs - like several others I’ve seen on trails - indicate that you should dismount your machine and walk it across. I’m quite sure this virtually never happens, but the signs are there for the liability coverage, I suppose.

All in all it was a nice ride over some beautiful territory. I’d note too that this section of the trail is, quite literally, just down the road from the north entrance to Six Flags Great America. I could see this as a great option for a cyclist to hit in the morning before taking the kids to see Bugs and Daffy at the amusement park.

Cat(trike) Fight - Expedition vs. Pocket

Ok - not really a fight, but I’ve been riding the Expedition now for three weeks, covering a little over 200 miles, which seems long enough on the new machine, and away from the Pocket, to be able to make a reasonable comparison. And I thought some of this information might be useful first for anyone who also has a Pocket who might be considering moving to an Expedition, and secondarily to folks thinking about moving from a trike with a 20" rear wheel to one with a 26" wheel.

There are differences in equipment between the two machines. I detailed that a couple of weeks ago, and you can look back if you are curious. But for now, let the Cat(trike) fight begin!

Size

The Expedition feels bigger than the Pocket and, given that it is bigger, it should. But when I say "bigger", I would say that it gives the impression of being more substantial as opposed to feeling heavier. I don’t really get the impression that I’m hauling more machine around in terms of it being more work. It’s just more substantial.

What this does translate to, tho, is comparatively less of the "go-kart" feel you get with the Pocket. This is not suggest that the Expedition is not a lot of fun to ride, but the sensation is different. To make an automotive comparison, the Pocket handles reminiscent of, say, a Triumph Spitfire or Mini Cooper S, while the Expedition is closer to a late 70’s Camaro (these may be somewhat idiosyncratic examples)...

(Yes - that boy is painfully young, and even I can see the teenage attitude)

All of which is to say that it handles well, but it’s not quite as immediate a handling experience as with the Pocket. This may change with additional experience, but I suspect not much - I think this is a factor of additional length.

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That additional size does also translate into additional carrying capacity, and I am finding that the new pannier bags work quite nicely. I can easily see carrying back a growler from a brewpub in them. It’s also pretty clear that I’m going to have an easier time hooking up my trailer when I finally get around to finishing it.

The size does have an impact on transportation as well - at least potentially so. The Expedition does fit in my Honda Fit (it fits in the Fit). The primary difference between the two machines is that, with the Pocket I can also bring along a passenger. To accommodate the extra length of the Expedition I have to move the passenger seat all the way forward on its track, lean it forward, and remove the headrest (because it blocks the right side rear view mirror).

I should say that this scenario involves me making no changes to the trike - I could put in the boom and would likely gain several inches. However, I did try this once and found it very difficult to slide in (by design, I believe). I’ve received several suggestions regarding this, including carrying along a rubber mallet to assist with moving it and putting talcum on the boom to make it slide more easily. I think these are good ideas, and I may try them in future, but the overwhelming majority of the time I don’t really need to accommodate a passenger, so the motivation is fairly low. And I could either strap it to the roof or set up a trailer with the car if I really need to (I do have one). As such, this is more of a difference than an inconvenience. And realistically, over the past couple of years my car has essentially become a rolling trike garage anyway. Passengers may just have to find their own way home.

Speed

One of the more common questions asked by people new to recumbent trikes is whether they are faster than Diamond Frame (DF) bikes, and/or how fast a given trike will go. Answers to this often fall into the accurate but unsatisfying range of either "it depends" or "it’s up to the motor (you)". Setting aside the fact that there is almost certainly a technical, gear-limited top speed for each machine, it’s generally a frustrating example of the real world failing to provide simple answers.

For my part, I had hoped that the Expedition would be faster than the Pocket, but based upon other people’s descriptions and experiences, I didn’t necessarily expect that to be the case. Yes, the Expedition has a larger rear wheel with the same (well - similar - 10 Speed vs. 9 speed cassette) gearing, and so technically a higher top speed capability. But I cannot say that I was routinely pedaling past the gear limits in top gear on the Pocket, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

And - before we get to what I’ve found thus far - there is an introspective part of the middle-aged me that wonders at why I’d want to go faster. While I’d love to ride more for actual transportation, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of the time I ride for pleasure and exercise. What exactly is the upside to making that go by more quickly?

But the truth is that there’s still a fair amount of that kid with the Triumph in there. He’s not necessarily rational, and might have purchased a series of other poorly conceived sporty cars over the years to meet that need (but I digress...).

So what is the deal with speed? Well:

Yeah - The Expedition is faster.

That’s right, hands down, full stop - it’s just faster. What you see in the graph is a comparison between the lifetime average of the Pocket, the Expedition, and (for fun) my Cannondale SR400, which was my primary machine before getting the Pocket. And as can be seen, the Expedition is faster than both of them.

Now, there are some qualifications needed here to understand what this is showing:

• The Cannondale referred to is a 1987 Cannondale SR400. It is a 12-speed aluminum road bike from the era of Madonna and Duran Duran and Mötley Crüe - it is not a modern machine. However, it was my regular ride for years, it is all of 22 lbs, and tho I prefer to ride the trikes now, I still think it’s a very elegant design. More details on it can be seen in the Cannondale catalog from 1987, and the bike itself is pictured below.
• The averages for both the Cannondale and the Pocket reflect far more miles over much more varied conditions - including winter riding (which is always slower). The distance on the Expedition thus far is only 204.89 miles vs 2901.35 for the Pocket and 2462.47 for the Cannondale

In order to compensate for the difference in number of rides I thought it would make sense to compare on specific routes. I compared overall speeds on the routes, and then also went thru and, where possible, did a comparison on the last three rides on each of the routes on the Pocket - all of which were in the last couple of months - in order to remove any effect of winter riding on speed (except the Inlet route - I’d only ridden that once on the Pocket, and that was this spring). That is shown in the table and graph below:

The outcome: The Expedition is faster.

Removing the effect of winter riding for the Pocket definitely makes it faster (snow is fun, but it slows you down), but the Expedition is still faster. It’s faster than the Pocket, and actually faster, on average, than the Cannondale.

I say "on average" here, because the LP route presented is the one that I ride most often. This is a function of convenience - it’s a bike path right by one of my worksites. It involves a hill climb up from the Rock River of about a half-mile or so. My fastest time on that route is still held by the Cannondale - 31:51 for the 8.44 mile loop at an average of 15.90 mph. But I beat my PR on the Pocket with the Expedition on my first ride on the route. And this despite the potential disadvantage of the larger rear wheel on climbing.

So yeah - faster.

Shifters

The Pocket is a 2012 model, and it came with grip shifters.

The Expedition has bar end shifters, as does every Catrike model currently on the site, including the Pocket, with the single exception of the Eola. My impression from participation from online groups is that people generally prefer the bar end shifters.

I am finding that I miss the grip shifters a bit.

I like the indexed nature of the grip shifters - each click is a gear. The bar end shifters aren’t really indexed - you can feel them drop into gear, of course, but shifting with them is much more reminiscent of the downtube shifters on the Cannondale. Usually it’s fine, but sometimes I have to adjust a bit to get right into the spot.

The other difference here is location - which is to say that I have to move my hand up to the top of the hand grip in order to shift, instead of just making a quick twist of the wrist. I’ll grant that this is a small thing, and I’m quickly adjusting to the bar ends, but it’s not (yet) as automatic as the grip shifters.

While I’m in this area, I’ll note that that the handgrips on the Expedition are a foam material that gives the impression of less durability than the rubber (or rubberized plastic) of the grip shifters. I have had no difficulty with them thus far, and I’ve never seen anyone complaining about these, so I’m not expecting that impression to be true, but that was my initial impression nevertheless.

The Expedition comes with the wrist rests on the handlebars, which is not a feature I have on the Pocket. This is nice, and I’ve found myself with my hands relaxed on top of them over long stretches. This sort of replaces my habit of on the Pocket of resting my wrists on top of the grips where the mirrors mount (and maybe will result in a longer lifespan for the mirrors). And speaking of those...

Mirror Mounts

The Pocket (or at least my Pocket, anyway) puts the mirrors on the end of the handle grips. This option goes away because thats where the shifters are on the Expedition, and instead there are separate stalks for the mirrors. The stalks are, quite simply, excellent! Not only does it get the mirrors out away from you a bit, but it also provides additional space to mount other things. Right now I’ve put my phone mount on there, which places it much closer in reach than its previous location on the boom.

And there’s room on it for other things - I’m considering a bell for trail riding (I’m often surprised by the number of people who are still startled by me after I’ve called out "on your left" - apparently they didn’t think I meant their left...).

Neck Rest

The Pocket didn’t come with a neck rest (and doesn’t from the factory), so there’s no direct comparison here. In fact, given the angle of the seat, it doesn’t really need one. I installed a Power-On Cycling neck rest myself, but this was more to get A) a higher mounting point for a taillight; and 2) give myself a handle for walking the trike. On rare occasion, on longer rides, I would lean my head back and rest it against the pad, but I really didn’t even have it in a position to work as a neck rest.

The Expedition has a greater degree of recline: 37° vs 41° for the Pocket. A difference of 4 degrees doesn’t seem like a lot on paper, but it’s enough to make you want to use the neck rest. I had sort of planned to order another neck rest from Power-On when I got the Expedition - again, mostly because of the elevated mounting point for the taillight - but I figured I’d hold off until I had a little experience with the stock model (and save a little coin if I could).

I was able to sort out how to get a taillight mounted on the stock headset.

And the Expedition is tall enough that, between the neck rest and the handle on the pannier bags it’s easy enough to walk it as it sits. The stock neck rest that it comes with works fine in terms of getting into position to lean against while riding. This would all be great, and represent a cost saving, but I am finding that it makes my neck a bit sore over rough terrain. I’ve ordered the Power-On rest.

Clipless Pedals and Shoes

As I mentioned in my initial comparison, I’d never used clipless pedals before. They weren’t a thing when I was a kid (I think versions of them existed, but farm kids riding around the countryside were not a target market). My Cannondale had toe clips (the cages or stirrups) when I got it, and I found those worked quite nicely. On the Pocket I’d installed the heel slings from TerraTrike, and supplemented them with Velcro cross straps to better secure and facilitate a full power stroke (pulling on return in addition to pushing). So, despite the fact that this technology has been around for a while, it was new to my use.

They are... ok.

To be clear, they absolutely work as designed and advertised - you snap in, and your foot is solidly restrained on the pedal. They are also easier to get in and out of than the combination I have on the Pocket. There I have to lean forward to my feet to put them on or off (the cross straps specifically - you can just rest your feet in the slings). The clipless literally just snap in and out. And thus far, that’s the primary advantage.

Right now I have one pair of shoes - the Shimano Sandals I ordered about the same time I ordered the Expedition. The sandals, again, work as advertised, and I can walk around in them - the cleats are recessed enough that you can hear them click on gravel or pavement, but they don’t appear to affect walking. But the design of the sandal itself is visually more like something you’d get out of a bin at Wally World, something you’d keep around for going to the beach, than a sandal you’d want to wear all the time (can you tell I’m still bitter that Keen doesn’t make the Commuter Sandal anymore?).

And, of course, they are expensive, which will still leave me needing to make decisions come winter. Do I seek out specific winter cycling boots (these do exist) or get myself into a pattern of installing and removing the heel slings for cold weather months (since I already have the sandals)?

A part of this also bumps into my personal bias - which I absolutely want to acknowledge here - against cycling specific clothing and gear. While I realize that cycling is primarily a recreational activity here in the US, I’d love to see it move towards more regular use for actual transportation. I do believe that the tendency towards cycling specific gear - especially clothing and shoes - takes away from that. It can give non-cyclists who might be interested the impression that you have to get all of this extra stuff just to get started. That presents an additional, artificial barrier to entry that might discourage folks who would otherwise come on board. Cycling to work becomes all the more effort if one thinks one has to purchase an extra set of clothing, carry the change of clothes that you’ll wear while at work, and change both once you arrive and again when you leave.

And, to be clear, this is a personal bias. I know people enjoy their bespoke cycling gear, and I have no problem with that (I even have a cycling jersey myself, despite all of this). But I don’t want to see the cycling world move towards designing daily use machines that require additional specialized gear.

And maybe part of my problem here is that I am actually considering winter cycling shoes rather than just getting another set of heel slings...

Ok - off the soapbox...

To Sum Up

Overall, I’m really enjoying the Expedition. It is a faster machine and feels like it - I can tell when I’m riding that I’m moving along faster than before. As much as I try to tell myself that shouldn't matter, it just does.

Everything else is just niggles, and a lot of it will go away with additional familiarity and adaptation. Most of the size differences are already fading - it felt much bigger than the Pocket originally, but now when I look at the two machines together the impression I get is that the Pocket seems smaller - the Expedition now - already - feels like the right size.

Time to ride...

Sizing Things Up

As I mentioned when I first wrote about my new Catrike Expedition, part of the reason that I went forward with getting the new machine was because MLW had expressed an interest in riding a trike as well. Like many people, she remembers enjoying riding bikes when she was younger, but finds the riding position - and especially the seating options - of a DF bike to be ...unforgiving.

If there had been any question that this was a desire in earnest, it was erased by the fact that, within a day or so of my setting up the Expedition, she was already out riding on the Pocket, using a pillow as a spacer to reach the pedals. This, of course, because the Pocket was still sized to me.

Any time a new person gets on a bike of any kind, things need to be adjusted. The seat and handlebars on a DF need to be raised or lowered, for example, to fit the height of the new rider. The same is true for a recumbent trike, but the process is different and, at least at first blush, a little more intimidating.

This is because, for many types of recumbent trike, re-sizing means re-setting the distance of the boom - the telescoping portion at the front of the trike that holds the pedals - and then either shortening or lengthening the chain.

The first part, I think, sounds pretty straightforward. The boom just slides in and out, and so it’s somewhat analogous to moving the seat on a DF bike. It’s that second part that gives a bit of mental pause: shortening or lengthening the chain.

I mean, all of us with any experience with bikes as a kid know what a chain is; it’s that thing that lets the pedals move the bike forward, and also the thing that catches our pants, gets grease on us, and periodically falls off, making us unable to move while our friends, not realizing our crisis, continue to ride away...

Ahem.

What we didn’t learn, most of us, was how to _do_ anything with the chain except oil it periodically and re-set it on the sprockets when it came off, incidentally cursing that oil for now being on our fingers. (I still remember the revelation I experienced when my dad showed me how to more readily re-set it by flipping the bike upside down - perhaps my first real-world lifehack).

This means that approaching that portion of the re-sizing seems a bit of an arcane, black art - a bit of sorcery known to the grizzled bike shop wizards of old, but a power which the novice knows not how to harness.

But: I’ve been resolved to learn how to do more things myself, my localest bike shop being 20 minutes away. And while MLW had devised her own solution for reaching the pedals, it seemed like it would probably be nicer for her to have it actually sized to fit her. So it set forth to tackle it on my own.

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The first thing I did was consult the folks at Utah Trikes on how to do this via their channel on YouTube. They actually have a very nicely done video that shows how to go through the process, including how to set the gears before doing so (tho you’ll want to watch it a couple of times, because that’s a brief aside several minutes in).

Then I marked the old spot on it for me with a sharpie, loosened up the quick releases on the boom, had MLW sit down on it, and went to slide the boom in and...

...nothing. Wouldn't move.

I’d been expecting it to slide right in, so I was a little surprised at the complete lack of movement. But, faced with an obstacle, I did what any red-blooded American male does:

I hit it.

By which I mean I smacked it at the front with the heel of my hand. This was successful, as far as it went, except it made my hand sore very quickly. I commented that maybe this would work better if I had a rubber mallet.

I made this comment standing five feet from my toolbox which, incidentally, had a rubber mallet sitting on the floor in front of it. So, of course, I continued to hit it with my hand. I point this out in part so that you will understand the grace and kindness my wife exhibited when she quietly said "you know, there’s a mallet right there" and completely refrained from appending "dumbass" to the end of that sentence.

Turns out the mallet worked at least as well as my hand, and with considerably less incidental discomfort. Who knew? (Yes - MLW knew, that’s who).

Once the boom length was set I... let it sit for a few days.

We’d set the length on a weeknight, and some time ago I learned to let new and longer projects wait until the weekend, when I have more time to struggle with them. Otherwise I become frustrated with the need to leave things partway completed - better to do it all at once. And given that I hadn’t changed a chain length before I didn’t know how long it was going to take me.

When I did sit down with it I first started with simply locating the master link on the chain. The chain on a recumbent trike is long - much longer than on a DF bike - and as I slowly worked my way through it I found myself wondering if I was simply cycling through the same sections of chain over and over again. I solved this by cleaning off a couple of links so I’d have a clear, shiny reference point (turns out there may be a benefit to not routinely cleaning your chain... kind of).

Once I located the link I started working on getting it apart. I did not have a master link tool, but I reasoned that it looked a lot like a set of needle nose pliers, and I certainly had those, so they would work just fine.

Right?

Well, no. After about five minutes of aborted attempts I decided that maybe it would be better just to ensure I had the right actual tools for the job, hopped in the car and headed out to my localest bike shop: Bike Works in Peru. The folks there were, as usual, very helpful. I explained what I was doing and they put together the items I needed and got me on my way. I was literally in and out in less than 15 minutes.

And what a difference the right tool makes! It literally took seconds to open the master link with the tool once I put it in play. This is a thing that I have had to learn over and over again across the course of my life - maybe this time it will stick (Narrator: It didn’t).

My experience with the chain tool was similar to that of the master link tool. It took a little longer to sort out just how to seat the chain and just far I would have to push the pin in in order to get it thru, but once I sorted that out it just came apart as designed.

As laid out in the video, I’d taken a picture of the position of the derailleur before I started moving things, pulled the two ends of the chain together until the derailleur position matched the picture, and put them back together. Bob’s your uncle - I was finished!

Well, I thought I was. I set up an improvised rope and pulley (using a garage rafter in lieu of the actually pulley) to get the rear wheel off the ground so I could cycle thru the gears. I was pretty pleased with this:

It worked a treat, and I began to spin through the gears on the big ring, pleased to see that it hit them all, and then again to see it on the middle ring. And it worked okay on the small ring, except that the chain was dangling slack in the top few gears. Which meant I hadn’t taken out enough chain.

In the area of true confessions, I’d taken my picture of the rear derailleur with the chain in a different position on the rear sprocket than they recommend in the Utah Trikes video. I’d realized this fairly early on, but I figured, you know, as long as it’s all in the same position at the end it’ll be fine, right?

Right?

So, again: no.

And now I didn’t have an accurate picture to use for reference. What I did have, tho, was another trike that I could set up with the gears in the same position and hopefully that would approximate the correct orientation for the derailleur. Which is why you see the orange Expedition sitting behind the Pocket here:

I got the gears on the Expedition into position and used that to eyeball the derailleur angle on the Pocket. Now I can’t honestly say whether it was a brilliant idea or just good fortune, but it actually worked (they say sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good)!

And there you have it - One Catrike Pocket, resized for My Lovely Wife. We also ordered her up a new flag to go with it, and she’s ready to hit the road.

Catrike Expedition - Differences in Setup

As I mentioned last time, when I ordered my new Catrike Expedition I chose to do some things differently from how they present on my Catrike Pocket. While I love the Pocket, I’ve had two years of riding experience and research to consider what I might do differently the next time around. As such, the configuration I arrived at was mostly stock, but with a handful of extras, primarily:

• A right-side mirror with mount
• A full fender set
• The Utah Trikes rear cargo rack
• A set of pannier bags (Axiom Seymour Oceanwave P25’s)

Let’s talk briefly about the why of these in turn:

Mirrors

The Pocket has grip shifters - you twist the handlebar in order to shift gears. That allows for an option of putting the mirrors right on the end of the handlebar. The Expedition (and I believe actually the entire Catrike line now) has bar end shifters occupying the end of the handlebar. This means that mirrors have to go on separate mounts along the steering mechanism. A left-sided mount comes stock, but I realized fairly early on with the Pocket that more mirrors was better, both for a broader rear-view as well as from a built-in redundancy perspective, so I ordered a right sided mount as well. One of the nice things about that is that the mirror mount also allows for additional mounting points for accessories.

Fenders

The Pocket did not have fenders when I got it, and still does not. This is a thing that I find I regret every time I ride thru a puddle, every time it starts to rain, and certainly any time I’m dealing with mud. The fact that it still does not have them is due in part to the fact that I’ve struggled to find fenders to fit the 16" front wheels (tho there is at least one option for the rear). Suffice it to say I’ve spent a fair amount of time with dirt-speckled forearms, and I was hoping to find a better way this time around.

I think the fenders look good on the Expedition, but it is clear to me that the rear fender setup is going to be a source of some noise on the road. I’ve been able to isolate most of that (a couple of carefully placed bits of sticky Velcro - soft side), and what little remains I think will be a fair trade off against the mud-stripe that would otherwise appear on my back.

Probably the one limitation that they do otherwise present is in how the mirrors are mounted. At the suggestion of folks on the Recumbent Trikes group on Facebook I mounted the Mirrorcycle mirrors without the little vertical arm on the Pocket.

This has the effect of decreasing vibration a bit, making it a bit easier to see what’s coming up behind you. Where the mirrors sit atop the fenders on the Expedition doesn’t allow any room for that option.

And actually, it’s not clear they allow room for it without the fender - the mirror might hit the wheel. I could possibly adjust the position of the mount in future, but I’ve left it for now - we’ll see how much the vibration bothers me.

Rack and Pannier Bags

The Pocket does have a cargo rack, and by the looks of it, it may well be from Utah Trikes (actually, given that the Pocket’s boom is painted, I suspect it may have been ordered from UT by the original purchaser, since this is an option they offer). It works well, so I knew I was going to want one on the Expedition. The Pocket also came with the Arkel frame bags, which I thought were an elegant use of space when I first saw them, and I still think they are.

Unfortunately, it is sometimes the case that an elegant design is not always the most practical or effective alternative. I find the Arkel bags can be challenging to get into and/or to zip up at times, as the zipper is very close to the frame. And while they make good use of the space in the arc of the frame, that also means their size is limited and the shape, dictated by that arc, isn’t terribly space efficient. But probably the biggest issue is more mine than theirs - the way the zipper sits, if you forget to zip it up and ride away, odds are good that you will lose your stuff.

I am... good at losing stuff. I’m good at it without the help of the design of these bags, and they have conspired to abet that tendency on an occasion or two in the past. So I wanted a design that closed at the top, such that if I failed to zip it, wouldn't start leaving a trail of breadcrumbs made from my gear.

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I went with Axiom Seymour Oceanwave P25 Panniers. The name is a mouthful, but key components to these for me were the additional size, the top opening feature, extra side pockets, and a carry handle for them when off the trike. This last item is a bonus in case I ever need to park the trike someplace where I’m concerned about someone getting into the bags (I did a brief search for lockable bags and didn’t find any, tho I’ll bet they are out there). I don’t carry a ton of gear, but the additional space in these actually leaves room for things like a sweatshirt or other changes of clothes, which is a thing I’ve often wished for in the mixed weather of spring and fall.

Other Differences

Not on the list of differences are a couple of things that I didn’t get (or at least, haven’t yet). On the Pocket I have a Power-On Cycling headrest. The Pocket did not have a head or neck rest when I got it, and the degree of recline to the Pocket’s seat isn’t such that I felt it was really necessary (tho it is nice to have from time to time). But what this item did offer was a higher mounting point for a rear light, as well as a convenient handle for walking the Pocket.

You only have to get a flat tire three miles out one time to realize how much you want a handle to walk your trike by. Or so I hear...

But the Expedition comes with the Catrike neckrest as a stock item, and it also sits a bit taller. I think it’s quite likely that I’ll still end up ordering another headrest from Power-On, but I figured I would try out the stock arrangement before shelling out the coin.

I also didn’t order, and thus have not installed, the heel sling kit from Terratrike that I have on the Pocket. As with the headrest, it’s not due to dissatisfaction with that item - I actually find the slings work nicely, particularly with an addition retention strap across the top of the foot. But I while I’ve been riding bikes of one stripe or another most of my life, I’ve actually never used clipless pedals. I thought it might be worth giving it a try so that at least I have a frame of reference for comparison.

I ordered a pair of Shimano Cycling Sandals for this purpose. I wear sandals for three seasons of year, cycling and otherwise. My preferred sandals are Keens, but it appears that they have elected to stop making the Commuter Bike Sandal (I actually emailed the company to verify this - they are really what I wanted). In fact, cycling sandals are, for some reason, a rather difficult thing to find in general, and where I could find them they were often either out of stock or not available in my size (and I’m an inch shy of the national average height - I’m not an odd fit). Is it possible that I’m the only one with feet that get hot when riding?

It’s worth noting that purchasing the sandals means that right out of the gate this is an expensive experiment - the sandals cost nearly three times as much as the heel slings, and they obviously won’t work for winter riding. I’m determined to give the system a fair shake, but it will have a hurdle to clear to be better.

Going Forward

And those are the differences going in. I’ve been out on the new trike three times thus far, and I’ll be heading out today. It is a different experience than the Pocket in multiple ways - I’m liking it, to be sure, but it’s different in ways that are interesting, at least to me. After I get a bit more seat time we’ll discuss.

Time to ride...

Catrike Expedition

We have a new arrival within our cycling stable - a new (2019) Catrike Expedition in Atomic Orange!

This was an addition I’d been considering for quite some time. I very much love the Pocket - have from the day I got it - but I’ve had my mental eye on an Expedition for a while. In addition, a little while ago MLW mentioned that she might be interested in riding a trike as well, which put my efforts into high gear.

Mostly I like to buy my machines used, but after spending several months combing through classifieds on Facebook and Craigslist I came to find that A) people who have Expeditions must really like them, because they don’t come up for sale very often; and 2) When they do, they were always at least several hundred miles away. As can be said for all of us, my free time is limited, and spending a day of it on travel - especially with the possibility that the thing you’ve come to see might not be all that was described - was not an attractive proposition. I was extremely fortunate back when I bought the Pocket two years ago because it was only an hour away and, though it was five years old, it had virtually never been ridden - it still had the little nubs on the tires.

So ultimately, after considering several options, I went with Utah Trikes. This let me pick the options I was looking for, including the color, and get it shipped to my door, and they offer a very attractive financing option. I’d actually been to their site multiple times during my search, and configured the trike more than once without pulling the trigger as I was thinking things thru. Once I did finally order it I found folks from UT very helpful. I took measurements of my positioning from the Pocket as they suggested, and sent along pictures of what I’d measured to make sure I’d done it correctly.

Turns out that was a good idea, since I did it wrong the first time around... but it all worked out. And, of course, once it was ordered, there was the waiting.

Einstein has taught us that time is relative, and while I’m certainly no theoretical physicist I’m pretty sure he was talking about the effect that occurs after one has made a decision to go ahead and order something. Over the days and weeks while one is mulling something over time moves forward at a perfectly normal pace, just minding its own business. But once one has actually made the decision time dilates down into a focused, incredibly slow moving stream such that one might feel they have approached the event horizon of a black hole...

Yeah - I’m pretty sure that’s what he meant by it.

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It seems that the folks at UT also have an understanding of this effect. Once my trike was assembled they set up a webpage for it and sent me a link so that I could see it! This was unexpected and very cool.

That interminable, tortuous, painful length of time between ordering and arriving at my door? One week. I did order a color that was in stock, which made things go a little faster, but I think all-in-all that’s a really good turnaround.

And, when I say "shipped to my door" I’m only being slightly metaphorical:

The driver for XPO Logistics who was, frankly, just delightful, got it off of the truck for me and once it was down said "should we look inside?" I think he may have been nearly as excited as I was, and he did say he thought it was a pretty thing once we popped the top. At it was:

I was a little surprised that the box was not filled with packing material - honestly, that’s what I’d expected. Instead there seems to be rather clever placement of additional cardboard buffers and holding sections within the main box to serve that purpose.

The rest of the process the first day was really just getting it out, looking it over, and allowing for it’s inspection by the other members of the household.

And I also wanted to get a look at it side-by-side with the Pocket to allow for some comparison.

The Expedition is different from the Pocket, of course. It’s bigger in all directions and has larger wheels all around (26" rear and 20" front vs the 2012 Pocket’s 20" rear and 16" front). It’s got a greater degree of angle to the seat - that is, its more laid back or recumbent than the Pocket (37° vs 41° for the Pocket). It also has bar end shifters while my Pocket has grip twist shifters.

While I love the Pocket, two years of experience has provided the opportunity to consider a couple of things that I wanted to be different with this new machine. As such, the configuration I arrived at was mostly stock, but with a handful of extras, primarily:

• A full fender set
• The Utah Trikes rear cargo rack
• A set of pannier bags (Axiom Seymour Oceanwave P25’s)
• A right-side mirror with mount

And, while I use the TerraTrike heel slings supplemented with Velcro cross straps on the Pocket, I decided this would be an opportunity to give clipless pedals a try (a thing I’ve truly never done before), so I’ve ordered a set of Shimano cycling sandals that I’ll be trying out.

Because the Expedition arrived in the middle of the work week I’ve been stealing snippets of time after work to get things set up. Mostly this involves things like getting the mirrors and head rest positioned and sorting out where to mount my other accessories, and getting the pannier bags placed and loaded up. I also had to spend a little time sorting out how the fender is mounted (there was a bit of tire rub as it was originally set up). I also had to put the SPD clips on the sandals and figure out how that system works.

Because of all of that, even tho it arrived on Tuesday, I didn’t get it out for a ride until Saturday (yesterday) evening. As you might expect - I liked it a lot (there was little to no chance of any other outcome, really). But there are clear differences in the experience between this machine and the Pocket. We’ll talk about those here, after get a little more experience with my new baby.

Time to get ready to ride...

Capture the Flag

Last week I wrote about my early July trip down the I&M Canal Trail from LaSalle to almost the Buffalo Rock State Park entrance, a trip that involved mud pits, and resulted both a filthy trike and a lost flag and rear light.

No Flag

The flag that I lost came with the trike when I bought it back in 2017. In my mind it really is a part of the character of the trike. It’s featured in many of the shots of the trike on this site. I was frustrated and tired - and sick of wet, muddy clay - when I gave up looking for it, but when I did that, my intention was to purchase another, identical flag. The following morning I fired up my iPad and began my search for just that.

Things went south quickly.

The flag in question was a Soundwinds design, the owner of which is retiring and selling off his stock; my flag was sold out. This was very discouraging, and the similar designs in stock, tho very nice, just weren’t what I was looking for ¹.

My cheapness gene was also starting to kick in, and I was beginning to balk at the prospect of dropping money on a new flag and new rear light when I could have looked longer the day before.

So I set the iPad down and felt bad for a couple of minutes, and then an idea occurred to me. I looked up my route on Cyclemeter in map view, and I’d made it a good portion of the way into and thru Buffalo Rock. With any luck, I thought, if I came in from the other side - from the Buffalo Rock entrance to the trail - I’d only have to contend with one of the clay soup patches (the one I chose not to ride thru the day before).

There’s a big assumption or two in there, I realize. Based on the map, I was probably only a mile or so from the Buffalo Rock trail entrance when I’d stopped, but there was the real possibility that the entire mile was soup. I hoped not, but it was possible. I was also assuming that the flag would be wherever it came off the trike - that no one else would have come along and picked it up. This latter item seemed a fair bet, tho, simply because I had been the only soul on that section of the trail for the entire ride the day before, despite it being a weekend.

I debated whether or not to bring along the trike or simply walk the trail. I hadn’t yet cleaned it up from the day before, and if I could ride the distance it would go much more quickly; but if it was all soup that would be a wash. I decided to bring it along, and figured that, if I found the beginning of the trail at Buffalo Rock to be soup, I could just leave the trike in the vehicle, but then I’d have it if riding were an option.

This turned out to be a good call, as I was relieved to see that the first, visible portion of the trail westward from Buffalo Rock was dry and intact. This meant that, for a half-mile or so at least I could move forward with pretty good progress.

And then I encountered the soup.

This particular batch also had an additional impediment, as there was a tree down across the trail about 25 feet into the clay soup.

Tree in soup

Given that I was going to have to portage the trike over the tree, and that the tree wasn’t very far into the soup, I decided just to carry it up to the tree. A Catrike Pocket weighs about 33 lbs unloaded, probably 35 or so with my gear. I was certainly still carrying my kid around when they weighed that much, so it seemed reasonable.

I listened to and rued the repeated "thuk-thuk-thuk" of my footsteps in the muck as I walked up to the downed tree, and stepped over it with my left leg. As I set my foot down, I felt a sharp, stinging sensation in my left calf.

Literally a stinging sensation.

I looked down to see the Yellowjacket stinging me, ended its existence, and quickly stepped away from the tree. As I looked back I could see a couple dozen of them swarming around this side of the tree near the ground. Either they had nested in the tree before it had fallen, or it disturbed a ground nest when it fell. Either way, they were not happy about it (and besides, Yellowjackets are aggressive assholes anyway), and one of them had decided to take it out on me.

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It’s been a long time since I’ve been stung, and I was not nostalgic for the experience. It took nearly a week for the bright red spot on my calf to fade and, in the interim, it provided a sensation I did not recall from prior events - it itched. A lot.

That was for future me to enjoy however. I continued to carry the trike another quarter-mile or so until we got to dry land. I tried to wipe and/or shake off as much of the clay as I could from my sandals, and began to pedal forward.

I was quite surprised when I saw it.

I’d expected to find it - if I found it at all - laying on the ground to one side of the trail or the other. That’s primarily where I’d been casting my eyes both the day before and during the bulk of this particular mission. The reality was something... different.

Flag in the distance

Flag up close

To be honest, it hanging there like that was initially a little creepy - reminiscent of something you’d come across wandering lost in the woods trying to shoot a documentary. I wondered for a moment if perhaps someone else had come along and found it, and hung it up so that, if the owner came looking, it’d be clearly visible. But that did not appear to be the case.

On the vine

On the vine

The closeup here shows it as I found it. The streamer at the top of the flag appears to have gotten wrapped around a hanging vine, and then lifted it up off of the lower half of the pole. The connection where they join isn’t loose, exactly, but it is pretty easy to slip on and off. I may need to add a bit of tape to increase friction at the connection.

Once I got over that initial creepy impression I was simply relieved. Though the trip took me out of my way for the day, it did save me the cost of a flag and a rear light (and I seem to go through lights at a prodigious rate anyway).

I lashed the flag to the rack on back and went back to once again tackle the clay. I rode thru it on the way back, at least up to the Yellowjacket tree. There I stopped a little short and considered strategy before trundling thru.

"Considered strategy", I say, like there were a lot of options. Ultimately it just involved making sure I had a good, firm hold on the trike and then going over the trunk as quickly as possible without slipping and falling in the clay soup. And there I was actually successful (yay) - gotta take the wins where you can get them.

As the day before, I emerged from the trail with both myself and my trike coated in gray.

It wasn’t gray when I got it

This particular adventure was different, tho, because I knew what I was getting into. Of course, this did not cause me to gain any newfound fondness for the sticky, slippery, sucking mess that is muddy clay (not that I’m bitter) - I won’t be signing up for a mud-soaked cyclocross event any time soon - but I was in much better spirits upon arriving at the trailhead. So much so, in fact that I decided to ride back the other way, towards Ottawa, for a couple of miles. Besides, I reasoned, I really didn’t have a better way of getting the extra clay off of the tires...

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1. The Soundwinds website says that some of their designs were going to be taken over by Premier Kites "later in 2019", and that a link would be included on the site when that happened. There was no link one the site when I looked at it - there still isn’t - but I decided to go over to look up Premier Kites anyway, just to see what they have to offer and, sure enough, they had my flag design in stock.  ↩