Springing Forward

About a month ago I wrote about the challenges that February seems to provide above all other months in terms of getting out and getting miles in while cycling. For myself, what I observed is that the weather in Northern Illinois, in particular, conspires against you as you try to fit those miles in.

As March rolled in it brought with it, as we all know and are living, a different world. But while that is the case, March also brought along the things that it always offers: warmer weather and longer days.

From a cycling perspective, this March turned out what is, in some respects, a surprising result - it’s my second-highest mileage month on record, and my highest month ever for total number of rides.

For the numbers folks, that’s 218.41 miles across 18 rides in the month of March, an average of 11.86 miles per trip. It’s not a lot compared to many others, but it is for me, and one should always compare one to oneself.

In the time since I’ve been keeping records - nine years now, give or take (thanks Cyclemeter) March has always been more active than February (or it has when both months are on the record - there are years back when where neither of them show up in my app). But it’s usually to a small degree - not anything like this. This year March is literally three times higher than February.

And what’s up with that? In part, I do have an overall trend of increasing my riding - this past February, while lower than its neighboring months was better than Februaries past, and year over year I’ve been increasing since 2017. But there’s more to it as well.

Life has changed for all of us to greater or lesser degrees. There are things that we simply cannot do right now, for the good of ourselves and of others. I think it’s common, in this type of situation, to look at the things we cannot do and yearn for them. But while that is a natural response, a better response is to look for what we can do.

One of the things we can do is ride. While many of us are living under Shelter at Home orders, one of the essential activities listed in those orders in most states (if not all - check your state’s order) is exercise. Illinois’ order explicitly includes exercise as a vital activity, as long as social distancing guidelines are met. Few exercise activities are as inherently suited to those guidelines as cycling.

Honestly, you have to really work hard to stay within six feet of each other on a bike or trike under most circumstances (and why would you want to?).

As the month of March progressed into madness, it started for me with continuing to go into work - I work in healthcare, though in a supportive rather than direct role - but being directed to limit contact and maintain distancing while there, and then ultimately to work from home. I work at one site three days per week, and typically take my trike in to work to ride over lunch at least one day a week, reserving the other two for collegial gatherings over food. Under these circumstances those gatherings were largely impossible, and so it just made sense to leave the trike in the car for each day.

Six days a week I also check a PO Box for work that’s about eight miles from home. Under under normal circumstances I might find the opportunity to ride instead of drive to that box maybe three times per month, maybe once per week at most. In March I took that ride six times, with three of them being over the last week of the month.

Why so many of those trips on the trike? In part, well, why not? The days are longer and my risk of running out of daylight on the way home is progressively lower (and I do have lights on the trike as well), since checking the mail is typically an end-of-the-day activity for me.

But I realize too, maybe now more than ever, cycling (and exercise in general) clears my head and centers me. Virtually all of the news we get now, and 85% of the posts on social media, is related in some way to the pandemic. Add to that the fact that, like all of us, my schedule and routine are completely altered, and when working the reality of the situation is just unavoidable as a topic in virtually every meeting; feeling stressed by all of it is inevitable. In this past week I found myself particularly dismayed by the situation, and talking to MLW about it she listened for a while, and then said to me "have you gone riding?"

And she was right.

When I got done with my ride after that, everything that had me dismayed was still a part of reality, but the effect it had on me had diminished significantly.

None of this is new - not to me and, most likely, not to you either. But even though I’ve been active most of my life I do periodically need the reminder of just how beneficial it is to go out and do things that get your body moving, get your heart rate and breathing up and running. It doesn’t have to be cycling, of course, that’s just my drug of choice - anything that gets the blood flowing is fair game.

I know others are finding this too, at least to some degree. While I was still going in to work I found the path that I typically ride on far busier than in times past. In fact, I drive past it on my way in to work each day (it’s literally right down the road), and in the mornings the parking lot, which has usually been empty in the earlier hours, was now routinely packed.

It’s vital that we remain within the guidelines being provided to us, but within those guidelines it’s also vital that we remain healthy both physically and mentally. Which is why it’s time to ride...

Tiptoeing with the Toe Clips

Last fall I ended my experiment with clipless shoes on my Expedition and installed the TerraTrike Comfort Pedal Conversion Kit - a type of heel sling which I’d already used on the Pocket - on the Expedition. This time around, though, I added a toe clip to the mix - specifically the Evo Double Quick Strapless Toe Clip - instead of going with my prior strategy using Velcro straps across the top of the foot.

That setup looked like this:

One of the questions at the time was as to how the toe clips - which were about $10 and made of plastic - would weather the winter season given the combination of cold weather and additional stretch needed for my heavy-duty winter boots.

I promised a follow-up on that, so here we are. But I have to qualify things up front - it’s only a partial follow-up.

The thing is: I used them all winter, but it literally never got cold enough this winter to require my heavy winter boots. I have a pair of hiking boots that I wear as my regular daily kicks from late November to about April (I’m a sandals guy the rest of the year - hot feet, don’t ya know. No, not hot as in sexy, just hot as in much too warm. And sweaty. And now I’ve said too much...). I use those hiking boots as my riding shoes until the weather drops below, say 20° or so.

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Which it just never did. I mean, we had a couple of cold nights across the course of the season, but I don’t ride at night much at all, and definitely not in the winter. There were probably a couple of days in the mix that also got there, but they didn’t correspond to days that I was free to ride. And I suppose I could have gone riding with the heavy boots on for the sake of science but have I mentioned the hot feet? So - no testing with the heavy boots.

Qualifications made, I’ve now ridden with this arrangement in place for over five months and over 650 miles. This has been thru good weather and bad, and in the snow and cold (but just not really cold). Thus far, what I can say for them is that they work exactly as expected. I see very little evidence of wear or strain on the toe clips, and I’ve had no issue with feet slipping out of the retention. And, as was the case initially, they are much easier to get into and out of than either clipless mounting or than the straps I was using on the Pocket.

So - short but sweet, they continue to work well for me, and the toe clips appear to be more durable than I had honestly expected. For $10 bucks they were a "why not" purchase, figuring I’d be out very little if they didn’t work out. Now I’m seriously thinking of getting another set and putting them on the Pocket for MLW.

In addition, they continue to offer the advantage of working with whatever shoe I have on in the moment. I’m still holding on to the Shimano SPD sandals - I took them with me to Florida in anticipation of possibly needing them when I rented the trike on my trip. But Trailside Bikes had its own solution on the pedals, so the sandals remain relatively pristine.

For Love of Fenders

This week it was raining, and more specifically, it was raining when it was also time to ride.

Generally speaking, I don’t like to ride in the rain. Everything gets wet (big surprise!), mostly me, and then I’m wrapped in damp clothes, and...

The thing is, with everything going on, I’m classified as an essential worker. But to reduce the risk of spreading, my essential work is mostly done in solitude now - in an office, behind a door, alone. I always value cycling, and it’s always provided a change of scenery, but the value I place on that change has increased markedly.

It’s also, apparently, changed how I look at riding in the rain. Well, it, and fenders.

The rain this day was relatively light - not a downpour, not a deluge. And, while I don’t have much by way of dedicated cycling clothing - I’m a middle-aged man, but I’m rarely in Lycra (so... does that make me just a "mam"...?) - I do have gear that I wear specifically for riding to keep the wear and tear (and sweat) off of my regular outfit. As I reasoned through that fact, I realized that, except for shoes and socks, my riding gear represented a complete change of clothing. So that meant that, if I got drenched on the ride, I’d only have to stay drenched while on the ride.

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All three fenders on the trike are beneficial, and they serve the same purpose, broadly speaking, but the experienced impact of them is somewhat different. The front fenders get the lion’s share of the glory while you are riding. If you’ve gone from riding a trike without front fenders to one with, you quickly realize, when in the wet, that water isn’t persistently being flung into your face. The wet, or whatever...

They enhance the enjoyment during the ride to a considerable degree.

The rear fender, for the most part, demonstrates it’s worth after the ride is over. That’s when you realize that you don’t have a vertical stripe of mud and water down your back (you’d think that mesh seat would block that effect, but not so much), and you realize you haven’t had your backside gain an additional five pounds in water weight. That rear fender is an unsung hero until the ride reaches its conclusion.

You could say that I really should just invest in proper wet weather riding gear, and you would be right, of course. I’ve said the same thing to myself on multiple occasions. The problem is that each of those occasions is typically right before I’m about to go riding in the rain, so, you know, not an optimal time for doing something about it.

In this case, it all worked out just about perfectly. I got through the ride, and I was wet, but not drenched. I simply changed out the the damp into the dry and went on with my day. But now it was going on with a day in which I got to ride.

Hindsight with Clarity

A few weeks ago I had the brief opportunity to take a ride on the Withlacoochee Trail in central-ish Florida. I live, shall we say, slightly north of Florida, and so instead of riding my faithful Catrike Expedition I rented. My rental ride was a HP Velotechnik Gekko in a bright yellow/green.

I really like my Catrikes, but my experience with other makes is extremely limited - my first trike was a Pocket, and while I’ve been cycling most of my life, that’s the Pocket was the only recumbent trike I’d ridden, and I’d bought it without a test ride from a man on the internet (on eBay). I did get a chance to ride an Expedition before buying one, briefly, at the bike expo in Milwaukee, but that was honestly just to be sure I liked the additional size. I was already hooked at that point.

So the Gekko was somewhat of a new experience for me. I described most of the details about that experience in the Withlacoochee trail post, but there was something I noticed about the Gekko that I left out of that post.

I was in a hurry to get riding on the day that I went out in Florida, so aside from a quick look over to familiarize myself with the location of the controls and the in-seat storage, I decided I’d have to learn anything else about the trike on the go.

The thing that stood out the most was how startlingly clear the view to the rear of the trike was.

The mirror on the Gekko is a teardrop-shaped, heavy-duty affair that gives the impression of durability and quality. It also seemed extremely stable and vibration free.

My Catrikes, like most, have the round Mirrycle mirrors on them. These are small, inexpensive mirrors that do give a view of the activity to the rear, but they are extremely subject to sympathetic vibration with road imperfections. This can be controlled for to some degree by removing the vertical section of the mounting system, which I did on my Pocket. However, that seems to be less of an option on the Expedition, as the position of the mounting post and the fenders make things a little more intimate on that machine. Even with that change, tho, the improvement is incremental - the vibration is reduced, but not gone. This means that you can see things coming up behind you, but details are not available - it’s hard to tell a car from a truck from a wildebeest (big wildebeest problem here on the roads of Northern Illinois, don’t ya know...).

And that was the difference here. While there wasn’t any worry about motor vehicles approaching from the rear - the Withlacoochee is a recreational trail - I was still surprised at how well I could see riders approaching from behind, for example, or the receding image of people that I passed. The difference was stark.

Stark enough that I asked the very helpful woman at Trailside Cycles about the mirror. She went out to look at the trike, and indicated to me that it was a HP Velotechnik mirror (which made sense at the time - more on that below). She also had one in stock.

I asked if she thought it could be mounted on a Catrike and she thought it could, pointing out that it mounts to the head tube.

The price on the package - $69.50 - was not insubstantial, particularly compared with what I was accustomed to spending on Mirrycle mirrors, which can be ordered from Amazon for less than $13. I gave thought to taking a picture of the package and looking it up online later - this is often a fairly decent strategy for saving a bit of cash on a purchase. However, I am loathe to do that to a small business in general (but hey, suck it Wal-Mart!), and the folks at Trailside Bike had been very kind and accommodating to me, so I thought it only fair to buy it from them. In deference to the price, however, I bought just the left side mirror.

As is often the case, it took me a while to get to mounting it to the trike. In this case the primary impediment was that the bolt that came with the mirror - as well as the one already in the head tube - was too short. I didn’t have a longer one at home, so it had to wait until I could make it down to my localest bike shop.

I was a little concerned that what looked so clear and vibration free on a Florida trail might not contend quite as well with the weather-challenged byways of rural Illinois. Since the new mirror mounts to the head tube, and the Mirrycle mirror is mounted to the accessory bar, I left the old mirror on so I could do a direct comparison.

Yeah - it’s better, even in Illinois.

The Mirrycle’s are convex mirrors, which adds a wide field of view, but makes everything in the mirror smaller (objects in mirror may be...). By contrast, the flat display on the HP mirror provides for a larger picture, and while it does have a reduced field of vision, what it offers is more than sufficient to see the road behind.

While that’s good, the more vital detail is that it is stable - virtually vibration free, even on the Northern Illinois asphalt. This leads to a clear picture of what is approaching from behind, which can be more important than you might think. Wildebeests aside, the whole idea of a mirror is that you can glance into it periodically to see if something is coming. The small, unclear image in the old mirror would sometimes appear to render immovable objects - trees over a hill, for example - as things approaching from the distance. Sorting that out sometimes takes extended viewing and processing time, all of which is time not looking at the road ahead.

When the thing in the mirror is an actual vehicle, it’s good to know the type, at times. While I firmly believe in taking my lane, how one handles approaching farm implements is still different than what one does for automobiles.

So - in short, I like it. The price is rather dear, to be sure, and if I had just been looking at it on a website instead of having used it on the rental trike, I can just about guarantee that my cheapness gene would have won.

Which brings me around to the type of mirror, and where one can find it. It turns out that researching the mirror for this post - and for consideration of a right side mirror for myself later on (I like symmetry) - was a bit confusing. If there is a way to order it through the HP Velotechnik site I was unable to find it. Even doing a site search for "mirror" turns up nothing related to mirrors. So I looked over the package from Trailside Bike for information, and it has has two labels on it:

I started out with the larger label, and then when to the smaller one. I should have started with the smaller one. Using "HP Velotechnik Mirror" got me to Industrial Bicycles. You can also find them at Utah Trikes (of course) under "B&M Head Tube Mounted Mirror". In both cases they are slightly cheaper (by 50¢) than I paid at Trailside Bike, but shipping from the former is over $20, and for the latter is $13, so I got a pretty good deal buying it on site (makes that cheapness gene unclench just a little bit).

What oddly didn’t occur to me until later was to look up and see whether Trailside Bike had a means to order one. They do - and they’ll ship it via US Mail for as low as $5.27.

So that’s where I’ll go to get the right-side mirror if I can get that cheapness gene to unclench the rest of the way. After all, I like symmetry, and I want to be able to see the approaching wildebeests from all angles...

Riding With Rosie

One of the things that has been on the longer list of my things to do with the trike is going out more regularly with Rosie, our Australian Shepard.

This is not a new idea, of course. People have been riding with their dogs in one way or another probably since the modern safety bicycle was invented. Heck, maybe even before then...

Back in the old days, of course, people had a more laissez-faire attitude towards their companion animals. If the dog would run alongside you that was great, and if it wouldn't - if it took off or ran after others or disappeared you’d assume that it would find its way home. If it didn’t, well, it wasn’t a very good dog, then, was it?

Nowadays, as a general rule we keep our canine companions a little closer and, ideally, safer, but this does mean it can be a bit of a project. For smaller dogs you have to figure out a way to contain and carry them on your machine - there’s a delightful group on Facebook called Dogs on Trikes that provides a plethora of examples of this. For larger and more active dogs it means finding a way to attach the dog to the trike that is both safe for the dog and safe for the machine.

It’s not my first rodeo on this front. When I was younger (circa late 90’s and early oughts) we had a couple of very active dogs - one a border collie mix named Dax, the other an industrial-sized Australian Cattle Dog named Sisko. Dax was mine, while Sisko was MLW’s companion.

Each dog has its own attitude and comfort level with cycling machines. With this in mind, when I first introduced Dax to the bike (and it was an upright back then) I was very cautious. I walked him over to sit near the bike, and I petted him. Then I moved the bike back and forth a bit by him, and I petted him. I rolled it by and leaned it in towards him and...

...and he gave me a look that I swear said "Dude! What I see here is: I can run as fast as I want, for as long as I want. Is that right? Then let’s stop messing around and get going!"

(If you’ve lived with a herding dog you have probably seen a look like this before.)

So I hooked him up and we went. It was magic - he took to it like he’d been born to do exactly that. He was so eager, in fact, that I’d have to watch carefully to catch his energy flagging, and periodically make sure he wasn’t overheating, because he wouldn’t slow down unless I did. We rode together for years.

Rosie is an Australian Shepard mix, with a similar personality type and energy level, though thankfully a little more subdued than Dax was (he was well matched to a young man in his late 20’s and early 30’s, but I’m slightly more seasoned now). She’s always eager to come along in the car (and often seems to think she should be there, even if it’s not convenient to the moment).

When I say get out "more regularly", what I mean to say is that we’ve done it exactly once before. A little while after I got the Catrike Pocket I took her out along one of the wind turbine access roads as sort of a test-run. I wanted her away from traffic, and I wanted to be sure that she’d be able to keep herself out of the front wheels.

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That might actually be mental overkill, and I don’t think I’d ever even considered it as an issue with Dax. But the fact that she’d be running right beside the front wheel of the trike concerned me a bit with respect to the idea that she might step into that wheel. That would be a bad day for both of us (but mostly for Rosie).

I chose to go back to the same wind turbine access road, again to stay out of traffic. I had given consideration to going into town and riding around the lake, which wouldn't have been entirely traffic free, but would have been paved. Still, the access road is closer, and this was an experiment of sorts, so why not?

This is why not:

It hasn’t rained or snowed recently, but we did still have some snow on the ground, and it was a nearly 60° day, so it was... soft.

I realized this when I got there, and looked at it all for a long while as Rosie waited in the hatch (did I mention she likes to be in the car?). But ultimately I figured I was already there, so we might as well make a go of it. After all, this was really more of an experiment of sorts - just to get out and do a practice run to make sure she would handle it ok.

I needn’t have worried.

We went slow - in part by design, to get her used to it, and in part because soft is slow - and went a little less than a mile - the distance of the access road there and back. Aside from a couple of attempts to go the wrong way - e.g. backwards - she did just great! Her response wasn’t quite as eager as Dax’s back in the day (I suspect that’s a once in a lifetime sort of thing), but she really did seem to enjoy it, and did well with it. A good time was had by all.

...And then I went home and cleaned the mud off the trike and out of the car.

Finishing February

There is just something about February.

Even though I am, and have been, a routine winter rider, over the past few years February has routinely turned up as my least active month for riding. It is tempting to blame this on the fact that it’s the shortest month, but let’s be honest - those two or three missing days aren’t the issue. It’s not like I was planning going to go out and ride the last couple of days in the month, only to suddenly discover that they weren’t there...

I think, ultimately, I have to blame the weather. Winter cycling aside, in northern Illinois, (and I think this is true for the upper Midwest in general) February is simply the least cooperative in terms of cycling friendly weather. Looking back across the calendar over the past three years or so it’s the month typically with the lowest number of rides, as well as the lowest distance. Lower distances make sense - my rides are typically shorter in the winter, as I try to make loops that keep me closer to home in case I need to call for help. But the smaller number of rides are the things that point to the weather.

As I discussed a couple of weeks ago, poor visibility conditions and freezing rain (and lightening, but that’s not much of a problem in the winter) are about the only things that will keep me off the trike. When I look back through the calendar, my usual ride days in February are missing ride events. Sometimes there are things to explain it - I missed a Sunday this February because we were traveling down to Florida, for example - but often the ride that should be there just isn’t. And that suggests something prevented me from getting out, which suggests weather.

Fortunately, if I isolate February from other months, and just compare them, it looks like the pattern is improving. The graph below shows my mileage for the past four Februaries - 2017 thru 2020:

I rode once in February 2017, three times in February of 2018, and six in both 2019 and 2020. In fairness to 2018, I also went cross country skiing on two occasions, so I did have five outings for the month. And even though the number of outings is the same for 2019 and 2020, the distance has increased.

The big change from 2017 to 2018 was the acquisition of the Catrike Pocket. I had been thinking about getting a mountain bike to better handle both gravel and snow, when it occurred to me that a trike would also be good at those surfaces (or at least much better than my Cannondale road bike), and that I’d wanted one for a very long time. And I did discover, after my two outings on the skis in 2018, that I preferred winter riding over skiing - at least on the type of snow that northern Illinois has been offering over the past several years. Those two outings in February 2018 are the last time I’ve done XC Skiing.

Admittedly, some of this is not new information - there are certainly other examples here of me discovering that: you know what? I like riding trikes! But when I look at that comparatively low number for February and start to feel a little down on myself, I find it helpful to step back and look at the bigger picture. In this case, that picture is: Yeah, February sucks, but at least it’s sucking less than it used to...

And, of course, now it’s Not February (also known as "March"), so it’s about time to go out and ride...

Withlacoochee Trail

The events of the past week found me and mine shedding the bonds of rural northern Illinois in favor of the sunnier - and mostly warmer - embrace of central Florida.

This was a family trip, and as such was primarily centered around what you’d expect of a trip to the Orlando area. While we aren’t, as a rule, fans of the corporate mouse, we do all enjoy the creations of George Lucas and of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and crew; and there is a significant subset of the family partial to the Potter that is Harry. But all that being the case, it seemed like there should be some opportunity in the week to squeeze in a ride.

Several years ago I’d realized, in part by chance, that there are often places in well established communities that will rent you a bike if you are looking for a ride and did not happen to bring one along. That first opportunity was in Arizona - Scottsdale, specifically - and was prior to my triking days. But I figured since I was heading to the homeland of Catrike there was a fairly good chance that I could find someone to rent a trike once I got there.

We drove for this trip (in fact, we are on the way back as I started writing this post, tapping away in the passenger seat as LB pilots the Mobile Trike Garage), so I did consider the option of simply taking my Expedition along for the trip. The Outback handles the trike just fine on the roof, and I could have pulled off the seat mesh and bags to improve mileage on the drive. But I was less concerned about getting it to and from, and more with what to do with it during. This was a week-long trip, and the riding was incidental. I love my trike, but they are somewhat cumbersome. I wasn’t sure if we’d have space for it in the room at the resort, and I didn’t want to leave it exposed on the roof for the week. I suppose I could have stored it in the car when we weren’t using it, but I suspect that would have involved a lot of moving it back and forth like, say, every time we wanted to carry people the car.

So: Rental.

I tapped into the Recumbent Trikes Group on Facebook for thoughts on places to try, and helpfully got a couple of options. I went with Trailside Bikes in Floral City because it is right beside - and I mean literally right beside - the Withlacoochee Trail, and also because Trailside Bikes did not require a deposit. They also did not take reservations, so I was taking a chance that they wouldn't have anything for me. I timed my arrival to just before the shop opened and crossed my fingers.

The trail was about an hour and a half from where we were staying in Kissimmee, and the route the map gave me was almost entirely two-lane roadways. I quickly began to realize that absolutely no one in Central Florida appears to be in much of a hurry to get anywhere. Fortunately, things did move along at something approximating the speed limit, and I got to the shop a couple of minutes before opening time.

The shop was already open, getting things set up for the day, and there was already a line for rentals (three groups, including me) - and this was a Tuesday morning!

Trailside was very much like any small bike shop, making it familiar territory, with the exception that it was literally full of trikes. Catrike, HP Velotechnik, Ice, were represented in the shop, as were a couple of other brands.

The rental group was small, but with some choices - the gentleman ahead of me, for example, was specific about wanting to rent a full suspension trike and wanted an ICE, which wasn’t available for rental, but chose an HP Scorpion FS instead.

I was offered an HP Gekko. There were other models to choose from, and it was clear I could have asked for something else, but I was looking forward for the opportunity to try something different from my usual.

Once selected, there was a brief set-up - mostly sizing - that I was assisted with, and I was ready to go. I had brought along my SPD sandals in anticipation of needing them, but all of the rental units were set up with flat, heel-sling supported pedals. I am certain someone out there will know what specific model of pedals these are:

While it wasn’t what I expected, it immediately made sense to me. If you are renting trikes, you can’t count on the average, curious weekend or vacation explorer bringing along foot retention. The pedals lacked the top of the foot retention that I use on my Expedition, so you only get to push, not pull. All-in-all, though, it seemed a reasonable compromise for a rental.

Renting also meant that I didn’t have mounting points for my phone (for ride tracking), nor were there pannier bags and such. However, many trike models, if not all, typically have some sort of storage built into the seat. On the Gekko, it turns out, there is a zipper pocket right at the top of the seat, and it was more than large enough for my phone, wallet, and keys.

The Withlacoochee Trail

Once I was all set up I hit the trail, which is, as previously mentioned and as implied by the name on the sign, quite literally right beside the the shop.

My time on the trail was limited - I was squeezing this ride in ahead of going to see the Star Wars exhibit at Disney Hollywood Studios, and I needed to get in, and get back, by noon. Ultimately this gave me just over 50 minutes and 12 miles of experience with the trail itself. In order to keep myself cognizant of the time without my phone easily accessible I set a timer for the halfway point in terms of total time, and wore a single Apple AirPod Pro so I’d be sure to be able to hear it when it went off. Yes, I hear you saying, a watch would have been a simpler solution, but I don’t own one. Also, I was more concerned about getting lost in the enjoyment of the ride and forgetting to check the time. I probably would have set the timer even if I’d had the phone mounted in front of me.

I started out riding south of Trailside Bikes for a little over five miles. This direction, as indicated by the helpful folks in the shop, was more rural, while the northerly course was through more settled area. The trail itself was asphalt, and in excellent condition (a very different experience from the asphalt trails - or roads, for that matter - in Illinois). The Withlacoochee is a rail-trail, so it bears the familiar signs of that type of setup - it is flat (although, so is most of Florida), and runs mostly in a fairly straight line. It’s separated from the roadway, and has vegetation barriers on each side, giving it a somewhat isolated (in a pleasant fashion) feel.

The vegetation is, of course, Floridian in nature, with Spanish moss in the trees, and other items of a rather tropical nature...

The sign for the trail indicates there are no horses allowed on the pavement. There is a grass strip down each side of the trail, however, which would imply that equestrian use _is_ allowed along that portion of the trail. I did not encounter any horses on the trail itself, but I was treated to this sight along the way:

My alarm went off just a little past the five mile mark, so I turned around and headed back. Looking at the map, this meant that, while I was in a fairly rural area, I didn’t reach the Withlacoochee State Forest, nor had I come across the portion where the trail runs along the Withlacoochee River. This was ok, and consistent with what I had expected, given my limited time. Still, if a future opportunity presented itself, I think I’d set things up to ride further to the south.

When I got back to the starting point, however, I found that I still had a little bit of time to work with - I was riding pretty vigorously, trying to make the most of the workout opportunity. So I set another, shorter timer and rode about a mile or so to the north of Trailside Bikes.

This area was more settled, and in fact there were a few businesses along the way:

In addition to the Fruit Stand there were a couple of taverns just off the trail with varying levels of entryway from the trail to the parking lot. If one were taking the time to ride the entire trail one could probably find a stopping point for some lunch and a beer.

This was an active trail. As I noted above, I was riding on a Tuesday morning, and there were multiple cyclists on the trail, as well as the occasional walker and/or jogger. Most were pleasant and returned a wave or a "good morning". Especially fun and interesting for me was the one thing, aside from the vegetation, that made it clear that I was in Florida: the sheer number of trike riders I encountered.

Some of this was to be expected, given that there were folks renting ahead of me, and I did encounter those folks. However, I also came across at least a half-dozen other people out on their trikes on this lovely morning.

This is a special delight for me, given the number of trikes I typically encounter when riding in rural northern Illinois (for those playing at home the number you are looking for rhymes with "Nero"...).

All in all it was a good ride, and a pleasant trail. It’s a little away from the Orlando area, but worth fitting in to a family trip. To be clear, a look at Google Maps with the bike trail settings turned on will show many bike routes available closer by Orlando. However, none of these are nearly as long, and most, if not all, seem to have an urban or suburban orientation, with several running at least part of the time on City streets. Good enough for exercise, but not what I’m looking for from a trail. Plus: Bike rental appears to surprisingly limited in the Orlando area, and trike rental even more so. Having a shop renting right on the trail is a major bonus. If you are going to be in the region and want to ride, I’d suggest checking it out.

The Gekko

My steed for this brief journey was an HP Velotechnik Gekko - I believe with a 26" rear wheel. My usual ride is now a Catrike Expedition, and previously a Catrike Pocket, so those are what I have to compare the experience to.

The Gekko seems to sit a little higher than the Catrikes, though not to a disorienting degree. The spec sheet on HP’s website indicates it’s about two pounds heavier than the Expedition, but given that it was bare - no rack or bags or cargo of any kind - I suspect it was comparable to my Expedition as it is currently kitted out. The Gekko has grip shifters instead of bar-ends, which was a nice change - I had them on the Pocket, and miss them a bit on the Expedition, though I’ve since adjusted.

Overall, it was a very familiar experience. I was cautioned to stay out of the little ring when it was being set up (I suspect to avoid dropping the chain), which was not a problem on the flat trail. It spooled up quickly and was a comfortable machine. I did find myself leaning in to turns more, I think as an artifact of the increased ride height. This was a felt need - at no point did the trike tip. Speed was good - my average speed for the ride was 14.42 mph over 12.31 miles, and my top speed was 26.31 mph. These are good numbers for me, and comparable to my summer speeds over... similar terrain. I say similar here because I don’t often ride trails, and those in my area are neither as smooth or as flat as the section of the Withlacoochee Trail that I rode. People think Illinois is flat, but Florida could teach Illinois a thing or two on that topic... in any case, the trail conditions abetted higher speeds.

Probably the only area of noticeable difference was the steering. Catrikes have direct steering, while the Gekko has indirect steering. This seemed to allow for a tighter turning circle, which I appreciated when I did need to turn around. Otherwise, it also seemed a bit more disconnected and less immediate, and on occasions where I had to take my hands off the handlebars while moving, it shook a bit in a fashion that doesn’t happen on my Catrikes. I don’t know if this was an artifact of this particular trike (maybe something was a little loose) or more broadly due to the type of steering, since I’ve never ridden an indirect steering trike before. However, I found the difference to be minor. Overall, I was glad to have the experience - the relative paucity of trikes in my area limits opportunity.

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And that was my Florida ride. People sometimes bemoan returning from winter vacation to the cold northlands. For myself I’d normally write here about how I enjoy winter - and I do - but it’s 43° here in Northern Illinois now, working its way up to a high of 51° (F). We had a beautiful week during most of our stay in Florida - highs in the 70’s and 80’s, including the day of my ride - but our last two days were in the 40’s, so coming home wasn’t much of a transition at all.

And - of course - a high in the low 50’s along with sunshine means today is a great day to ride...

Which Conditions?

When the topic of winter cycling is broached on a social media group, one of the more common questions is about which conditions keep the winter rider at home.

This is one of mine:

In case it doesn’t read clearly in the picture, what I’m trying to show here is rain.

In February. In Northern Illinois.

I don’t really love riding in the rain, even in summer, but February rain means freezing rain.

It’s a general understanding for people who are active outside year-round that there is no bad weather, only bad clothing. This is a testament I generally adhere to, and certainly it’s possible to dress against freezing rain.

But one cannot dress against road conditions, nor against visibility. And in terms of the latter, I’m not concerned about my own, but about that of the motor vehicle operators on the road. It’s better to be able to be seen, and to not be in conditions where the large metal objects struggle to arrest their speed.

And so today, on the couch I remain...

Patience has its Rewards

So last week I was struggling with anticipation as I waited to ride until the plows had made their journey through the countryside. But the moment did finally arrive.

By way of context, this was my driveway that morning:

I’d like to claim that I put those tractor tracks in the snow, but that was my cousin, who graciously comes up and plows us out when we are hemmed in. And prior to the plows going through, this is similar to what the roads in the area looked like. Now, I’m not afraid of riding in a little snow, but I don’t have a fat bike or trike, and more importantly, there was a lot of material on the road - I didn’t want a plow depositing a load of the white stuff on me as it passed me by.

The waiting worked out tho - this is what the roads looked like as I ventured forth:

And this is the thing about winter road riding. I am sometimes quite certain that people think you are (or more specifically, that I am) insane for going out. But what you see in that picture - which is a secondary, rural road - is what I encounter the majority of the time.

This is a point that Tom Babin touches on in Frostbike. People often think about winter as being 3-4 months of punishingly cold weather, but the reality is that, like the rest of the year, it’s usually mild temperatures punctuated by brief extremes. Most winters here in northern Illinois we do see temps in the negative double-digits (F), but that’s usually brief - maybe a few days. It’s possible to dress for the extremes, but even if you stayed in for the very cold days, the rest of the winter is quite manageable.

There are those who prefer to stay in and ride on trainers when it’s cold, and I intend no shade towards them - people should get to like what they like. But if you’ve ever wondered whether you just might be able to manage it out in the winter climate, I’d recommend going for it. It’s not an arctic expedition - you’ll find an abundance of days that are quite amenable.

Speaking of which: time to ride...

Anticipation

Almost every Sunday morning after I wake up and - let’s be honest - after I have my first cup of coffee, I start thinking about where and when I will ride. And while I experience that virtually every week, this Sunday, in particular, the feeling is especially acute.

There is a combination of factors contributing. First is that I made the conscious decision to forgo a ride last Sunday in favor of getting a couple of projects finished. These were things that definitely needed attention, and Sunday is also my day for projects. Usually I prioritize riding and do what I can for projects afterward, but occasionally things have to go the other way around if a thing is going to get done. But this means that I’m a ride short in my mental tally now.

The other factor is that we have snow.

We’ve had dustings and such this season, but the snowfall over the past few days is the first that we’ve seen in earnest, offering an actual ground cover. I’m very much looking forward to being out and about in it.

But there is also a problem: we have snow.

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The snowfall was continual over the past couple of days - slow, but persistent. But the temperatures during the day were hovering around the mid-low 30°’s (F), slightly above freezing for much of the day each day. This appears to have led the road crews out in our rural area to bide their time before getting out and running the plows on the backroads - to wait and see how much will melt away before committing township resources to removal. As a taxpayer and owner of vehicles with all-wheel drive and snow tires I can appreciate that.

For the next several days, however, high temps are forecast to stay below freezing, which means the plow trucks will be out. Which means I need to wait a bit.

To be clear, I am not afraid of riding through a little snow. This is a thing I’ve been doing for a while now - it’s all part of the fun. But I don’t want to be on the road on my trike when the plows go by. You’d be astonished at how much snow can actually land in the lap of a person on a recumbent trike. Or so I imagine...

So I’m sitting, waiting, listening and watching for evidence of snow removal vehicles. Over the years I seem to have developed the ability to detect and isolate the characteristic sound that a plow truck makes as it passes by the house. It’s a little like how my dogs can hear the kibble landing in the food bowl from anywhere in the yard.

Maybe one more cup of coffee, and then maybe they’ll pass by...

Keeping All Your Eggs In One...

When I asked MLW what she wanted for Christmas this year, she requested a fancy countertop egg cooker. This is a thing that makes hard boiled eggs, soft boiled eggs, poached eggs, omelettes, scrambled eggs, pheasant eggs under glass... (not sure about the last one). Seemed a perfectly reasonable request, so we ordered one up.

...and sent it back to exchange for another one that worked. And when the new one arrived we were missing one key component to egg making happiness: the eggs.

For me this presented an opportunity to kill three birds with one egg - I could make my sweetie happy, get in my Sunday ride, and get an opportunity to use my trike as transport and see how it would handle fragile items across the six miles or so of country blacktop between home and town.

The fragile part was really the only question in the mix. I’ve done multiple cargo runs into town on the trike, and carried some heavier items as well, but I wasn’t entirely sure how this one would go. My Catrike Expedition is a capable machine, but it has nothing on it resembling a suspension. And the roads here aren’t bad, but they do have their fair share of expansion joints and other imperfections to contend with, and I can confirm that my tuches is familiar with each and every one of them.

Still, I figured the worst that could happen would be needing to clean out a pannier bag and then having to drive in and shell out cash for more eggs. Seemed a reasonable risk, so off I went.

When you live out in the country the tendency is to purchase things in bulk. No one wants to discover that they are down to just one of anything - sad when it’s eggs or lunch meat, terrifying when it’s toilet paper. So that meant I was going to be carrying back three dozen eggs in two 18-packs.

I put them in my pannier bag with the old zip-neck fleece pullover I carry for temperature emergencies as padding. What I didn’t adequately prepare myself for was the change in perspective that occurred for the ride back.

Literally every bump, crack, frost heave, or other tarmac imperfection became locked into my visual radar, and each time I chose poorly - each time a bump smacked harder, more smartly than seemed ideal - I winced in sympathetic, anticipatory pain.

This also had the effect of slowing me down markedly. The wind was not against me, and my load wasn’t heavy - it’s two cartons of eggs, for goodness sake - and yet my average for the return trip dropped to something south of 10mph as I gingerly picked my way back across the prairie landscape.

When I got back to the garage I pulled out the cartons and contemplated opening them there to see how I’d done. However, I have a personal tendency towards tragic mishap when it comes to interacting with fragile and/or fluid containing items, and raw eggs, it seems to me, fit in both categories. As I considered it I could picture myself opening a carton, having carried it all the way home on my trike, and then unceremoniously dropping it’s contents on the garage floor.

Hell, I figured I was going to be fortunate to just not drop them while carrying them in to the house.

So I carefully picked them up - with both hands, just like Grandma Marie taught me - and took them inside. I set them firmly on the table, ensuring they were securely placed before I opened them. And:

There you have it. I suspect I was being a little over the top in my concern on the way home - I’ll be more comfortable next time. But I’ll still carry them in using both hands.

The Road Less Traveled

I have a section of a pretty regular route, my ride to check my mailbox, that has a couple of pretty enthusiastic dogs on it. One of them is an Australian Shepard that is clearly interested in running along and herding the trike (and routinely approaches 20 mph), and the other is a brown and white dog that is, I think, more concerned that I’m an interloper that must be dealt with (he seems, shall we say, less friendly than the Aussie). I also worry that they are out on the road when I’m riding by. These are not heavily traveled byways, but as a child in the country I lost more than one dog to the road for similar reasons.

There’s a road that more or less parallels the road the dogs are on less than a mile to the west. Taking it would avoid the dogs, add some variety to an otherwise very familiar route. It also rides through a wooded area, part of it a tiny preserve - Bartlett Woods or Knox Grove, which astonishingly has its own Wikipedia page - given to the county by a landowner a few generations ago. The road has a lot to recommend it.

The problem, of course, is that it is gravel.

I don’t love gravel roads - a topic that has come up here once or twice before. But I slowed down as I approached this road on my return trip and gave it some consideration:

As I looked down the road it was clear that it was the right kind of gravel, which is to say that it’s a gravel road with virutally no gravel on it. It was wet, so it was going to be slower and sloppier than the usual road, but I wasn’t especially in a hurry, and the combination of (presumed) canine absence and allure of variety helped me make my choice.

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I’d been down this road before by car once or twice, primarily to see the aforementioned preserve, but it had been several years. And while the first portion of the roadway was standard Illinois backroad scenery (open fields - empty this time of year), it wasn’t long before I was rewarded for choosing the road less traveled.

Most of the roads in my part of Northern Illinois hew to a grid system, but a few remnants from the era of horse and wagon routes do remain. This was no exception. As you approach the woods you can see the s-curve in the road, probably undertaken to gain the best angle for crossing the creek.

As you get there, of course, you get a view of the creek itself. This is Bureau Creek, which I’ve mentioned here many times before. Many small Northern Illinois waterways are rather dull affairs due to long-standing human intervention. The area has undergone significant alteration over the years in order to provide dry land for agriculture, and so streams and waterways were channelized in order to abet drainage. For the most part, Bureau Creek seems to have been spared that and, if anything, enhanced by additional volume from the drainage systems. In part this may be due to its size. It is unclear to me whether there is a clear, explicit definition to separate a creek from a river (and searches don’t help much on this topic), but Bureau Creek could probably have been called a river under other circumstances - in many places, for example, it is wider than the Little Vermillion River a few miles to the north.

All of this means that the views along Bureau Creek often offer exactly the sort of thing you are looking for from a waterway.

And then, rolling past the creek, you arrive at the entrance to Knox Grove.

This has not been a place well loved by the county. The little foot bridge and the sign are almost the entirety of the improvements here, and neither is new. It would be easy to look at this sort of situation and remark that it is a sad one, but it’s somewhat understandable. The woods here are small, and largely part of a watershed. When LB and I visited it years ago we found the ground soft and difficult to traverse, and she was nearly carried off by mosquitos. Not every natural area is inviting to, nor needs to be maintained for, humans.

Once past the entrance to the grove, the side-journey was pretty much over. This section of road is slightly less than two miles long, and it’s somewhat of an anachronism for our area. While northern Illinois is intensely rural, most of the backroads are paved. A few months back, when I posted about my nemesis - a particularly abusive section of rocky roadway - some folks opined that I just needed to get different tires for my trike. This is a fair suggestion, but the reality here is that gravel sections appear only intermittently. If you were looking for an extended gravel ride - and people do - I literally think about Bob Sharpe over at Old Man Gravel every time I approach a road like this - it is challenging to find continuous, connected gravel roadways in our area for more than a 3-4 mile stretch.

For me, mostly that’s just fine - pavement is my friend. But it is nice to to periodically take the less trodden fork.

Okay - time to ride...

On the Board

I really wanted to get out and ride on New Year’s Day. I mean, while the day itself is somewhat arbitrary, I like the romantic notion of getting out on day one; first day of the year, first ride of the year, that sort of thing.

The thing was, while I liked the idea of it, I was having trouble getting myself to actually do it. This is unusual for me - I generally just enjoy riding. I hadn’t been out super-late the night before, nor had I over-reveled. Still, the wind was blowing hard out of the south, and I was working on other things (including Wednesday’s year-end round-up ). I also was waiting for my winter gear to finish winding its way through the wash. As the day wended on it got easier and easier to imagine not riding. I started to negotiate with myself, reasoning that I’d ridden the day before, and I’d have opportunities to ride on Friday and Sunday, and wasn’t that still pretty early in the year...?

Ultimately I negotiated with myself to set up a new, shorter route - all over familiar territory, but a slightly different pattern - so that it would be a limited commitment but still get me out on the trike.

Once the dryer stopped it’s cycle I pulled the gear out and made myself go. And five minutes into it I was enjoying myself and pleased to be out on the machine, out in the elements, embracing the day.

By the time I got back I felt much better, and I was very happy that I’d pushed myself into it. It wasn’t a long ride, or particularly adventurous, I was on the board for day one of 2020.

This is, I think, a familiar experience for many of us, even folks who exercise regularly. But it is helpful to have a periodic reminder of the phenomenon - that even when you don’t really feel like it in the moment, you will feel better if you just go ahead and do it. That reminder will hopefully help bolster the resolve for the next time you just don’t wanna...

2019 Cycling Year in Review

So it’s that time when we look back at the year that was and consider where we’ve been, what we’ve done in regard to our goals, and consider where you’d like to go from there. And here at Applied Life it’s now an annual tradition. You know, cuz I did it once before, last year.

We’ll set aside the fact that there’s nothing actually special about the end of the month of December, and further set aside the fact that a more reasonably designed calendar would end the year either on the winter solstice or the vernal equinox. But that’s what you get when you have a calendar designed by committee, so, you know, I won’t even bring that up here.

As always, it is always important to remember to compare oneself to oneself, not to others. I periodically have to remind myself of this, particularly when undertaking something like this. With that in mind, what follows is a look at _my_ year in cycling.

Distance

My goal for this past year was to get to 1500 miles. This seemed a reasonable, achievable increase from my ultimate 2018 total of 1372 miles (well, technically 1372.14, but who’s counting...).

That won’t seem like a huge increase - 1372 to 1500 - for some people, I realize. In the cycling groups I follow there are people who literally have tens of thousands of miles per year. But keeping in mind that adage of comparing oneself to oneself, it seemed reasonable at the time.

I may have undersold myself. I met the goal this year, and then sailed past it a bit, to hit a year end mark of 1722.34 miles.

In terms of the how and why, according to Cyclemeter I rode both more often, and for longer distances per ride on average. Last year I managed 106 rides, with an average distance of 12.94 miles. For 2019 I came in at 121 rides, with an average distance of 14.23 miles.

That may seem pretty elementary, and in some ways it is. But rides and distance both take up time, and it can be challenging to squeeze additional riding into my schedule. But I did make a conscious effort to increase the length of my Sunday rides, which seems to have had an effect. I’ve also tried to do a better job of taking riding opportunities where they present - for example, riding to my mailbox on days when I am working from home (it’s a 16-mile round trip to a PO Box - I’m not just riding to the end of the driveway).

It also helps sometimes when you have a new toy, which brings us to...

Machines

I know that a lot of cyclists are N+1 types (as in the right number of bikes to own is the number I have now - _N_ - plus one more). I am not. I think new bikes are cool and all - they sure do look pretty sitting there on the showroom floor. But I’m really much more the sort of person who establishes a long-term relationship with a machine. I rode my 1987 Cannondale for at least a decade before getting the Catrike Pocket, and I was set to ride off into the sunset with the little blue machine.

But I didn’t.

At the end of July I took possession of an Atomic Orange Catrike Expedition.

To be clear, was absolutely nothing wrong with the Pocket, and I’d been happy riding it for the past two years or so. But I’d purchased the Pocket as my entry into the world of recumbent trikes, a chance to see whether or not I liked it. My selection of it as a particular model was one of convenience - it came up as available on eBay, was in my price range, and was only an hour away.

It’s worked out well for all of that, but when I felt like I was finally in a position to consider getting something different, I decided to take a more considered look at what I thought would work for me and my cycling goals, and the Expedition seemed to fill the bill. I’m liking it a lot, as anyone looking back across the posts this year can see. And I suspect this will be a long-term fling.

And this doesn’t hang the Pocket out to dry. I resized it for MLW so she can have her own triking adventures.

Trips

This year, as usual, most of my rides started and ended at my driveway. But between opportunities offered by work travel, and some additional general adventurousness, I did get out to a few new trails, as well as revisited some more. Those included:

• The month of May offered an opportunity to drive down to the pointy end of the state, so I took a ride on the Tunnel Hill Trail, riding from Vienna to Karnak.
• In June I made the trip over to Sterling to tackle the Hennepin Feeder Canal trail. I managed to get very wet. Incidentally, the feeder canal provides the water supply for the Hennepin Canal. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because it’s Illinois gateway trail for the Rails to Trails coast to coast path project.
• In July I returned to the I&M Canal trail and learned a thing or two about what the rainy season can do to a trike. And then I returned again to go hunting for my lost flag (ugh).
• In August the opportunity to ride the Des Plaines River Trail presented itself.
• I rode in the Farmondo again in September.
• On Black Friday this year I decided to give the Expedition a shot at the Military Ridge Trail in southwestern Wisconsin. I did not distinguish myself in terms of either speed or distance, but I did learn a thing or two about the rolling resistance provided by wet sand, and got quite a workout in the process.

There were a couple of others that I returned to or tried but didn’t find the muse to put them down here, including two return trips to Rend Lake (one on the Pocket, one on the Expedition), and a late day adventure riding north to the titular Tunnel on the Tunnel Hill Trail (that one may still get its own post). One of my goals for last year was to explore more trails and, all in all I think I managed to get there.

Miscellaneous

I had a couple of other areas of more technical exploration in 2019:

• When I ordered the Expedition I also ordered up a pair of Shimano Spd sandals and decided to give being clipped in a try. That experiment was not successful, but I did learn some things along the way; and
• My desire (okay - need) to sometimes have coffee along for the ride led me to add a Terracycle Adjustomatic Bottle Mount to my Expedition. Besides having a product name that is just delightful, it also works very well; and
• The addition of a second trike required me to rethink the storage setup in our comparatively tiny garage. And finally
• Serendipity brought along the opportunity to get a new mobile trike garage in the form of a Subaru Outback. That experiment is more successful than the spd shoes thus far...

Next Year?

The end of the year is also the time to set goals for the new one coming.

In terms of mileage, last year I set my goal at 1500 miles. In retrospect, that seems like it may have been too safe a number, but I also find myself mentally wanting to make excuses about how I’m not sure where or how I would fit much more riding into my schedule. I’m sure I’m not the only person that struggles with that issue - as I said before, distance equals time. Still, I think I need to at least shoot for a 2000 mile goal.

There - I said it. Now we’ll see if I can actually _do_ it...

Last year I said I wanted to explore more trails. I’d like to do a little more of that for 2020 - I think there are a handful of routes in areas I visit that I haven’t yet taken advantage of. But I’d really like to manage a couple of options that I didn’t achieve from last year:

• I would really like to finally make it from LaSalle to Ottawa along the I&M Canal Trail. I tried this year, but was stymied by mud and... well... just so much mud. And I didn’t make it back later in the season, when the rain finally had tapered off.
• Similarly, I didn’t make that trip further down the Hennepin Canal Trail. I did, as noted above, take a ride along the feeder canal, but I didn’t make it back down for the main event. Portions of the Hennepin Canal trail were closed during the rainiest parts of this spring (this is something that, hopefully, Rails to Trails has a plan for sorting out), but again, didn’t take the opportunity to return to it later in the season.

And along these lines, I’d like to see if I can’t find a way to fit the occasional stop in at restaurants or taverns along those routes. This is a thing that I’ve often considered, but with one exception - the Lodi Tap in Utica, following my struggles with the mud along the I&M canal trail (did I mention the mud?) - I usually just keep going (I’m a fairly solitary soul by nature). But I think that would add to the variety along the way.

And finally, I need to finish my trailer project. I’ll be honest here and admit that part of the issue is that working on the trailer directly competes with riding - both are spare time activities, and faced with doing one or the other, I’ve generally chosen to ride. I may need to bring it inside and do some work when the winter snowstorms rise up.

So: that’s it for 2019. Come on 2020 and show us what you’ve got!

Grocery Getter

A couple of weeks ago MLW announced that it was time to make a chuck roast. This is always a moment of celebration in the house - My Lovely Wife is a magnificent cook, and when she applies her skills to a large item like a roast it means that the goodness lasts across several meals. I am a particular beneficiary of this, as I love leftovers, and I seem to be of a singular preference for that in our household.

My role in these things is often to fetch items, and this meal was no exception. I was beginning to gear up for my Sunday ride when she asked if I could run to the store and pick a few things up. It was a short list, and so my first thought was that I could quickly run into town, grab the items on the list, and then go for a ride upon my return. And then it occurred to me: maybe I could kill two birds with one trike...

Ok - so the metaphor there needs a little bit of work, but you can probably see where I am going with this. I asked her if she needed the things on her list right away, or if it would be okay if it took an hour or so. She agreed, and didn’t even roll her eyes at me (or if she did, she was kind enough to do it when I wasn’t looking - either way, I’m a very lucky man).

So I decided it was time to set my Catrike Expedition to work as a grocery getter.

Now I realize that people in urban areas have been using their bikes to run to the store for several years now, and that those numbers are increasing as the amount of urban cycling increases overall. In that respect, this idea is not a new one, and in fact, when I lived in an urban-ish area in the 2000’s I used my Cannondale and a repurposed child trailer to do periodic grocery hauling myself.

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But we don’t live in an urban area now. We live about six miles out of town on the open prairie, and getting to the grocery store is a 12-mile round trip. Comparatively speaking, my trip to the store back in our urban-ish days was less than three miles all told. This is not a complaint - we actively chose to live out here, and this is not a decision I regret - but it does mean that a ride to the store is a greater time commitment, and that it requires planning - there’s no running back again for "one more thing".

In this case, it also meant that I needed to do some planning in terms of carrying capacity. I reviewed the list that MLW provided:

And determined that I should be able to carry all of that in my pannier bags if I emptied a few things out of them first. Mostly this meant that I wouldn't be carrying additional insulating gear (which I’ve been keeping in there as the weather gets colder), and that I would have only one spare tube for the front and rear tires. So, you know, if I got two front flats I’d have to call for help. None of that would have been necessary if I had a trailer to pull behind my trike, but some jackass has been dragging his feet at getting that project finished...

That all set up, I double-checked to make sure I had my wallet along with me - there are few things more frustrating than riding 6-8 miles to do an errand just to find that you have not brought along a vital component to completing said errand; or, you know, so I hear... - and started riding my way into town.

This adventure occurred on the 15th of December. The temperature was right around 20°F, but it was sunny and the wind was blessedly, atypically still. In short, it was a perfect December riding day.

The ride in was uneventful, and the shopping itself was, you know, shopping. I’m sure I attracted a bit of attention with my riding gear. I’m not a MAMIL - I’m middle aged, but I don’t go in for specialized riding clothes. However, I was wearing Columbia noisy pants (nylon hiking pants) and a bright orange insulated jersey (Lycra I don’t need, but visibility I do). But as is true of midwestern small town life, if people took notice they whispered about it amongst themselves.

The challenge came in when it was time to pack my produce on to the trike:

Fortunately I had calculated correctly, and everything fit. But once it was in there, I could certainly feel it.

While celery and herbs don’t add much by way of weight, the wine and the beef broth - two containers of each - certainly did. I packed the broth on one side and the wine on the other in order to balance things out. This wasn’t exactly perfect - the broth was about 4lbs (2lbs per container), and a 750ml bottle of wine is about 3lbs, for a total of 6, but I put the broth on the side with my spare tubes and tools, so it was probably pretty close. Once I was all loaded up I zipped the bags shut and hit the road.

When I say that I could feel it, I mean that I could definitely tell that there was more weight on board for the return trip. It wasn’t unreasonable, and I’ve carried far more weight on the back of the trike without significant issue. But you definitely knew it was there. And it shows on the stats for the ride as well. My ride speed from Cyclemeter is in the graph below:

The ride in is 6.36 miles, and that sharp drop-off in speed around mile 6 is almost certainly my arrival in the parking lot. To even things out, I compared the first five miles to the last five, leaving out miles six and seven. My average speed for the first five miles on the way in was 15.4mph, while on the way out it dropped to 12.3mph. So the extra 10-11lbs of groceries dropped my average speed by about 3mph.

This was, all in all, just about a perfect day for this comparison. Usually wind is a significant factor in riding on the prairie. The fact that the day was essentially still means that the difference in speed can largely be attributed to the difference in weight. One could argue, I suppose, that I might also have been more fatigued on the way back, but this grocery run was shorter than my average ride for the year thus far (14.27), and I often find that my speeds either maintain or go up as I get warmed up, so I don’t think fatigue was a significant factor.

To me, that 3mph drop seems a reasonable trade-off for the utility use of the trike. When I put together my argument for recumbent trikes being the ideal rural bike, this was exactly the sort of thing that I had in mind. The Expedition handled the weight well, and I was able to manage the load at a reasonable return speed. 12.3mph isn’t going to set any speed records, mind you, but it’s pretty good for managing an additional 10-11 lbs over and above what I carried in.

And, as always, I just love it when I get the opportunity to use my trike as transportation. I don’t have the illusion or expectation that I will ever be in a position to cycle for most of my transportation, but on this occasion, at least, I used no fossil fuels, put no wear and tear on my car, and managed to get some exercise. In my book, all of that comes together for a win.

And incidentally: the roast was excellent!

Trike Transporting - The High Seat - Getting on Top of Things Revisited

One of the things that goes with getting a new mobile trike garage is learning how to work out the different aspects of carrying the trike. Most of the time, of course, I plan on just carrying it inside. This is really the safest option in multiple ways - keeps my Expedition out of the elements and keeps it away from prying eyes and touching hands.

And while I chose the outback because it would carry the trike and a couple of people, sometimes we have to carry multiple people and their stuff.

A notable example of this occurred over thanksgiving. Apparently my wife and child want not only to be transported over the river and through the woods, but they also want to bring along other ridiculous items like, say, pajamas, toothbrushes, and changes of clothing - so demanding.

I’d dealt with this before, setting up the rack for the Pocket for the same trip last Thanksgiving, but that was on my Honda Fit. For that car I’ve used an entire separate Yakima rack that mounts to the roof (no particular allegiance to Yakima here - it’s just what I already own). The Outback comes with its own roof rails - specifically swiveling roof rails (it took me a little while to figure out what that meant) - so I’d need a bit of different equipment.

As you might expect, Yakima makes mounts for factory roof racks as well. I spent a little time on their website, and it appeared that all I would need was the Mighty Mount 23H to hook the wheel trays to the Outback’s factory rails. I ordered them up. They come in packs of four, and I needed six (two mounting points for three wheel trays), so I ordered two packs.

I was a little puzzled by the warning on the box - where exactly did they think I was going to put these?!? But then again, those silica packs look pretty tasty too...

Once they came in, installation was pretty straightforward. Of course, on the Outback the first thing you have to do is swivel your roof rails. I said before that I had read this phrase several times when I was researching the Outback, but didn’t know what it meant. When you look at the car, the roof rails run parallel to the sides:

On most vehicles this means that the rails essentially serve as a mounting point for crossbars, which you will have to purchase separately - e.g. from the manufacturer or from an aftermarket company like Yakima or Thule. That’s initially what I expected to have to use as well, but I already have two separate sets of crossbars (I’ve had to mount bikes and skis to a lot of different roofs over the years. Anyone need crossbar mounts for a 1994 Nissan Pathfinder...?).

What I learned is that when they say "swivel" what they mean is that the bars unhook from their parallel mounting and swing around (swivel) across the roof to a perpendicular position.

Why I am spending so much time writing about this aspect? Honestly, it just tickles me. I’ve spent years putting racks on cars, some of which had no factory rack, some with just side rails, and some with full racks that I just wouldn't trust. In every case part of the problem is putting on and taking off the rack, storing it, etc. You can’t just leave it on because it plays havoc with mileage and presents a noisy intrusion. Subaru has solved at least part of that problem by keeping the rack (or at least the crossbars) always on top, but out of the wind until you actually need it. It’s just elegant. Maybe other car companies have similar systems, but none of them have ever been on a car I’ve owned, and I’ve had a few. So I’m a fan of this solution. But now I’ll stop gushing and move on.

Everything else is pretty much what you’d think - line up the mounting points so they are straight, put the wheel trays on to them, and tighten everything down.

One’s (my) natural tendency might be to try and center the rails on the roof, but you want to keep in mind that you have to lift an entire Catrike Expedition up there. I try to mount it as close to the driver’s side as I can get it, since that’s where I’ll be lifting up from.

The wheel trays I’m using are Yakima Copperheads. What you see are the wheel tray part of those with the fork mount head removed. For the trike what I needed was the ratchet straps that would go around the rear wheel of an upright. This is all the same system and equipment that I used with the Pocket last year.

The trike is awkward to get up there, but it gets easier with practice.

I supplement the ratchet straps with bungees (the heavy duty black rubber ones)...

...And I always put my cable lock around the seat frame and crossbars. I think of this last part as a bit of double security. Hopefully it will keep people with wandering hands from contemplating taking my trike, and also will act as a final safety catch if other parts let go.

How did it all work? I love my Honda Fit for a lot of reasons, but you can tell that the Outback is designed with the idea that people will carry things on top. It’s relatively quiet even with the trike on the roof (the Fit was not), and where the Fit struggled to maintain speed in a headwind the Subaru (with its much larger engine) managed just fine.

I’ll still carry the trike inside most of the time. The following morning in Wisconsin illustrated the reason why quite nicely:

I love a fresh dusting of snow, but I don’t love it being on my trike... You know, unless I put in there myself.

Ok - time to ride...

Frostbike - A Review

One could be forgiven for thinking that a book about cycling in the cold months of the year would have a very narrow field of interest. After all, it’s a pretty small group of people who even want to venture out to do anything in winter’s chill, much less spinning pedals on a decidedly weather-exposed machine. Indeed, for myself I first heard about Frostbike: The Joy, Pain, and Numbness of Winter Cycling by Tom Babin through the Winter Cycling group on Facebook. This is an excellent, and well moderated group, but it’s group that exists in part because a relatively small number of people share the interest. And, of course, those folks are nuts, right?

It turns out that this perspective is, in fact, a distinctly North American one. As Babin notes, here in the US and Canada...

What usually happens when winter rolls in is that the number of cyclists tumbles, and those who do it are seen as zealots or oddballs.

As the book makes clear, however, there are other parts of the world that do not share our way of thinking. Babin explicitly describes arriving at the airport in Oulu, Finland, and finding that the bike routes not only came directly to the front door of the airport, but they were being actively used. And he was there in February.

That’s right - Finland. in February.

But none of that was what I expected when I purchased Frostbike and downloaded to my Kindle last spring. I bought it last March, at the end of the winter riding season, purposely planning on holding off reading it until things got chilly here at the end of the year. I was anticipating a book about the author’s personal journey towards becoming a winter cyclist, and I figured that would help me with mentally gearing myself up for the next season. And the book does include that journey - I suspect Tom Babin’s beginnings with the world of cold-weather pedaling will be familiar to many winter cyclists. But Tom Babin is a journalist and cycling advocate from Calgary, and Frostbike extends well beyond his personal journey.

Frostbike explores the bigger picture of understanding where people have been historically with respect to cycling and winter, as well as literally journying to cities around the world to see how other cities - cities where there is actual, real winter - handle cycling.

It’s not too big a spoiler to say that they handle it well. Of Oulu, Finland, Babin writes:

I realized I had probably, in just a few minutes, seen more people riding in the snow than I ever had in my life.

From Finland he also travels to Copenhagen to keep his perspective from being too narrowly focused, and finds a similar picture. And when he asks people there why they ride in the winter the answer is both surprising and simple:

The reasons people ride bikes in the winter, he said, are the same reasons they ride bikes in the summer–doing so is quick and convenient. You just have to dress for it.

The book also takes time to investigate why we seem to have such a different perspective in North America from Northern Europe when it comes to winter cycling and, frankly, just winter in general. Where he arrives is illuminating, and for myself placed the finger finally on the nose of a phenomenon I’ve been trying to mentally sort out for years. I remember, as a kid, enjoying being outside in the winter weather, and having friends routinely joining me. I still enjoy it, but I no longer have company in those pursuits. He hits the nail on the head with his observations and conclusions in this area. I won’t give it away here, but I will offer this quote as a teaser:

For Canadians, and perhaps many North Americans, complaining about the weather has become second nature, our default way of relating to each other.

You will see the cycling advocate in this work as well. In particular, he does an able job of outlining whether, and why, cycling infrastructure should be supported and maintained in winter months, and it involves a hard look at whether there are other facilities that municipalities develop despite not having year-round applications...

Going in, it is good to be aware that the book is very much focused on learning about and developing winter cycling for urban settings. This should, perhaps, not be surprising - that’s where the bulk of cycling focus seems to be, where the majority of people are to be found, and arguably urban areas are where cycling has the most benefit to offer in terms of reducing congestion. There is some discussion about the development of fatbikes, and it was interesting to read the history in that area, but it’s ultimately in service of the author’s efforts to determine which type of bike will work best for his (urban) winter commute. I would have liked a little more about the broader world of winter riding. Still, my hope for more on the wider world of winter cycling was an expectation the author did not promise, and was not obligated to meet.

There is also a section at the end of the book, styled as an addendum, offering up tips for winter cycling. It’s brief, but practical, and will be helpful for new adventurers. I’m certain that the existing, died in the wool cool kids will have disagreements with the author’s recommendations, but then again, they don’t really need the tips either.

If you have an cyclist on your holiday shopping list, or if you are just interested yourself in looking into winter cycling around the world, Frostbike (I love the play on words with the title, and iOS autocorrect, incidentally, hates it) is an excellent read. It’s available in hard copy and Kindle through Amazon. (Regular readers will be aware that I usually listen to my books, but Audible doesn’t (yet) carry this particular tome).

Enjoy. Now it’s time to ride. In the cold...

Medallion Status by John Hodgman - A Review

With his last book, Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches, John Hodgman broke away from his prior role as a purveyor of tomes of fake knowledge and began to delve into the real world and his own life. This was done to good effect, as I discussed at the time, both light and funny and still emotionally poignant and touching.

To call Medallion Status: True Stories from Secret Rooms a follow-up to that work is unfair and misleading. In this new book, John Hodgman is once again the protagonist - it is, after all, a series of essays about his life experiences. As such, it continues to present his sardonic yet sincere and endearing perspective.

But while Vacationland presented much of its story as reflection - about growing and becoming - Medallion Status spends much more time on Hodgman in current day, or at least in recent day. In this respect it presents a man struggling with competing ideas of the importance of status and family while recognizing and coping with inevitable change. For Hodgman this change is reflected in part in the transition from, as he describes it himself, being a "minor" television personality to being someone who, increasingly, isn’t on television.

Obviously this isn’t an experience most of us have had - though he delightfully writes portions of the book from an instructional perspective, as if you are, in fact, the person having the experience - but many of us of a certain age and beyond have experienced transitions in life where things that we’ve done and loved for years are no longer a part of what we do. Our own status changes with those transitions, in one direction or the other, whether we like it or not. It starts early and persists throughout life - consider the transition from high school to college, college to the world of work, or transitioning from one job to the next. Each confers a change in status, and that direction is not always on the upswing. We see the same things with family and friends and so on. And ultimately, that is the core of this book - working through those transitions.

In the course of that journey, Hodgman alternates in a range between wry and bordering on being a little silly. All of it is artfully composed, as is all of his writing, and there are many touching moments in-between those of humor. He is often painfully honest, and reveals things about himself and the way he feels about components of his world that reflects a courage I think it would be hard to replicate. In fact, one of the things I always appreciate about John Hodgman’s work is that he is always funny, but he’s never mean spirited, except possibly towards himself (and that to good effect).

As is usually the case for me, I listened to Medallion Status as an audiobook. The book is read by Hodgman himself, and this is always a good thing in his case. Hodgman is intimately familiar with his own written voice, and hearing him perform his book further emphasizes and clarifies the humor and poignancy the words already contain (this is not true of all authors). Like David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell, Hodgman is an author for whom I will wait for the audio version of their work not just for convenience but because their readings amplify already great material.

For those of us fortunate enough to live in the western first world, the holiday season is somewhat of an exercise in irony: We struggle with what to get for people who need nothing, while they in turn struggle with that same, unneeded task on our behalf. And studies show that people ultimately appreciate and remember experiences far more than things over the longer term. The beautiful thing about a book is that it is both a thing and an experience. Give the person in your life who loves reading this sort of work Medallion Status and you will be giving them a thing to treasure, and an experience to remember.

In fact, while you are considering this book, you may also want to consider John Hodgman’s other books, which are:

• The Areas of My Expertise
• More Information Than You Require
• That is All
• Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches (All the links immediately above will take you to Amazon)

The first three books are a trilogy of sorts, and they are different than Medallion Status or Vacationland. They are, in fact, "an almanac of complete world knowledge compiled with instructive annotation and arranged in useful order". All of which is to say that they are a three part compilation of an astonishing array of delightfully funny fake facts and made up trivia including information about the mythical city of Chicago and ultimately addressing the end of the world in a blood wave. You remember the blood wave that ended the world, right? In 2012?

I already emphasized above the benefit of going with the audio version of John Hodgman’s work. I’ll note here that if you are interested in the trilogy of fact facts, above, the audiobooks are not just readings, they are complete performances with musical interludes and a cast of characters that include Paul Rudd, Jonathan Coulton, John Roderick, Sarah Vowell, Zach Galifianakis, and many others.

New Mobile Trike Garage...

For much of the past two years or so, my car has largely functioned as a mobile trike garage. While I went through a fair amount of thought and effort to figure out how to store my trike by hanging it from the ceiling in the garage, the reality is that it spent relatively little time on it’s perch. The Pocket, being a relatively small machine, fit nicely behind the rear seats in my Honda Fit, and since I most frequently drive alone or, on rare occasion, with a single passenger, it was simpler to leave it in the car much of the time. Besides, you never know when an opportunity to ride might present itself, and you can only capitalize on that if the trike is present, so...

When I got the Catrike Expedition this summer I knew that it’s increased size was going to complicate things a bit. I love Honda Fits - they are extremely flexible, efficient and, with a stick shift at least, fun to drive. But the Expedition is both wider and, notably, longer than the Pocket. I expected it would strain the Fit’s capabilities as a trike transport.

Strain was correct. While the Pocket fit behind the front seats with the rear seats folded, I was not able to find any way to carry the Expedition without encroaching into the front passenger area. Ultimately, the best arrangement turned out to be sliding the passenger seat all the way forward and then leaning the seat back forward. With this done and the Expedition put in the back at an angle I could just barely get the rear hatch closed. (I also quickly discovered that I had to remove the passenger headrest because it now sat directly in my line of sight of the right-side rear view mirror).

As I mentioned, most of the time I’m in the car by myself, so this wasn’t necessarily the end of the world. However, it does decrease flexibility. Say your child needs you to swing by and pick them up on the way home, for example. Unless they are going to ride in the seat of the trike, there’s nowhere for them to sit. Oddly enough, passengers tend to object to this option.

Yes, it is possible to carry the trike on the roof - I’ve done this before - but that puts it out in the elements and in view of prying eyes and wandering hands, so I prefer to have it inside whenever possible. And besides, the roof rack has a negative impact on noise level and gas mileage, so I don’t put it on unless I’m planning to carry the trike up top in advance. It’s not there on the car to be used if I encounter an unexpected passenger need.

All that aside, it’s been workable, if occasionally inconvenient, for the past several months, and I’d been prepared to work with it for the longer term. However, events transpired such that the family was going to need to get a different vehicle. Given that, it made sense to pass down my trusty, but well used, Honda Fit to the aforementioned offspring and look for a vehicle more suitable to trike transport.

Of course, the ability to transport the trike was not the only criteria I needed to meet (believe it or not). We live in the hinterlands in northern Illinois, and I travel by car a fair amount for work. A vehicle for me needed to meet the following criteria:

• Have real all-wheel drive - we contend with a lot of snow
• Be comfortable for distance driving
• Sporty and relatively fun to drive
• Get relatively decent gas mileage
• Have room for the trike and at least one other passenger to ride in comfort; and
• NOT be a truck or SUV

It’s the last one, of course, that really narrows things down, given the rest of the list. While we’ve had a truck or three in the household over the years, I prefer the handling characteristics of a car. Plus, since I drive a lot, the greener side of my nature struggles with the mileage hit of, say, a Suburban or Tahoe (which would otherwise easily meet the other criteria). To boil it down: I can’t help myself - I’m a car guy.

This list frankly left me with, as best I could determine, two potential choices: Subaru Crosstrek or Subaru Outback.

I like them both, and I loved the fact that the Crosstrek could be had with a manual transmission (car guy, remember?). However, I’ve parked next to many a Crosstrek with my Fit over the past few years (well - mostly the same one many times- a friend in my martial arts class drove one, also in orange), and the Crosstrek appeared to be bigger than the Fit, but not by a lot. So I posted a question for the folks in the Catrike Owners Group on Facebook to see if anyone else had experience with Expeditions and Crosstreks and, well, they had (groups are really the best part of Facebook. Maybe even the only good part...). The upshot: it’s about the same situation as with the Honda Fit.

So that left me with the Outback.

I spent a few evenings searching online for something in our desired price range, and then MLW and I set a day aside to go have a look. Besides identifying a dealership and mapping a route, my primary act of preparation was shoehorning the Expedition into the back of our 2011 Honda CR-V. My logic here was that, given my primary criteria was being able to carry the trike and people, the best way to test that would be just to bring along the trike and try it out.

Brilliant, right?

What followed was a phenomenal testament of just how good My Lovely Wife is to me. When I say "shoehorned", what I mean is that it does not fit comfortably in the CRV, which is taller, but not really that much longer than the Fit. So, in order to fit it inside, I had to slide the passenger seat forward, set the seat back bolt upright (but not forward - yay!) and push down on the trike against the tire pressure in order to slide it back because the rear cargo rack was pressing against the ceiling.

After I had accomplished all this MLW looked at it and said: "so - that’s right against the back of my seat."

"Yeah" I said. "Is that ok?"

"So" she says "I can’t lean back or, you know, move or anything?"

"Umm... I could take it out. I could just bring along a tape measure and do measurements..." I said.

"How far is it?" She asked.

"About an hour and a half".

And then she sighed and said "it’ll be fine. Let’s go."

I’m quite certain I don’t deserve her.

---

I’m pleased to say that the salesman at the dealership appeared completely unphased by my request to cram my trike into the back of a car I did not yet own. I’m sure that part of it is just due to wanting to make a sale, but I suspect that it was also helpful that the car, though used, happened to be for sale at a Subaru dealership. Given the target market for these cars I suspect I’m not the first person they’ve encountered bringing along equipment of one sort or another to see how it fits.

And: it does. I’m pleased to say that, with the back seats down and the front seat moved slightly forward the Expedition fits and allows for two passengers in addition to the driver - one in the front passenger seat and one in the rear driver’s side seat (in the "40" side of the 60/40 rear seat split). I did have to loosen the neck rest on the trike and tilt it forward to fit it in, but that’s a pretty easy adjustment to work with.

That sorted, it was just a test drive and some negotiation time before we settled things up and I took it home:

I’ve had it out and about a few times now with the Expedition in the back, and it all works out well. I did briefly try running the rear wheel in-between the front seats, but that blocked the central rear view mirror more than I cared for, so I switched to setting it in at an angle. That adjustment made, everything seems to work quite nicely. We’ll see how it works out over the longer term, but at the moment I’m pretty optimistic.

---

I have no doubt there will be readers who will quibble with my conclusion here on various fronts. If that’s not you, feel free to stop here. But if you are thinking something like:

"You know, this [type or brand of minivan/crossover/panel van/Conestoga wagon] does most of what you want and you can haul two trikes in it at once."

Or

"There’s nothing like a Suburban [Excursion/Escalade/full-size pickup/etc] for cargo capacity and four wheel drive. You live in the country - it’s time to step up to a truck."

Or

"They make rear hitch racks/you could use a trailer/did you consider [type/brand] of carrying system?"

Please know that I think these (and related ideas) are reasonable ones to present. But I think there are a few things that are important to consider when looking at vehicle solutions surrounding carrying a trike. Probably first and foremost is considering whether your transport vehicle is going to be your primary vehicle or whether you will use a secondary vehicle for that purpose. If you are in a position to have a vehicle oriented just towards your recreational activities I am happy for you. I have periodically considered that - getting an older truck of some sort just for hauling the trike. But I’ve done that in the past and it really didn’t work out for me. While I do have just recreational riding times - my regular Sunday rides, for example - in order to increase my riding opportunities I try to integrate riding into the rest of my regular schedule. If I’m traveling somewhere for work and it offers trails, paths, etc, I’ll bring the trike along and ride over lunch and/or after the work day.

This approach has worked well in terms of enhancing my riding time, but when I say "traveling", it’s often distances of two to six hours in the car - this really isn’t the ideal sort of situation for a utility vehicle. Hence the focus on comfort and gas mileage in the criteria.

It’s also the case that this decision point was triggered by having a family vehicle taken out of service. We weren’t in a position to get a secondary vehicle - anything added would have to serve full-time duty.

Finally, while I don’t care for SUV’s or crossovers as a general rule, I don’t have anything against minivans - I think a good minivan is a beautiful thing from a utility perspective (though they are not sporty or fun to drive, as a rule), and I’ve eyed the little Ford Transit vans closely in the past for similar reasons. But nothing in the class does what I’d call real all-wheel drive. Most of these vehicles, when they have all-wheel drive, have systems designed to aid in stability and traction under slippery conditions, and this is what is needed for most people in most situations. As far as that goes, that same type of benefit can also be conferred on virtually any two-wheel drive vehicle by adding a set of snow tires. What neither solution does well, however, is crawl their way through, or out of, a snow drift. We are rural enough that this is a periodic need - and I can tell you that my knowledge in this area is more than academic...

While it doesn’t quite have the capabilities of a four-wheel-drive truck, Subarus occupy that middle ground between being much more capable than the typical slippery-road friendly vehicle and a truck, while still operating like a car the rest of the time. They are, in a way, kind of an odd compromise machine that other manufacturers just don’t make, but which happens to fall right into my current sweet spot.

Soft is Slow

We gather every year with family in Southwestern Wisconsin for Thanksgiving festivities. It’s always a good time, and this year, in addition to a delightful meal, LB led a game of Dungeons and Dragons which added to the fun. The following day - Black Friday - MLW and her sister go off to Madison to battle the shopping crowds, and the rest of us seek our own fun in the Driftless Area. For me, for the past few years, that’s meant tackling the Military Ridge trail.

I’ve written about the trail itself before. You can look there for detail, but it’s a rail trail with a nominally crushed stone (but mostly packed sand and grass) surface. I was pleased when I looked out in the morning and could see that the Wisconsin weather gods had chosen to bless me with a bit of snow.

The dusting of snow really is a blessing - I enjoy riding in the white stuff, and it often has the additional effect of putting a hush over the world and of keeping most other people off of the trail.

When I woke the thermometer sat at 30°F, working its way up to a high of 35°. The main artifact of this is that, while there is a chill in the air, the ground isn’t really frozen. And that means that the snow and the sand conspire to provide a soft, resistant surface. This isn’t a problem, per se - I’m riding for exercise and to enjoy the countryside, after all. But it does have an effect on the speed and distance traveled.

In sum: soft is slow

When I loaded up the Expedition for the ride - its first adventure on this particular trail - I also included a growler in the saddle bags in anticipation of riding from Ridgeview to Mt. Horeb for a stop at The Grumpy Troll.

I knew I was probably being optimistic with that decision. Mt. Horeb is a solid 13 miles along the trail, presenting with a 26-mile round trip. The distance doesn’t scare me, mind, but I was looking for some exercise, not to spend the day on the trail.

As it all laid out the trail was reliable and consistent with past experience in terms of the ride through the countryside, albeit softer.

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Enjoying this post? Check out our Cycling page for links to other cycling articles on Applied Life

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What became clear, as I rode along the trail, enjoying the scenery, was that it was not going to be a speedy trip. I do most of my riding on the big ring when I’m on pavement, especially on the relatively level roadways of northern Illinois, but it quickly became clear that I was going to need to drop down to number two.

And then, as the ambient temperature rose, down to the little ring.

Ultimately, as I entered Barneveld - the first town East from Ridegeway along the trail - and I was already an hour in, drenched with sweat, I knew I was nearing my endpoint. I rode to the far end of town and turned around.

I came out of ride at 12.27 miles and an average speed of 6.75 mph (but with a blistering top speed of 12.18, so there’s that...). But the landscape and snow more than made up for the lack of distance. I’d also been looking forward to seeing how the Expedition managed one particularly soft uphill portion of the trail - one which has required me to get off and walk both with the Pocket, and with MLW’s Schwinn years ago. In other, similar things the Expedition’s larger footprint has seemed to provide an advantage, so I was curious.

Here, too, it shined. That section appears on the return trip and, despite the softness of the trail, the Expedition crawled its way up the sand on its decidedly road-oriented Schwalbe Marathon Plus’s with little slippage. Riding that ride this time actually made me wonder what had made it so difficult in the past...

And I was once again very pleased with the presence of the fenders on my Expedition. I’ll probably get tired of bringing them up at some point, but it really is amazing what a difference such a seemingly simple technology can make. Without them the climactic conditions and season would have conspired with my wheels to throw untold amounts of a conglomeration of sand, snow, ad leaves into my lap. Instead they were arrested at the wheel level.

Soft or not, because of the snow I was able to see, and thus follow, my original track on the return trip. Although the effect was likely small, there did see to be some benefit to remaining in the wheel path, perhaps from a bit of compression gained on the way in. And besides, it’s neat to see that evidence of where you’ve been (and the trike makes a pretty unmistakable footprint).

Of course, some cleanup was needed upon arrival back, but this is not an uncommon component of winter riding. And given that the trail isn’t cleared, there’s little by way of road salt to be concerned about.

Probably the only other downside is that Cyclemeter, which I generally like, seems to track calorie expenditure based upon speed and distance if you don’t have supplemental sensors attached. The assumption, then, seems to be that my slow pace means I only worked through 584 calories. My dripping sweat begged to differ with that assessment. But I’m far too cheap to pony up for the additional equipment to rectify that situation, tho, so here we are, and here we remain.