New Old Roads

Though I moved away for many years, I spent my formative years in the same part of northern Illinois that we now live in. As a teenager with an old car and a newly minted driver’s license I spent a considerable amount of my free time (and, for better or worse, “homework time” also fit in my definition of “free”) driving around the country backroads.

For this reason, it’s always a surprise to me when I find roads in the area that I’ve never seen.

I’ve been consulting with google maps over the past few days to lay out longer routes. Most of the past few years I’m building up my distance endurance around now in preparation for the Farmondo - a group ride put on by the Tempo Velo bike club in Sterling, IL - but like so many things, that event appears not to be happening this year. The Farmondo is the only group event that I typically participate in, but I like to do it because, besides being a fun event, it is timed, so it offers independent corroboration of one’s progress (or, potentially, lack of). I have to build up to it because the 43-mile middle-distance segment of the Farmondo also happens to be the furthest distance I’ve ridden in a single outing.

With that not available, I’ve set my sights on doing a birthday ride. I see other folks mention this from time to time - riding near the time of their date of birth at a distance that matches the number of years they have now been on the planet. This will work out nicely for myself, as doing a birthday ride this year will also get me my first half-century ride, so it kills two birds with one stone. And 50 miles seems like a reasonable goal above the 43 of the Farmondo.

To start that journey I laid out a course that came out to 36 miles covering some familiar roads, but also several miles of roadway that I’d either only been on in a car, or have never set rubber upon before. This always has the potential to be frustrating - for example, discovering that I’ve accidentally mapped out a section of new gravel to pick my way across - but it’s usually rewarding regardless.

The first 11.5 miles were in familiar territory, taking me through, and a few miles west of the tiny little town of West Brooklyn, before I hit unfamiliar territory:

Beyond the stop sign was where it would begin - a road that I’ve looked at many times, but I’ve literally never been down it.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but every new road I drive past draws me in just a little, tempting me with it’s new possibilities. What might just look like another stretch of asphalt to someone else brings me a little bit of joy, a little hit of dopamine every time I put rubber to it.

That happens every time, but I was especially lucky with my choices on this route. A portion of my ride took me along a portion of Green Wing Road which I’d never seen before, which turned out to be a winding and twisting affair cutting through the woods.

I discovered, as I rode by the signs (you see me trying - unsuccessfully - to catch them in the video) that to the left side of the road on the latter portion is the Gremel Wildlife Sanctuary.

According to the website, this is part of an ongoing attempt to preserve the remnants of the wetlands in the area - there used to be a large swamp system here which was largely drained off in favor of farmland. There is a trail system as well, and visitors (on foot) are welcome. This is a thing that I had no idea existed in the area tho, in my defense, it apparently didn’t until about three years ago.

The rest of the route was almost stereotypically northern Illinois, from the agriculture...

...To the derilects...

The last one above is an old school. And this one below appears to be getting some rehab:

There were tiny town treasures...

...A little cemetery...

And Yogi Bear:

(It’s a local campground)

And, for the record, it is still grasshopper season...

But probably my favorite discovery of the ride was this little self-serve vegetable stand:

It was about a mile down the road from the campground, sited almost certainly with hopes of capitalizing on that location. There was small SUV with bikes on the back shopping there when I arrived, so it may have been working. And it worked for me. I always bring along along a little cash when I’m riding in case there is an opportunity like this. We’ve had our sweet corn fill for the season, but a few fresh tomatoes and cucumbers were something we needed, so I paid up and bagged a few.

This route came out to just over 37 miles, which is farthest I’ve ridden this season. I am pleased to say that I was tired, but not exhuasted by the end of the ride, which hasn’t been true of my build-up rides in years past. Probably this is due, in part, to the fact that I’m riding longer distances on average this year overall, so this build-up isn’t the stretch that it would have been in years past. It makes me optimistic that the birthday ride will be within reach.

But I did take today off as a day of rest, just in case...

Space-Age Solutions

I’ve written here about my appreciation for the fenders I have on my Catrike Expedition. After two years of intermittently getting water, mud, and snow, flung up at me while riding my Pocket, they were a pleasant relief.

What I did not realize or anticipate was that I was also getting a little bit of bonus shelving with those fenders as well.

Because of where they mount at the base of the handlebars, the struts for the fenders actually offer a bit of rare semi-horizontal surface on the trike. I say "semi" horizontal, because they actually sit at a bit of an angle. And, if we are being honest, it’s really a semi surface too, since it’s an open triangle with two small flat bars about a quarter-inch wide. So seeing it as a semi-horizontal surface may take a bit of imagination.

Or - more accurately, it takes a bit of help.

Early on it occurred to me to use this area when I was looking for a means to mount a battery pack on the trike - here I’m referring to the small batteries for charging mobile devices. These are wonderful for extending phone life while on longer rides, and can be used to charge USB lights in a pinch as well. On the Pocket I had been carrying the battery in the Arkel bags, and had used a USB extension cable routed though the seat and strapped to the frame. This worked ok, but was prone to bouts of suddenly not charging, which necessitated trouble shooting through multiple connection points - a thing you don’t really want to stop in the middle of your ride (and it always happened in the middle of a ride) to do. But the Pocket, being on the smaller side by design, didn’t offer a lot of other options for location, so I struggled through with it.

When the Expedition arrived, it wasn’t long before I began eyeballing that space on the fender struts for the battery. It sits right beneath the phone mount (I use a Rokform motorcycle mount, which works with a Rokform case), so it would offer a much shorter - and much less complicated - connection to the phone. It would also be closer to the front light on the boom mount, which is the light I’m most likely to need to plug in on a longer ride, allowing me to get there with a single, longer cable, removing the need for an extension cord.

The question was how to get a battery pack - or anything really - attached to the fender strut. I puzzled over this for a bit and played with a couple of unsuccessful options. And then I realized what I needed was a space-age material - something that astronauts would use - to solve this problem.

Yup - I needed Velcro. Or, I suppose I should say "hook and loop fastener material"...

I’m making like this was a great revelation, but the reality is that I use Velcro for a lot of things. Adhesive Velcro can be purchased in big rolls, and you can cut pieces to size and purpose. It’s pretty handy stuff.

What I did, then, was to line the strut arms with the soft side of the Velcro, cut specifically to the shape of the arms. You can do this by simply tracing around the arms on the back of the velcro (easier to see if you use a white marker) and then cutting it with scissors. I think the end result looks pretty good - because the Velcro and the fenders are both black, it’s almost unnoticeable when there’s nothing on it, and I’ve had it there for about a year, and it’s still in good condition.

On the battery pack I just place a nice, large piece of the hard side across the back.

There may be a temptation to put small pieces on in order to line up with the struts, but this is additional effort without much benefit. While you will use less material, it’s much easier to get the battery seated if you don’t have to be super-precise in how it is situated. Once it’s on there you can just stick it on the fender:

The little shorty Lightening cable is a find from Amazon, and it’s perfect for this sort of application.

While I set up the battery pack this way early in the game, I have since adapted it to add some additional items. As I’ve increased my riding over the season, I’ve also been experiencing some increased engagement with citizens of the canine variety (more on that another time, most likely). Given this, I’ve found it helpful to have some deterrents close at hand. For these I mounted additional strips of Velcro across the top strut and the vertical portion of the fender beside the wheel:

And then just put strips across the deterrent items:

The air horn is wedged in pretty solidly, but I find that it doesn’t usually have to be pointed straight at the offender to be effective. I put smaller strips on the pepper spray because it’s lighter, and I wanted to be able to pull it off quickly and easily at times of deployment. It works pretty well.

And I still have an open "shelf" on the left fender if I need it. So far I haven’t had anything to put there, but I could imagine specifically setting up a second battery pack there - maybe a dedicated one to power the headlight for longer rides.

Ok - now that everything is set up, it’s time to ride!

Grasshopper Season

We’ve hit that part of the summer here in northern Illinois where the grasshoppers come out in abundance. While they are literally everywhere right now - I had coffee with one this morning, his name was Dennis - you’d think that they would choose primarily to stay, you know, in the grass.

This is not the case.

No, despite their name, these green-hued hoppers really seem to enjoy sunning themselves out on the warmth of the asphalt. This is troubling enough when one is traveling along in a car - the crunch of exoskeletons under the wheels and the smack of hopper bodies against the grill is cringe-inducing at best.

Troubling enough, but riding through batches of grasshoppers on a recumbent trike is a different matter entirely. The key here is height, which is to say that you are only a few inches above the pavement upon which they sit.

Understandably, the grasshoppers are startled by the trike as it approaches, and that triggers their flight response - quite literally. As you approach the grasshoppers will use their one defense - leaping into the sky - to escape the sudden danger. According to Wikipedia, which is never wrong, this is an attempt to startle potential predators:

when detected, many species attempt to startle the predator with a brilliantly-coloured wing-flash while jumping and (if adult) launching themselves into the air, usually flying for only a short distance.

This is exactly what happens - as you roll up on them they leap into the air, arcing off to one direction or another, wings out with a flash of color that is quite lovely - you can easily mistake them for a butterfly if you don’t see them before the leap.

It’s lovely, of course, until they hit you.

And they _do_ hit you. On my Catrike Expedition I sit such that my head and chest seem to be at a height just below the apex of their leap. I am never so glad to be a person who wears glasses as I am in these moments.

---

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

---

Since they are an unavoidable part of nature’s tableau during the mid-summer, I’ve tried to adapt and develop an approach towards dealing with them. What this looks like in practice is watching for them as I’m going down the road - distinguishing them from small bits of debris or even changes in color in the tar and chip at a distance makes that somewhat challenging - and then I try to maneuver so that I don’t ride over top of them - e.g. so that the trajectory of my travel wouldn't have the trike seat travel directly over them if they stayed in place. Because they don’t stay in place.

The Hoppers are There…

Hopper Revealed

The logic to this is that they will then at least not be directly in front of me as they start their leap. This does mean that I’m engaged in a bit of erratic slalom activity as I go down the road, and I’m sure there are fellow travelers who see me do this and wonder "why does he drink before he goes out to ride his trike?"...

(To be clear for those who might worry: this is all within my lane of travel - I’m not veering all over the road, and I forgo and risk hopper-strike instead if there are cars around me).

Does this work?

...Honestly, I have no idea. I can pretty much guarantee that each time I start to think "yeah, I’ve got this figured out now" it is followed by a "thwack" as a grasshopper smacks into my forehead. Or my chest. Or my face.

These are typically very brief encounters - the "thwack" occurs, and then the hopper is gone. But on a couple of very rare occasions the arc of the insect’s pounce ended with it landing on my chest.

Then it’s just you and the grasshopper, staring each other down. In these instances I did what any red-blooded American male would do:

I let out a high-pitched shriek and yelled "get off, get off, get off" while flailing wildly at my chest.

What to Wear

I am on record as being personally opposed to buying and using cycling specific clothing. My greatest area of resistance is clipless shoes, but I also chafe at the idea of having other clothing items specifically for cycling.

Now - to be clear - I don’t have any problem with others wanting and using those items, this is very much just a personal thing. I prefer the flexibility of using clothing items that can be applied to other activities as well. For example, my basic winter riding gear is the same setup that I use for cross country skiing. It’s a getup designed for exercising, but flexible enough to apply across multiple winter activities.

My gear for riding has evolved over time, particularly with the transition from uprights to recumbent trikes. On the upright, for most of the year, I rode with a t-shirt and cargo shorts. Yes, I know cargo shorts are a fashion crime, but they are also very useful for carrying things when you are riding upright.

I learned very quickly that, on the trike, those things fall out of your cargo pockets. You’d think that I could have intuited that by looking at the angle of the pocket and all, but (apparently) I enjoy learning things the hard way.

Additionally, the shorts become something akin to a low-level parachute given the fact that your legs are pointing directly into the wind that you are generating. Granted, this can be somewhat refreshing on a hot day, but it’s somewhat unsightly. Plus, the buttons on the shorts tend to strike the handlebars as they come around. I can still hear it in my head:

snik-snik-snik-snik-snik...

I needed a different solution. I used a basic pair of nylon shorts for a while, and those worked ok, though the wind issue still presented. A few years ago MLW bought me a couple of rash guards for swimming on a family trip to Mexico, and the following summer I switched to those from the t-shirts. They aren’t significantly warmer than the t-shirts, and they offer UV protection, which allowed me to stop putting on sunscreen, at least up top.

---

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

---

I was happy enough with the rash guards - and more importantly, the reduced amount of sunscreen use - that last summer I started to look for an alternative for my legs. I wanted something that would cover them, but not be too hot in the summer. And while I’m good with the rash guards on top, modesty prohibits the wearing of compression garments on my lower half.

What I arrived at for a solution was linen beach pants. Linen is lightweight and cool, and they met my flexibility requirement because they are also suitable for casual wear around the house and yard - and they were great for our trip to Florida in February, both for cycling and theme-parking. The only additional component needed were some Velcro straps to keep the cuffs out of the chain - and Amazon has them in orange, so...

I mean, no one is going to accuse me of being a fashion plate while I’m wearing these outfits, but then, no one did before, either.

I’ve got two rash guards and two pairs of the pants, and a third top - the orange (yes, I have a problem) San Pellegrino jersey MLW got me last year. I’ve been pretty happy with this solution, but as my riding has increased I’ve begun to fear that I may have painted myself into a corner.

It’s been a mild summer, but even so, things need to be washed after pretty much every ride - Recumbent trikes are much more comfortable than uprights as a general rule, and my seat is mesh, but it still functions as a back sweat production machine. So: I am now periodically finding myself waiting for things to dry so I can ride.

But as I am waiting to ride, I find myself wondering: if I’m wearing the same thing every time I ride, such that I am now waiting for the clothes so I can get on the trike, don’t I essentially have specialized riding gear? I mean, regardless of how I’ve put it together? Am I just a hypocrite?

It was with that in mind that I hopped on the trike to take something over to my aunt and uncle’s place. They live about a mile down the road, and my gear was still in the wash, so I said to myself "just go with what you are wearing - you used to ride like this all the time" (I was wearing a t-shirt and cargo shorts - it’s sort of a personal uniform. And yes, I _do_ trade the cargo shorts for cargo pants when it gets colder - how did you guess?)

And as I started to pedal down the road, I heard it:

snik-snik-snik-snik-snik...

I think maybe I’ll just order another rash guard and pair of pants and learn to live with the hypocrisy.

Privilege

The recent turmoil and subsequent protests surrounding the death of black men in police custody has caused me to look back at a particular event in my youth frequently over the past few days.

It occurred either when I was seventeen or eighteen years old, falling during the summer either following my senior year of high school or my first year of college - the vagaries of recollection make it too hard to locate it more precisely. The year would have been either 1988 or 1989.

I was at an event at the Mendota Community Center - a dance perhaps - and my friends and I were leaving the event to move to a second location. I suspect that location was The Pond - a property belonging to a friend that is now, tragically no longer with us. And because of the location, I was going to run home to change before meeting others there, my fancy dance clothes not suitable for laying in the grass under the stars.

I hopped in my car - to give you a complete picture here, it was a 1976 Triumph Spitfire. Spitfire always seemed an awfully grand name for such a tiny machine, but it would have accurately described the attitude of the teenager operating at the time. You can see it, and said attitude, below.

I hopped in the Spitfire and left the parking lot, rolled along the access road, out onto 251, and headed north. I was in a hurry, of course, because I wanted to rejoin the group, and that was what as on my mind as I rolled under the viaduct and saw red and blue lights starting to flash in my rear view mirror.

The first thing that flashed in my mind was the realization that, in my rush to head home and change, I had not put my seatbelt on.

The seatbelt requirement was a relatively new law in Illinois. Wikipedia says that it passed in January of 1988 and, while I actually didn’t have any opposition to wearing a seatbelt - years of reading Car and Driver in the school library during study hall convinced me that wearing them was the right call - I’d neglected it in this case.

I was certain I hadn’t done anything else that represented a violation - I wasn’t speeding (the Spitfire, despite its name, couldn't have exceeded even the in-town limit in the space I’d traveled), the registration was current, all the lights were functional. But I’d had experience with the local police in my prior high school years, and did not want the indignity of yet another ticket. And I didn’t think I could pull on the belt without the cop seeing it - I was in a convertible with the top down, after all.

So I arrived at a brilliant solution.

I opened the door, stepped up out of the car, turned to face the police car, raised my hands and arms out to the side, and shouted "WHAT?!?".

The officer was about halfway out his car door when I did this. He stopped with a jerk, looked at me, and then stood the rest of the way up. "Well", he said "I thought you may not have come to a complete stop at the stop sign coming out of the community center."

"Well I did." I said angrily, and stared at him.

There was a brief pause, and then he said "Okay." And he let me go on my way.

---

I’m sure I celebrated this that night - regaled my friends at The Pond about my successful police circumvention, my cleverness in escaping the ticket. There may have even been a high five or two.

Thirty years later all I can think about with it is just how goddamn lucky I was. He did not take my license, did not ask for proof of insurance, did not run my plates...

...did not shoot me for jumping out of a car in the middle of a police intervention.

But the reality is, I wasn’t lucky. I was white.

I mean really white. My skin is nearly translucent, even in the middle of summer. I was raised in a middle-class family in a small town in northern Illinois. I grew up with both parents in the home, and wanted for nothing. Hell - I had a classic British sports car that, yes, I "paid for" myself, as long as "paying for" doesn’t include having to pay license fees or the astonishing insurance costs that went with being a teenage male, then as now.

I was so white that being pulled over by a police officer was an irritation, not a moment of fear. I was so white that it seemed like a good idea to jump out of a car and confront an armed authority figure.

I was so white that it worked.

Now, it may be possible for a person to look at this situation and say "well, you got very lucky there, but that was certainly a fluke - that sort of thing wouldn't happen twice."

Ok.

In my mid 20’s MLW and I were driving back home from an event late in the evening. We’d driven there separately, so we were each piloting our own vehicle - she a Nissan Sentra SE-R and me in my Honda Civic Si. The type of vehicle is important here because they both fell into the category of factory suped-up enconomy cars. We rolled up to the toll booths on the Harlem road bridge, each in our own lane. We looked at each other across the tool booth, eyes connecting with a moment of unspoken agreement...

And then we launched out of the toll booths like they were a starting gate, tires squealing and snapping each car through clutch drops and gear changes. This was great fun, and we continued the race, at speeds somewhere north of the posted limit, until we got to the turn for our residential neighborhood.

It was s few blocks down that street that we were pulled over - both of us, by at least two police cars, with a third joining shortly - about a block away from our home.

There was no jumping out of the car this time. The officers kept us separate, and started asking me if I was in a fight or an argument with the woman in the other car. MLW was fielding similar questions, along with a being asked whether she felt safe returning to her home with me there. To their credit, they were clearly concerned for her safety, thinking that I was perhaps chasing her as part of a fight or an argument. She assured them this was not the case, and for my part I admitted that we had impulsively done something that was probably a bad idea.

The outcome? Satisfied that MLW was not in domestic peril, they sent us home, with an admonition not to be seen racing each other about the vicinity again. No arrest, no ticket, not even a written warning. Tho - notably, they did laugh at us, particularly the fact that MLW was beating me in the race.

It wasn’t a fluke. We were engaged in behavior that resulted in multiple cars being called, multiple officers on the scene. And we were clearly in the wrong, clearly in violation, and we were simply let go.

MLW, to be clear, is also white.

---

As we continue to experience civil unrest across the nation social media starts to sprout various responses as people try to process a reality that has been present, but somewhat hidden from polite public view. I’ve even seen folks - notably folks who, like myself, are quite Caucasian - post the idea that white privilege does not exist.

I read that sort of thing, and then look back at that moment in my little blue sports car. I think the reality is that, for many people, perhaps most, the presence of that privilege is subtle, woven tightly into the fabric of life, making it sometimes challenging to see. Most people don’t have the stark experience that I do of having done things that are extremely ill advised and that would have likely gotten someone without my advantages arrested at best, and shot at worst.

It’s clear to me that my privilege exists, and that I’ve benefited - and frankly survived - as a result of it.

Putting an Old Soldier Back Into Service

Our little household is moving towards being a little smaller still, as one of the crew - our daughter, LB - is getting ready to head off to college. One of the things LB has asked for is the opportunity to take a bike to school so she can ride to class and otherwise use it for transportation.

When she was little, LB was frequently my cycling companion. The donor frame for my trailer project was originally a canvas child trailer, which LB had spent many hours inside, with books and snacks to entertain if watching the scenery became less interesting than desired. As she got older we moved on to her own machine, starting her out with a pink Giant with training wheels:

She cuts a pretty suave stance, does she not? This picture was taken at a trailhead, just as we were heading out for a ride together. It’s from 11 years ago, which is frankly a little hard for me to believe.

She came off the training wheels, of course, though that was a bit of a challenge - for the first little while every time we practiced, with me running alongside, she’d want to turn her head to look at me and talk. When she did this, her hands, and the handlebars within them, followed the direction of her head...

I am not a person who has the "N bikes + 1" gene, so LB’s subsequent bike history is brief - a Specialized mountain bike, purchased used, sits in-between the Giant and current day. We still have it, though it’s a little small, and we should probably find it another home. Most recently when she rides - which is not often, her interest declining with age and competing activities - she rides the Schwinn Suburban that originally belonged to her mother.

Her father (me) has offered to ride with her many times, but he is apparently "too competitive", wants to "go too far", and "doesn’t want to take breaks".

I mean, I’m probably guilty on all counts, but you think she’d give the old man some slack...

The old Schwinn - a big-box store purchase twenty some years ago or more - has gone largely unloved and unmaintained over recent years. I’ve ridden it a handful of times myself, typically in the winters, it’s knobby tires offering more purchase than those of my Cannondale road bike (though the Cannondale has also seen snow in its time):

The Schwinn, like the Cannondale, was almost entirely sidelined once I got my Catrike Pocket. A part of why I wanted the recumbent trike was for the additional stability on snow and ice - I enjoy riding in the winter, but I do not enjoy the sensation of a bicycle simply disappearing out from under me, which always happened at least once a winter. Probably my last time riding the Schwinn was the ride in which I compared it with the trike during it’s first winter.

All of this meant that the bike was going to need a little TLC to prepare it for regular use. I figured this ought to start out with a wash...

I considered taking it in to our LBS for a tune-up, but I’ve been spending a lot of time working on my Expedition, with increasing levels of success. I’ve even managed, on my last foray into maintenance, to successfully tame the dark mystery that is the derailleur with help from a video by Utah Trikes. I figured it was worth a try to do it myself. After all, I could still take it to the bike shop if there was anything I couldn't address.

It was surprisingly cooperative for a machine that has received so little attention over the past two decades. The chain and sprockets cleaned up fairly well, and with a few twists on both ends of the cables the derailleur is shifting smoothly and accurately with the grip shifters. The tires are holding air without complaint. I even put the original saddle back on it - It had been replaced with a custom saddle meant to reduce pressure on the female nether regions, but that saddle was also a soft fabric design, and the bike will sit outside most of the time while LB is at school, so the water resistant vinyl of the original seemed preferable.

It’s common for folks in the cycling community to denigrate these low end machines, and I certainly have a propensity for higher end devices myself. Still, I think these bikes absolutely have their place. Though I’m hoping she’ll catch (or re-catch) the bug someday, LB is not an avid rider and doesn’t need a carbon fiber or aluminum road bike to get her from dorm room to classroom. What she needs is something that will reliably allow her to sleep in an extra ten minutes and then successfully whisk her across campus, while not drawing undue attention from prospective bike thieves (I can only imagine how long a high-end Trek or Cannondale would last in the bike rack before being snatched up). This old girl is perfect for the task.

Tunnel Hill Trail… After Dark

Back in May of 2019 I ventured out to the Tunnel Hill Trail in Southern Illinois, riding from the town of Vienna (say "Vy-Enna") to the Egyptologivally named town of Karnak. This was a beautiful ride, including woodlands, wetlands, and a couple of tiny little settlements across a 21-mile round trip. There were also a couple of side-trips that I didn’t take - Heron Pond, a little Winery, and a Wetland Center - and are on my list for when the opportunity presents again.

Still, the thing the trip to Karnak and back lacks, as lovely as it was, is the tunnel that the trail is named for. I still wanted to see that, and I had another opportunity to be down that way towards the end of last October.

Both trips to the Tunnel Hill Trail were end of the day affairs, but their location on the calendar made for some differences in terms of available daylight. I knew I’d be riding against the sunset, but I reasoned that I had lights on the trike and, if could get _to_ the Tunnel in the daylight and get an opportunity to see some of the rock formations I’ve seen in pictures, I wouldn't mind riding back in the dark.

The Norns clearly detected my urgency on the way to Vienna, and decided to have a laugh at my expense by putting road construction along the way that had not been there in May. Sitting still in a line of traffic on a two-lane road knowing you are racing against the sun and are otherwise 10-15 minutes or less from your destination is its own exquisite type of torture. Still, I took deep breaths and waited semi-patiently. Eventually the road opened up and I was on my way.

...Until the next construction zone. I’m pretty sure this happened approximately 723 times on my way to the trailhead.

But once I got there, I got the trike unloaded, and everything started out fine...

I had not researched ahead of time exactly how far from the trailhead the Tunnel was - it didn’t really matter, because I was going to ride to it regardless - but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the 9.3 mile indicator on the sign didn’t concern me a bit - I routinely ride further distances, but the trail is soft material - ranging from crushed stone to, at times, frankly just dirt, which always tends to be slow going. Still, as I’ve told my child on multiple occasions, if you wait for the perfect day, the thing will never happen. Besides, either way, I wanted to ride, so I rode on.

The first half mile or so this way is reminiscent of the ride to Karnak, including the very cool retention of the old railroad bridges. This is a taste of how it all starts out:

But while the trail starts out similar in this direction, it did start to hint at the rocky nature promised at by the pictures I’d seen fairly early on:

And rolling on, I was pleasantly surprised to start to hit the rock wall sides I was hoping before while there were still some vestiges of daylight:

Riding with the rock walls on either side provides a very different feel from my usual experience of being on the open road. It’s very cool, but did have me beginning to imagine myself traveling through a medieval world, watching for ambushing archers above... but that’s probably just me.

What the rock walls also meant, however, was that the available daylight was rapidly occluded. For a brief period of time I needed my light to see even though I could see blue sky above:

It was an interesting effect - I’ve seen it before, traveling out west, when mountains interpose between you and the sun later in the day. I can’t say I’ve ever seen it in Illinois, but here we were.

It was also brief. Though I wasnt able to see the sun go down, it clearly departed. Now it was dark overhead as well as in front of me. But at this point I figured I had gone this far, and that I might as well keep going till I got to the Tunnel itself.

It emerged from the shadows in a fashion that was, well, surreal at least.

As it broke from the shadows it occurred to me - perhaps not for the first time - that we were just two days away from Halloween.

Of course, it would have been a little creepy anyway, and somehow riding into the dark of a tunnel is still a little unsettling even when the area outside of it is also pitch black.

But I went thru anyway. Honestly, the fact that it creeped me out made me feel like I needed to go thru it. Besides - I’d come this far, hadn’t I? So I went thru, and then turned around and came back thru the other way:

It really was just as dark coming out of it as it was inside. I live in a pretty rural area at home as well, but on the prairie you can see the open sky. Here, between the trees and the rock walls there was nothing. It was a different experience to be sure.

I can’t recommend waiting until the end of the day to tackle Tunnel Hill Trail. My time in southern Illinois was very limited - I was headed for home the following morning, and I wasn’t sure when the chance would present again - so I didn’t want to let the opportunity pass. But I definitely hope I get the chance to do it again in the daylight.

Mid-Year Check-In

At the end of last year I did a review of my year in cycling, and set some goals for this year. Since we rolled past the halfway point at the end of June, it seems like a good time to check on whether I’m making progress towards those goals.

The first goal I established was distance. I’d managed 1722.34 miles between January 1 and December 31, 2019 so, with some hemming and hawing, I set my goal at 2000 miles. The number scared me a bit when I wrote it back on the first day of 2020, but it also seemed to be the right number - the next rung on the ladder.

There are folks out there that will absolutely say that a rider shouldn't worry about the distance - don’t stress yourself out about how far you are going, just get out there and ride. I can appreciate that perspective and, what’s more, I suspect that’s the right way to look at things for the people saying it.

But I’m a numbers guy. Setting the goal and then tracking it doesn’t stress me out - I enjoy it. I like looking not only at distance, but also the other statistics that Cyclemeter gives me - average speed, average distance per trip, etc, etc, etc. I find that the information lets me know objectively whether I’m actually doing better or whether I need to step it up. The numbers won’t let me tell myself I’m doing better if that’s not actually true.

I’m certain I’m not the only one.

As of the end of June my 2020 mileage was: 1203.74

---

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

---

That number put me more than halfway to my goal as of the mid-point of the year, so I’m on track - or actually a little bit ahead - for making the 2000 mile goal. As of today - July 12th - I’ve added another 114.99 miles, putting me at 1318.73 so far for the year. I’m less than 60 miles from exceeding my distance for 2018, which is my second longest year on record; and if I stay on track over the next couple of weeks I’ll roll past that marker by the end of July.

That all probably sounds like boasting, and I suppose it is. But I hope it also offers a bit of hope for others who wonder about taking up cycling, particularly since we’ve been in a period of accelerated bike sales during the lockdown. In 2016 - just four years ago - my total mileage was 260.49. You can change it if you want to.

My other goals for the year included:

• Riding from LaSalle to Ottawa along the I&M Canal Trail
• Riding further down the Hennepin Canal Trail
• Finishing my trailer project; and
• Stopping more regularly at restaurants or taverns along my routes

On this list I’m not doing quite as well. I did finally buckle down and finish the trailer. Mostly, anyway - I still haven’t put the sides on it, but having used it a few times now, I don’t think I’m going to. I can secure items pretty well using bungees, and I like the flexibility of the flatbed for carrying larger things. And I can always put a container like a Rubbermaid tote or similar onto it if I need that type of capability. So I’m counting it as complete.

The Pandemic has really hampered progress towards the other items on the list. This is an effect both of the shutdown of everything in the spring, and my personal reluctance to be around people, particularly with what appears to be pretty limited mask and distancing cooperation out in our rural areas.

I did make it out to the Hennepin Feeder Canal trail when Illinois first opened it back up, so I suppose I’ve technically met that goal, but not in the spirit I intended it. My intent is to get further along the main canal - the East-West trail that is the Illinois Gateway trail for Rails to Trails. The challenge is that the trailhead for that section is about 40 minutes away, and while it’s usually pretty lightly used, I’m a little concerned that it will be packed full of people, which was not my thing before the pandemic, much less now. I’m reluctant to invest the travel time to potentially find out I don’t want to be there.

The I&M Canal trail is closer, but I have similar concerns there. Besides, part of the idea there was to go to a particular brewpub which, although Illinois has moved into Phase 4 and now allows outdoor dining, is also something I’m reluctant to do.

So, in a way, the pandemic both giveth and taketh away. It was already my goal to ride more, but my opportunities have also expanded because of changes in work life, making that goal easier to achieve. And I’m very happy with the progress there - I’m riding both more frequently and further than I have in the past, and I like it. The impediments to the other goals are a bit of a bummer, to be sure, but the trails will still be there when we come out the other side of the current travails, and I prefer to do what I can to make sure I’ll be able to enjoy them when we get there.

Maintenance Day

Rolling past the end of June puts us at the mid-point of the calendar year, and it happens, here in the US, to be followed by a holiday weekend (at least this year). This seemed like a good point to take a day to do some routine maintenance and reflection on how my cycling year was going.

When I say "maintenance", I mostly mean that I decided to take a day to address issues that I’ve noticed while riding over recent weeks (maybe months) but have mentally set aside in favor of riding. This is not always ideal, but I am certain I am not the only person who does it.

Top on my list was addressing front end alignment. I’d had an issue with tire wear back in April, and I’d purchased new tires and re-set the alignment following the instructions in the Catrike Manual. Now - about 700 miles since putting the new tires on - I was noticing somewhat uneven wear on the outside edges of those tires. I’d gone back and forth on this in my head. First I questioned whether I was really seeing it, and when it became more undeniable, I debated whether to take the trike in to the shop to have it - and any other maintenance - addressed.

This debate occurs in part because, although I’m getting better at it, I am still not a confident bike mechanic. In many ways, the ways of cycle repair and adjustment seem a black art, with myself but a novice, and afraid that I will accidentally summon a demon if I recite the incantation incorrectly.

Or something like that. I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going on in the back room of the bike repair shop - probably summoning Balrogs. I hear Balrogs do bike repair...

---

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

---

The thing is, the bike shop is almost an hour away and, in our troubled times, requires an appointment be made in advance. My trike would likely be gone at least two days, possibly three. I do have an alternative to the trike, of course, but I don’t want to use it. And so I remind myself that these are the reasons I’m learning to do it on my own.

Alignment isn’t hard work, but it’s fiddly. And, of course, it seems like my first go at it either wasn’t quite right, or perhaps it had worked it’s way out (though the nuts around the adjuster bar were still quite tight). At this point it appeared I had too much toe-in, so I worked it back out a bit. This required a lot of moving back and forth with my measurement tool - a bit of telescoping curtain rod - but I think I have it set better now. Time will tell (and I think I’ll order a second set of tires just in case).

The other area I wanted to address was either an issue with the chain length or the derailleur, and I wasn’t sure which. I have been having trouble getting the Expedition to shift into the big ring on the back. Sometimes it would go, but others it would do that characteristic clattering sound that is the functional equivalent of the trike saying "I’m trying, Boss, I’m trying", but with no joy. The chatter is there for other gears, and I’d been having issues with single clicks of the shifter periodically jumping two gears at a time. More recently, I’d also been having some issue with shifts into higher gears simply not grabbing at all for several seconds.

This latter issue is particularly concerning when it happens just as you are shifting up to pull away from a chasing canine. Which is, of course, always when it happens.

I’d adjusted the boom in just a bit a few months ago due to some issues with knee pain. It was a small adjustment - I really just needed to make up for the difference in length needed to accommodate for winter clothes and boots - but it made me wonder if the chain was now too loose (remember - dark art). So my next task was to take a link out of the chain.

This I’ve actually gotten pretty good at, using a wire to keep the two ends nearby, and popping those pins in and out with the tool. I did quickly discover that my workbench was not at the ideal height for this particular task, requiring a little more bending than I’d prefer, but I got the link removed, got it all back together, and ran it through the gears...

...And it was clear, as I hit the two big rings together - twenty-first gear, I believe - that the chain was now too tight. It would still spin, but it was very taught and rubbing tightly against the lower chain tube.

So I muttered a few less-than polite words to myself and Calamity Jane, my trusty sidekick for the day, and went and put the link back in.

This meant that I was going to have to fiddle with the derailleur. To me, this particular part always seems the darkest of the black arts, and if I’m being honest, part of the reason I started with adjusting the length of the chain was in hopes that I wouldn't have to interact with it.

Fortunately, Utah Trikes has a very nice video laying out how to adjust the derailleur. Five minutes into it I was able to get the chain to reliably move to the top ring of the cassette. The adjustment to address gear skipping took a little longer, but I think I’ve got it sorted out now. I say "I think" because I definitely got it to stop happening on the work bench, but I haven’t taken it out on the road yet. That - which will probably happen later today - will be the ultimate test of my conjuring.

While I was at it I cleaned the chain (wiped it down anyway) and re-oiled it, and wiped everything else down as well. I did brief checks on the brake connections and made sure the wheel skewers were properly tightened down. I have come to realize, as my riding time goes up, that I need to do this sort of thing more regularly. I was able to more or less get away with annual spring tunings at the bike shop with my Cannondale. But my highest mileage year on the Cannondale was about 750 miles, and I’m already well past that now for 2020. More riding means more wear and tear, of course, and that means more maintenance. Plus, while I love my trikes, they are mechanically more complicated than the Cannondale - one extra wheel, 18 more gears, and much more chain, among other things, makes for more to keep track of.

As I’ve hinted, I didn’t go for a ride after completing my maintenance. Working on the trike was actually my second project of the day (the first involved putting a swing, which had been the victim of the prairie winds, back together), and it was relaxation time by the time I got everything back together and my tools put away. So I put the Expedition back into the Mobile Trike Garage, locked everything up for the night, and consulted with my beer fridge.

But today? Today I’ll test it all out. Today I ride.

Unnatural Phenomena

In my time first growing up in, and then leaving and returning to rural Northern Illinois, I’ve come to appreciate the quiet beauty of the countryside. While I think this is true for most people out here, it’s clear that, for a small subset of folks a quiet, empty countryside represents an opportunity to divest oneself of waste material without the need for use of purpose-built receptacles and distribution systems.

In simple terms: they view rural lands as a personal dumping ground.

Riding the trike through the countryside puts one directly in contact with these events. On rare occasions this reaches extreme levels, and some of the things you see are perplexing.

Unhappy Meal

Now, I’m not saying it’s unusual to find fast food refuse on a country road. That isn’t the perplexing part. What is unusual is that this appears to be an entire Happy Meal. How does this happen? Did they set it on the roof and forget it? Given that the closest McDonalds is about 5 miles away that seems unlikely. Did the child it was intended for get mouthy on the trip home, resulting in an exasperated parent throwing their meal out the window?

Either way, it was now an Unhappy Meal... (feel free to insert your own rim shot here)

A week or two later I came across a similar phenomenon:

Why did the McChicken cross the road?

Yes - that does appear to be an entire, intact and wrapped McChicken Sandwich. And yes, it is sitting at the edge of the road, completely unmolested, as if it was simply set there gently by caring hands.

I came across it about a mile away from, and four days after, coming across the Unhappy Meal, so they seem to be different phenomena. Did someone, perhaps, pick the sandwich up out of the bag, hit a bump, and drop it out the window? Was it an offering to the great asphalt gods of Illinois, in an effort to keep in their favor and maintain our paved roads, keeping away the gravel? Has McDonald’s been working on a teleportation delivery system, but still hasn’t worked out the bugs? (That would be far preferable to the two-lane drive-thru system).

And if it did fall out a window, the maintenance of structural integrity is either a testament to the wrapping job or an indictment of the sandwich materials.

But if these items are puzzling, the more usual items found fall more into the category marked "frustrating"...

Anybody have a light?

However, by far the most common thing that one comes across when riding the country roads is... anyone? Anyone?

That’s right - beer containers. Usually cans, sometimes bottles, sometimes the ancillary components. This is, on its face, a blight upon the countryside, and it raises the question as to what the disposition of those containers was prior to finding placement in the ditch. But as with anything that one encounters in a high enough frequency, it starts to become usual, almost expected. And that means that it might be helpful to look at it another way. So I decided to give that a try:

My little buddy Weiser

My little buddy Weiser

Hiding behind the Busches

As I began to do more and more of this I began to detect... well... something of a pattern to the containers I was finding. See if you can find it too...

It’s the Silver Bullet

George? W? Jeb?

Friends don’t let friends drink…

No virus jokes, please.

Bottle-fed

Less filling, but not less littering

Are you seeing it? Maybe one more will help:

If you aren’t familiar with the brand, that’s a Natural Light can. Natural Light bears the distinction of being the beer so cheap it’s what the fraternities bought in kegs for party nights when I was in college. It is truly the beer that one consumes when the goal is intoxication at minimum expense. Assuming, of course, one does not consider the sacrifice of flavor an expense.

What I increasingly came to realize, as I rode along and took stock (and photos) of all of this is that the Venn Diagram between people with bad taste in beer and people who are countryside litterbugs is essentially a perfect circle.

Of course, there’s always an occasional exception to the rule...

Heinekant

For the casual observer it would be easy to assume that the act of tossing beer cans out the window is an occasional event - that these cans just sit out in the ditch for an extended period of time, non-degradable testaments to relatively rare behavior. The very generous might even assume that these blew out of the back of trucks of people who were taking them in to recycle.

I ride portions of the same routes over and over again, since my driveway is my common starting point. I can assure you there are routinely new additions to the crop, and while there are some of the same brands represented here, each picture is a unique individual - perhaps the cans are reproducing in the rich Illinois soil...

Or perhaps not - they usually show up in linear groupings. It’s harder to see among the Busch and Bud Light cans due to sheer volume, but when something less typical shows up it becomes clearer.

Red Apple, Orange Trike

Red Apple Redux

While they look similar, these are shots of two unique individuals. The second picture is about a quarter mile down the road from the first. If I’d kept looking, or maybe if I’d gone back the other way, I wouldn't have been surprised to find others at a similar frequency. I’ll leave the how and why of it to your imagination.

This spontaneous sprouting of aluminum receptacles is not a new phenomenon to the open lands. When I was a kid growing up out here I briefly started a beer can collection from cans I picked up alongside the roads. I say briefly, because I was probably about 10 years old, and the idea of cleaning them out before putting them on display simply did not occur. It was not long before the growing smell resulted in a parental eviction of my prized possessions. Clearly the loss haunts me to this day.

And, if I’m being honest, I suppose I’m part of the problem. I do recycle aluminum cans, and I’d like to be able to say that I stop and pick up these blemishes of the byway, but I don’t. While I’ve considered it, I’d have to set up the trike to do it and make a special trip. Otherwise I mostly ride for exercise, and I’d never get above 10 mph if I stopped to pick up every can I encountered.

I’m not sure trying to look at them a different way really helped, but it seemed worth the try. I have no doubt there was an occasional passerby wondering what the hell the oddball with the trike was doing now, on his hands and knees in the ditch with his camera. And I have to give it to them - I’d consider myself an oddball too.

Time to ride - but I think without the pictures today...

Alternate Cycling Universe

As the world continues to struggle with the ongoing pandemic there is ongoing discussion about the changes that it is and will cause to our lifestyles. The nature of shopping, social gathering, and working are all seeing changes.

Transportation is also being affected. Bike shops are running out of inventory as people look for a means to exercise in the out of doors and for an alternative to public transit. We see cities making changes to the ways that streets and byways are used, closing spaces to automobile traffic in favor of human-powered options.

I often find myself wondering what our society’s would look like in terms of transportation if things developed along different lines - if the development of the internal combustion engine hadn’t come along when it did, spawning our embrace of, and dependence upon, the automobile. And lately I am wondering if we might not be starting to see a bit of what might have been.

A few years ago, inspired by reading David McCullough’s Wright Brothers biography, I put together a timeline analysis of bicycle adoption. To sum it up briefly, the development of the safety bicycle - essentially our modern bicycle - happened so closely in time to the automobile that, in my humble opinion, cycling never had a chance to take hold before people had a motorized option.

What if that hadn’t happened? What if, say, the internal combustion had never been invented or perfected to the point that it could be made in a small enough package to power personal transportation?

It does seem that, prior to the introduction of the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, the world was not necessarily expecting such a thing to develop. A trip through cycling history sites shows that there was considerable effort in the 1800’s to develop human powered vehicles. Yes, we all know about the penny-farthing bikes of the 1870’s, but things started ahead of that...

Folks were clearly pretty inventive. They didn’t yet have the key developments - pneumatic tires, effective gearing, lightweight materials - that make our modern machines so capable, but they were clearly on the path. If those inventions had come along earlier or if, as we said, the internal combustion engine hadn’t, I suspect our transportation sector would look very different. What would that alternate universe look like?

I don’t think anyone would argue that human-powered vehicles would be routinely used for long-distance transport. I suspect we’d see rail heavily employed for that purpose. While it’s sadly insufficient here in the United States, rail is still a primary transportation mechanism in many countries around the world. Early locomotives were, of course, built on external combustion engines, so they fit with our thought experiment. Many trains now are electrically powered, and we’re going to assume development of electric systems would have progressed as they have in our current day. For the US this would be a significant change - we’d likely see railroads in the place of our interstate highway system, connecting our cities and towns, probably with express routes between major cities supplemented by regional and local lines.

I’ll pause here let my fellow US citizens picture that - it’s a mental image that takes a little while to absorb. No highways.

It would also mean no heavy motor vehicles - no long-haul or short trucks, etc. The US used to be covered with rail lines and spurs to facilitate local movement of heavy goods like grains and coal. Cyclists in the States are already familiar with that fact, at least obliquely - it’s the bulk of what Rails to Trails was built on, recovering the land from defunct rail lines.

Or - perhaps by the equivalent of current day in our alternate universe it would be more accurate to say: there would be no heavy motor vehicles with internal combustion engines. It might be the case that electric vehicle technology would have evolved sufficiently for short-haul heavy vehicles (range being a long-term problem for electric vehicles we are only now starting to solve). So - perhaps electric farm equipment, and electric trucks bringing loads to the local depot for rail transit. But I suspect that our alternate universe would have relied on animal power for moving heavy loads for much longer than our actual one did.

For virtually everything else - for short distance transportation, certainly, and possibly medium distance as well - I think we’d be looking at human-powered vehicles. After all, cycling is the most efficient known form of human transport.

One of the things about this aspect that fascinates me is trying to consider the form those HPV’s would take. I don’t take it as read that we’d all be tooling around on a typical upright, diamond-frame bicycle at this point. In our alternate universe the HPV is the primary means of transportation, and would have had nearly 200 years of development with that as a focus. In our actual universe cycling has been somewhat sidelined as a recreational activity and/or as a transportation option for children and for those who cannot afford, or are not allowed, motorized alternatives (when I say "not allowed" I am picturing the men you see riding an old bike wearing work clothes and smoking a cigarette - I suspect we all know what’s going on there...).

Without that sidelining our alternate universe might well have seen cycling technology advance at a much more rapid pace. Consider, for example, that the first derailleur system was developed between 1900 and 1910, but we didn’t really start to see bikes with multiple speed gear sets here in the US until the mid-1960’s. Now we have cycling machines with extensive gear ranges - I’ve got 30 speeds on my Catrike Expedition, for example - but those are relatively recent developments. I suspect they’d have happened sooner in our alternate history. Similarly, we’d likely have seen the adoption of more exotic materials - aluminum, titanium at least - earlier on to reduce weight.

I mentioned above that I suspect we - or at least, most of us - wouldn't be riding around on upright two-wheeled bikes. While I obviously have a bias here towards recumbent trikes, I come by it honestly. Some people come to trikes because, for one reason or another, they aren’t able to ride an upright. While there’s nothing wrong with that - I love that trikes let people continue to ride - I came to trikes because I think they are cool. Since I first saw an article on a Greenspeed, probably 15 years ago (possibly longer), I’ve wanted one. And one of the first things I thought about it was: "that is the natural evolution of the bicycle". In addition, with HPV’s being the primary form of transportation we wouldn't have been as likely to see the ban on recumbents by the UCI that is felt to have propped up the upright bike over recumbents in the 1930’s.

Not to say that I think our alternate universe denizens would necessarily be riding about on Catrikes and HP Velotechniks. Actually, I suspect people would be mostly moving about in something like a Velomobile. Particularly in less weather friendly areas, an enclosed human powered vehicle would make more sense, and riders would benefit from the aerodynamic advantages as well. I suspect they’d be somewhat different than what we see now - there would likely be a need for better cargo carrying options, though perhaps that could be managed with trailers or similar systems. Pulling a trailer is an acquired skill when it’s behind a motor vehicle. It’s considerably less intimidating a task when it’s attached to an HPV.

We are in the middle of an e-bike boom in our our actual world, and one suspects that would have happened much sooner in our alternate world. Having battery support would be needed to operate mechanical systems - wipers and ventilation systems, for example. And while it took a very long time to get electric cars with ranges that match gasoline vehicles, that range wouldn’t be necessary in our alternate reality. But having the battery support would make our HPV’s practical medium-distance vehicles. No train to the next town? It’s only 30 miles - let’s just take the Velomobile...

There are other implications as well. Streets would look different - there would be considerably less need for traffic controls - stop signs and such - and probably no need at all for stoplights. The Dutch have already demonstrated this to a considerable degree. Road surfaces would last longer without the constant pounding of one- to three-ton machines. Pedestrian injuries and traffic deaths in general would be far, far lower. People in would be far more fit, on average, given the routine cardio workout involved in traveling from place to place. Not to mention the lack of issues surrounding air pollution and all of the problems with finding, securing, drilling, refining, and transporting oil.

Will our world look more like the alternate universe we are considering here going forward? It’s hard to say for sure, but the opportunity appears to be there at the moment. The effects aren’t simply academic. Multiple European countries, particularly (but not exclusively) Denmark and the Netherlands have seen many of the benefits listed above with their focus on cycling, and we’ve already seen an improvement in air quality with the reduced automotive traffic during the shelter-at-home orders. And one expects the changes, to the degree they occur, will be seen more in the cities than in rural areas, particularly here in the States - there’s a lot of territory to cover, and that old train network is long gone. But I still enjoy the idea...

Roadsides for Wildlife

Illinois is one of those places for which people - if they are not from here - often seem to have one or two particular perceptions about. The first is that Illinois is synonymous with Chicago. While that’s not remotely true, you can understand why people would make that association. Chicago is the third largest city in the country, and the city proper accounts for over 20% of the state’s population. Include the entire Chicago Metro area, and you’ve accounted for 75% of the population for the entire state. Odds are that, if you’ve met someone from Illinois, they were from the greater Chicago area.

This first point is so pervasive that, on occasion, people from other parts of the state itself will assume that you are from Chicago. When I was in college I had a fellow student ask me where I was from, and when I told him the name of the town and where it was at, he said "so: basically Chicago".

No. But again, you can understand it.

For the rest of the state the picture I think people most commonly have, when they have one at all, is of a flat terrain desolate but for cornfields. There is some truth to that perception - most of Illinois hosts intensive agriculture, and corn is a primary crop. The little town I’m from, in fact, hosts The Sweet Corn Festival every August, so it’s hard to argue that’s not an accurate picture. It’s not the only picture, of course - there are multiple other crops sown here, including soybeans, peas, hay, and so on. But there is a lot of corn.

Despite all of that when I write about my part of rural Illinois - particularly when referring to cycling through it - I often refer to it as "the prairie". Folks looking at satellite shots of the area, or who are traveling over it by plane or even by interstate, might understandably tend towards saying "well, maybe former prairie, but now...?"

Still, prairie is how I think of it. And much of that is due to the roadside.

When I was kid in the 1970’s and 80’s I would routinely see signs in the ditches proclaiming a given area part of the Roadsides for Wildlife program. I was a kid, so I didn’t entirely understand it - in some ways it seemed like it might be an excuse to not mow the ditch. But it turns out it was an active program designed to encourage prairieland wildlife because of the increasing movement towards monoculture (corn) in the state. The Illinois DNR maintains a copy of a brochure for it here on their website. And, while I’m not sure that program is still active (the DNR was actively planting grasses for the purpose), they do still recommend holding off on mowing.

The program was active when I was a kid, and it has a distinctive effect on the landscape that remains for much of the region still. While there are certainly people who fastidiously mow their ditches, many are left to grow. For the cyclist riding in rural Illinois it means that you aren’t just seeing cornfield after cornfield. Rather, there’s prairie right along the roadside:

Depending upon the part of the season you are in, you’ll see not just grass, but also a variety of flowers and flowering plans - clover, as above, but also raspberries and sunflowers and black eyed Susan’s; bee balm and phlox and - of course - the ubiquitous presence of the trusty dandelion, often in great profusion early in the spring before the grasses grow up.

But wait, you say, the program was roadsides for wild life, not wildflowers, right?

Yes:

If you choose the road less traveled - and the ones where mowing is not routinely conducted - you will find those ditches contain a wide variety of critters. The original program was originally focused on prairie birds, and particularly on pheasants, and you will see those here, along with killdeer, red-winged blackbirds, and many others. In addition to the fox, above, who was one of a pair of juveniles curiously playing alongside the road (see here) for more pictures of them) in the past two months I’ve seen countless versions of the aforementioned killdeer (they are prominent because they actively try to lead you away from their nest) and other prairie birds, but also pheasants, hawks, and even a young deer or two out in the fields, one of which stayed still long enough for me to get a pic:

Here’s a bit of a closer look:

"Ok", you say, "so there’s more to see than corn. But it’s still flat."

First, the countryside rolls more than can easily be conveyed in a photograph. But second: Yes - and we’re talking cycling here. Flat is hardly a major downside.

I don’t expect to see legions of cyclists showing up suddenly across the northern Illinois region. But story after story tells us that the bike shops have been cleaned out by people looking for things to do in the era of social distancing. If you are one of those folks yourself, and you live within a reasonable distance of Northern Illinois, you may want to come out our way.

I’ll be the one on the orange trike - and I’ll wave if I see you.

Riding In a Rut

One of the recurring themes to cycling posts here on Applied Life is my ongoing search for opportunities to use my trike as transport. I mentioned recently that, despite the other challenges with our worldwide pandemic, one of the effects of sheltering at and working from home is that it affords increased opportunities for riding. Those combined factors have led me rather predictably to choose to more frequently ride, rather than drive, to check the PO Box I keep for work.

...I seem to have outsmarted myself.

While I’m enjoying my riding, it has seemed of late that I have less to think about on my rides, fewer observations about the countryside, less musing on the emergence and progress of the season. This is unusual for me, and those components are always part of what I enjoy about cycling - the fact that cycling is an activity that takes out into the world, making you a part of it. I had started to wonder why this would be - was cycling starting to lose its allure?

That seemed unlikely, so I took a closer look at my riding patterns in Cyclemeter, and there it was:

I’m almost always riding the same route now.

You might think that would be obvious, but one has a tendency to lose track of these things when in the thick of it, and to overemphasize the exceptions. If you’d asked me to casually talk about my rides over the past month I’d say that I rode to the post office a few times, but then I’d tell you about my trip to the Hennepin Canal Trail and about riding in to get gas for the mower. But when I actually look at the month in Cyclemeter, what is see is that I rode 14 times, and that 10 of those 14 rides - 71% - were virtually identical rides to the post office.

What’s more, two of the other four rides were slightly longer routes that also took me to the post office. I’d added them in for a bit of variety and increased distance, but they still cover much of the same territory. For those doing the math, that means the two standouts that I mentioned above - Hennepin and the gas trip - are the only two rides that were to different destinations.

The only two.

Looking back at April finds a similar story. I may have gotten myself so focused on using my trike for transport that I’ve ridden myself into a bit of a rut.

This is easily rectified, fortunately enough - I have lots of routes mapped out around the area, lots of countryside to ride through. But it does make me wonder a bit about what happens with folks who cycle for transport on a more regular basis. I know from years of experience that driving the same route to work every day results in an overlearning effect, where the task becomes so automatic that one finds it hard to remember things from the trip - you look back on the drive and wonder "did I stop at that stop sign at the corner...?"

Given the number of variables involved in road cycling - the elements, the road imperfections, the automotive traffic, the chasing of dogs - it seems unlikely that one could quite reach the same effect. But a route can, apparently, reach the point where it becomes mundane. I’ll have to remain on guard for that.

And now it’s time to ride... to somewhere different.

Putting the Trike to Work - Trailer Project Follow-Up

I tentatively wrapped up work on my far-too-long delayed trailer project at the beginning of the month. Since then I have had a couple of opportunities to put it to work.

It was clear to me that it would be able to handle light grocery trips and that sort of thing - the canvas covering that it originally came with was up to that, as is used it for that purpose many times back in the days of $4 gasoline. But I was curious as to how things would work, all told, with somewhat heavier items. I’ve had a couple of opportunities to test that out over the past few weeks.

The first was a trip to the general store near my post office box. MLW was out of Coca-Cola, so I offered to pick some up on one of my mailbox rides (these have been frequent occurrences in our time of sheltering at home). One of the first thing I noticed was that the trailer adds enough length to the entire kit that the trike no longer looks ridiculous occupying a parking space:

For this run I brought along rubber bungees as well as ratchet straps as I was unsure what exactly would be the ideal method of securing my treasure. The bungees turned out to be all I needed:

And they arrived home much as I strapped them down initially. I had actually considered picking up a case of beer as well, but I was concerned about the additional weight for this first run. As it stands, a 12-pack of coke (or pop, soda, sugar-fizz - whatever you call it where you are from) comes in at about 10 pounds. Here, as you can see in the picture, I was carrying four of them, so that would come out to 40lbs for the trip.

The second test was yesterday. It was time to mow, and we were going to need gas for the mowing machine. I could have just tossed the gas cans into the mobile trike garage - and I certainly considered that - but this seemed like a good opportunity to try out the trailer with a heavier weight. I have two five-gallon gas cans, and I wanted to fill them both. How much does 10 gallons of gas weigh? Turns out that Siri can tell you that:

I don’t know why Siri knows the answer to that - I actually expected her to send me to a website - but there you have it. I also thought it would be heavier. Long ago I learned "a pint’s a pound the world around" - so, you know, 8 pints to a gallon would be 8 pounds per, thus I assumed it would be 80 lbs. But because of science, it turns out that water is denser, and thus heavier, than gasoline. It also turns out that a 10 gallons of water is actually 83.45 lbs, according to Siri, so I am generally starting to question a lot of things I learned long ago...

But I digress. Even if the gas was not as heavy as I thought it would be, I figured it would still be a good test. In addition to being heavier than the load on the previous run, the gas cans are taller and more awkward. Plus I knew it would give me an opportunity to take this picture:

(I sort of delighted in the special irony of that moment)

This approach also had the bonus of letting me not put gasoline containers in my car. The weather is nice enough now that I could have windows open and such, but I don’t love putting fuel containers in a space that also has carpeting and leather upon which I could quite possibly spill petrol.

So how did it all work out? Pretty well, in both cases. Unloaded the trailer, while almost certainly heavier than it was with its original canvas covering, is not much effort to pull. It probably has some impact on my speed overall - it must, since it would be providing both additional weight and rolling resistance - but it’s not subjectively detectable. It’s a little bouncy unloaded, but not in a way that seems problematic for riding.

Loaded up the weight is certainly detectable. On the 40lb ride I could feel it, but it wasn’t bad and, according to Cyclemeter, it didn’t slow me down. However, I had a tailwind on much of the way back to the tune of 17mph, so that may have had an impact on the return speed.

The additional 20lbs on the gas trip was more work, and definitely slowed me down. On a couple of hills I had to drop into the small ring, which I very rarely need to do on our roads (we do have hills, but they aren’t usually granny-gear level). That isn’t a bad thing, I don’t think - it’s just the reality of physics - and both trike and trailer appeared to handle it just fine.

One thing that did happen in both cases is that the hitch mount on the trike, which I set at parallel to the ground, worked it’s way down at an angle by the time I got back. This seems likely to be an artifact both of the weight, and perhaps also the connector on the hitch, which is a thick piece of nylon:

It works, but it may contribute to the bounciness of trailer, and that may be part of what worked it down. The hitch came with a smaller diameter nylon hookup surrounded by a steel spring, but the spring was too big for the existing tube. I may need to investigate getting a different hitch or modifying this one.

Either way though, it was up to the tasks. I don’t think I’ll often need to carry quite so much weight, but if and when I do, it seems like she’ll manage. And thank goodness she was up to it this time, because it really was time to mow the lawn:

Least Favorite Sort of Day

That’s the forecast for Northern Illinois today, Sunday, May 17th.

It’s almost as if the weather gods do not know, or perhaps do not care, that I am supposed to have a Sunday ride today. Perhaps I’ve displeased them in some way?

I am often skeptical about the presentation of such a forecast - how can it possibly be going to rain the entire rest of the day?

A look at the radar shows how, tho - the weather system plaguing me is a slow-moving, rotational pattern that will just hang over northern Illinois for the rest of the day, dropping rain on us more or less continually.

I do not approve, and I’m not sure why this wasn’t cleared with me before being put into action. I would have required there be some sort of break in the rain to allow for a ride. It’s only polite, frankly.

And - of course - this leaves me wishing that, at some point in the past I’d actually gotten around to purchasing lightweight rain gear suitable for riding in.

Past Erin has screwed me over once again. Hate that guy!

If I get lucky, there may be a period where it looks like the rain will be light enough to allow for some visibility and I can head out with lightweight gear - rash guards and linen pants don’t seem to mind getting wet from time to time.

Until then I guess I’ll have to find something else to do today - watch a movie, read a book - something.

Ugh.

Hennepin Canal Trail - Further Exploration

Here in Illinois we had a loosening in some of the restrictions related to Coronavirus beginning on May 1, and a part of that loosening was the opening of some (but not all) of our state parks.

The Hennepin Canal State Park was initially not on that list, but then it was added. I figured it might be a good opportunity to explore the canal trail further, so I decided to trek out to it last Sunday.

For those not familiar with it, the Hennepin Canal is a very large - if unusually shaped - state park. It consists of two narrow strips of land bounding the canal (of course), one running from Bureau Junction on the Illinois River east-west across about half of the state to the Mississippi River, and another running north-south from Rock Falls to meet the east-west portion just north of Interstate 80. I’ve written about it here before, exploring portions of both the lateral and vertical portions.

I wanted to explore a portion I hadn’t yet seen, and I wanted to avoid people, as much as possible, both for purposes of social distancing and because, as a general rule, I enjoy solitary riding. I figured the portions of the trail that bound towns and settlements would be pretty busy, given the pent-up demand for any activity, so I decided I’d begin in a more rural location. This is not hard to do for the canal - the word rural describes most of it. The last time I’d ridden the Feeder Canal - the north-south part - I’d ended at Route 172. That seemed like a good place to begin, and my plan was to ride from there to the junction of the two sections just north of I80, which would make for about a 40 mile round trip.

Route set, I packed up my trike and mask into the mobile trike garage and headed out.

When I arrived at the entry point for Rte 172 I quietly congratulated myself at my genius. There was only one other vehicle in the parking lot, and the occupant was inside, so I was certain that I was going to pretty much have this section of trail to myself.

I was, shall we say, something different from a genius. It became clear that I had not fully appreciated the degree of pent-up demand for outdoor activity. It also became clear that many folk may not have fully grasped the guidelines given for social distancing, group size, or face coverings. But I had my mask, and I quickly moved it from my bag, where I’d put it in the presumably very unlikely chance that I would need it, to keeping it on my neck so I could quickly apply it when people approached. And I applied it a lot.

I should say, tho, that encountering people was most common within a relatively short distance of a road crossing. Fortunately, there are long stretches of the trail that don’t involve a crossing, and these were as secluded as I could have hoped for.

As I mentioned, I started at 172, which is where I ended when I rode here last June. It had been a wet spring, and I’d encountered a couple of mildly flooded underpasses before getting to 172, but when I arrived there, this is what I encountered:

I’d ridden through the underpasses before, but I couldn't tell how deep that one was and, while I could have ridden up to the road to cross, I had ridden about as far as I wanted, so I let the flood waters turn me around.

I wasn’t sure what I would encounter this time, but I went ahead and decided to start where I ended. Fortunately, it was a different picture this time:

Not only was it not flooded, it looks like work has been done fairly recently to bring the trail under the bridge to a higher grade to help prevent it. I rolled on under and I was on my way.

The trail surface for this section was what I’d remembered from last year - essentially deprecated crushed stone (and packed dirt) with a fair amount of low-lying ground-cover growth in it due to a relative lack of foot traffic.

It’s absolutely passable on the trike, but the going is slow because the surface is somewhat soft. Mountain bikes soft-readers of various sorts would be fine here as well, but you’d be struggling with a road bike, I believe.

It’s also slow because the trail isn’t cleared well - there’s a lot of dead wood on the trail from overhanging trees. This is likely due to the fact that the park is huge, and that it had been closed for the past two months. I don’t remember that being an issue in my prior rides, so it may be less of a problem as the season progresses and park personnel can tend to the trail.

That said, there is a portion of the trail in this section that is - suddenly, inexplicably- paved. The paved section begins about nine miles south of Rte 172, and continues up until the point that I turned around (more on that below). I didn’t pay close attention to where the pavement began at the time, but it was easy to suss out by looking at my route speeds by mile:

In case it’s not immediately clear what I’m showing, the paved portion would be in the circled area:

The views are always everything you could hope for from this sort of location. Spring is underway, so everything is greening up, there are birds on the water and in the trees. I saw fish jump in the canal, a turtle sunning itself on a log, and a snake coiled around a branch at the canal edge. That last fellow I tried to get a picture of, but I was too noisy in my approach and scared him off. However, I did manage to capture this guy:

As you might extrapolate from the name, the Feeder Canal wasn’t designed for shipping. As such, except for at the very beginning, the Feeder Canal doesn’t have any locks. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t things to see for those interested in the history and construct of canals - What the feeder canal has - in spades- is aqueducts. The canal is carried over multiple small streams over the course of the ride, and the first couple of times you see them it takes a bit to fully process what you are seeing. You a riding on a trail with water to one side, perhaps a foot or so below you. But then you and that water both travel overtop another stream five to ten feet or more below you. There are also portions of the trail where you can see creeks running alongside and below the trail at the opposite side of the canal.

It’s a bit surreal because it’s unnatural. But then, of course, so is the canal.

The best and most impressive example of that on this portion of the canal trail is the aqueduct that crosses the Green River.

The Green River itself is also somewhat unnatural - it’s been channelized and modified to drain Inlet Swamp (successsfully - it’s no longer there) about 32 miles to the east as the crow flies. But for that reason it’s large and the aqueduct that crosses it is similarly grand.

My ride ended about two miles south of the Green River Aqueduct, and about four miles short of the junction between the canals. Why would I stop so close to my ride goal? Well, there were a couple of reasons. The first one was this:

I couldn't tell if this was a tree fall from the copse to the far right of the picture, alongside the road below, or perhaps something placed to purposely block the path. Accidental or purposeful, it was doing an effective job of being a barricade. I could have gone around it, and I absolutely considered it, but while it’s a little difficult to tell in the picture, the road to the right is some 15 feet below, down a pretty steep grade. In addition, I didn’t know if it was there on purpose (I know that is sometimes done), and if it was barricaded on purpose I didn’t know what I’d encounter further down.

It was also affected by the fact that I’d already had one flat tire, so I’d already been out longer than I’d anticipated (I am not a rapid tube replacer in the comfort of my garage, much less at the side of a trail). I decided to take the tree as a sign and turned around.

That may have been a better idea that I’d realized, because I got another flat on the way back. That’s right: My trip on this particular day was lengthened by the delight of not one, but two flat tires. They were both on the same wheel (right front), so I suspect I’d gotten something into the tire that flattened the tube it a second time. I also discovered that I’d used up my only new spare on the first change.

This meant that I’d have to do a patch, but it was challenging because it had been a slow leak the second time, which meant a very small hole. Small holes are hard to see, and I stood there for a couple of minutes, moving it between my hands slowly and wishing that I had some water I could put it in to find the leak.

Some of you have no doubt already arrived at it: I was wishing for water.

That’s right - wishing for water while standing next to a canal.

I took a moment to dutifully chastise myself for being a dumbass, then found a spot at the edge I could access, pumped up the tube and stuck it under the water. It literally took seconds to find the leak, and another couple of minutes to patch it and get it in. I also ran hands around the inside of the tire hoping to pull out whatever might be in there. A week and two rides later it’s still holding air, so I must have gotten lucky.

Those moments are frustrating, but they never fail to illustrate the fundamental truth to the fact that even a bad day riding is better than a day without. I was frustrated by the need to fix the flat, frustrated with the fact that I was out of fresh spares, but once I had my canal-water epiphany and got back rolling I felt like a hero and I was enjoying myself again.

It goes without saying (or saying any more at least) that I would absolutely recommend trying out these trails - Hennepin and the I&M as well - if the opportunity presents. But they do require planning. Particularly as you move into the rural areas of each, you are going to be your own support, and they are quite rustic. If that’s a concern, for the Hennepin I’d recommend riding the Feeder Canal - the north-south portion - in and around Rock Falls. The area there is well settled, has lots of stores for supports, and has an excellent local bike shop - Meads - which also sells and services trikes for the three-wheeled riders among us.

In addition, because of the slow nature of the surfaces, for either of the canal trails - Hennepin or the I&M Canal - you want to allot significant additional time for the distance you want to cover. My average speed on the trike is right around 12-13 mph, but I routinely come in under 10mph on average for the canal trails. If you are wanting to cover a fair amount of distance, I’d suggest you just plan to make a day of it. And if you do, it will be a good day!

Trailer Project Part 4 - Finished-ish

Trailer Project Part 4 - Finished-ish

Trailer Project Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

In an effort to not have another year between sessions of working on the trailer I dedicated most of last Sunday to putting it together.

Mostly this session involved time laying it out, thinking through a couple of the design components, and then spending time with my table saw as well as a hammer and nails.

I knew the basic design I was looking for - just a rustic flatbed trailer, with maybe some sides on it to hold things in and/or strap to. And I was considering a rear lip to keep things from sliding off the back:

As the day and my time with it went on, though, I ended up deciding to go with a simpler, more basic approach, at least for the time being:

Part of this was a simple matter of time - as in, I was running out of it. Part of it was questioning the utility or need of the lip. I’ve hauled items on my automotive flatbed trailer - strapped down of course - just fine without having either sides or a rear tailgate. I suspect the same will be true for this device.

I’d also considered putting another layer of palette boards on the outside edges of flatbed - where the blue outline appears here:

This would have largely been a decorative element - it would have covered the joint space between the outside edge pieces and the inside slats, making it look more uniform. I had also briefly considered having the inside slats just float instead of nailing them down, which would have required the pieces on the edge to hold them in. In the end, though, I was surprisingly happy with how well they fit together - I don’t think the joint spaces look too bad, and it should be noted that most of the slats are uncut - the pieces coming off of the palette were surprisingly uniform in length.

---

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

---

I discarded the idea of having the slats float because I wasn’t convinced I could get them in place tight enough to keep them from rattling over bumps, and our Illinois backroads have plenty of bumps.

I also realized as I went that the decorative edge pieces would mean less flat surface on the trailer - the edges would be raised by the 1/8" or so of the pieces themselves, which would mean less useful area in the trailer. Plus, not having the decorative edge pieces would reduce weight. So - no edge pieces.

I am still mentally debating whether to add some sort of side rail. I cut pieces for them, but one of them split when I started to screw it on. It was at the end of the day and I was running out of patience, so I decided to set them aside for now and see whether I would miss them and/or see a need for them after I actually get to use it.

My attachment approach for getting the flatbed on to the trailer was a combination of a couple of screws and mounting blocks cut from sections of 2x4’s:

I used the wood blocks in part because each of them would/could also be an attachment point for a side rail. There are four bolts at front where the frame sections join, and four at the rear where the wheel attaches that could be used if needed, and I will likely do that if the wood blocks don’t hold up. I didn’t do that here primarily because I don’t have bolts long enough for the job, and part of the idea here was to use materials I had on hand to avoid going to the store and to maintain social distancing.

Once I had it all together I wanted to see how it all would look and work. I’m pleased with how it looks:

The final change I need to make with the trailer is to its hitch. As I mentioned in the second trailer project post, the donor trailer was a 2000 Schwinn Joyrider, and the hitch was designed for attaching to the rear of a diamond frame bike (and even then, only a diamond frame bike with tubing of a specific diameter - it never worked with my Cannondale either). So it won’t connect properly to the frame of the Expedition. I ordered a proper axle hitch to replace the mount.

Still, I wanted to get out for a ride with it attached to see how much the additional weight of the trailer seemed to affect things. So I finagled the old hitch into the rear cargo rack and went out for a ride.

This put the trailer at a bit of a jaunty angle but I wasn’t hauling anything so it didn’t matter.

Overall, it seemed to go pretty well. I did a very familiar 13-ish mile loop that doesn’t take me far from home so I could call for help if there were any significant issues. I did have a short period of time where it seemed to really be slowing me down and pulling me to the right, but that turned out to be a flat right tire (the one where I had to use the tube I’d patched when replacing the tires). This required a bit of swearing and ultimately a roadside repair, but it wasn’t the trailer’s fault. Looking back at the route in Cyclemeter, my speed on this trip for the portion following the tire change appears to be more or less comparable to prior rides without the trailer, which would suggest the weight of the unloaded trailer doesn’t make a lot of difference. I’m sure that won’t be the case once I put things on it to carry, but that would be the case regardless of how I carry things.

I’ll continue to evaluate the need for side rails one way or the other, and as I’d said in Part 3, I wondered about having a raised handle for pushing it as a cart. That would involve either using the old aluminum frame from its stroller days, or building a handle with wood, and either is a possibility. But as I think about it I suspect the likelihood that I’d actually use it as a cart independent of the trike is pretty slim, so that, like the side rails, will probably wait till if or when I see a need for it.

So - at this point I am feeling this is a qualified success, and just one trailer hitch away from being complete. I may do a brief update when I get the new hitch attached and get everything set up.

Until then, it’s time to ride!

Trailer Project Part 3 - Getting on Board(s)

Trailer Project Part 1

Trailer Project Part 2

Trailer Project Part 4

With warming weather and increased time at home, it seemed like a good time to return to my admittedly neglected bike trailer project.

When last I addressed this project - apparently a year(!) ago now - I’d cleaned the canvas shell off of the frame and had started debating about how to build a cargo floor for the trailer.

At the time I mused that the simplest thing would be to use a thin sheet of plywood - and it would - but in my head I was also wondering about perhaps sheet metal - aluminum or galvanized steel might be options - or even some type of plastic. In the abundant amount of time between finishing that stage and now, someone posted a video about using palettes for this purpose. While I lost track of the video itself, the idea resurfaced in my head as I approached this - I didn’t have plywood or any of the other materials I’d been considering, and I did not relish a trip to the big box home improvement store in the era of social distancing. But I did have palettes.

Granted, they were on my burn pile - living in a rural area means lots of trees. Living in a wind farm means lots of wind-fallen tree deteritus, so we usually gather enough for a bonfire every year or so. In the winter I’d decided to dispatch with the palettes as a part of that process - I had kept them in case I had a use for them, but I hadn’t found one, and I wanted the space they occupied for other things. But now?

Fortunately they were still in decent shape, so I brought them in to the garage and started to disassemble them. As is true every time I start a project in the garage, I had company...

As is also true every time I do a project, I think about putting on gloves too late...

Unfortunately, nothing about the knowing what you want to, or of having a plan, gives you the callouses of a carpenter. Those have to be earned.

---

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

---

I broke down about four palettes and, since they had been out in the weather, I laid them out on garage floor in the sun in order to dry them out.

After several hours in the sun I stacked them up and put them away until my next chance to work on it a few days later.

Once I had a chance to get to them again I broke out the orbital sander and sanded down enough of the boards to cover the base. I wanted to smooth them down - palette boards are pretty rough when raw - and clean them up. Once that was down I laid them out across a couple of reclaimed 1x4’s along the frame to start to get an starting idea of what everything would look like.

And as I laid it out, Rosie signaled her approval of my approach:

With all of the material on the trailer I did a very unscientific evaluation of the weight of it all (I picked it up). Even though there are several pieces of wood it doesn’t appear to be unduly heavy, which was a concern. And I like the way it looks like it will come together.

So now I am weighing a couple of additional components. I’d like to be able to use it as a push cart - because it was originally a combination kid trailer and jogging stroller it can be set up with a front wheel - and I will need to have some sort of side rails. I’m debating whether to use the original aluminum frame assembly, which has a handle for pushing and to which I could attach side rails, or to build something bespoke for that purpose.

The former choice - the aluminum frame - would be quicker and easier. The benefit to the latter approach is that I could cantilever off the back of the trailer a bit to make it longer. I don’t know that I need it to be longer - my current cargo needs are modest, involving mostly trips to the grocery store and similar sorts of outings - but I might want that option in the future.

My plan is to move forward fairly quickly one way or the other. Of course, that was my plan a year ago. Construction time competes with riding time, after all, which is always my challenge.

Re-Tired

To start here, let me note that I am a person who firmly believes that, even if you have some fancy book learnin’, you should still be able to work with your hands.

From about age 12 up to and through college I worked summers for my Dad’s contracting business as a plumber’s helper. That experience, even though I was a essentially a glorified gopher (or maybe not so glorified) has been invaluable through my adult life - it has made me willing and able to do things for myself that I would otherwise have to bring in - and pay - someone else to do. That doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes pay other people anyway, but it means that I often at least have the option.

That being said, I remember the day clearly when, as a young adult, I was opining about the possibility of not going on to school and finding other work. I was saying this to my father, and then I watched his his face as he clearly looked back in his memory and began to recall my handiwork on previous projects before he said: "Son, you should go to college."

It was said with love, and he was right.

This memory comes back me any time I take on something like putting tires on my trike.

Last time I wrote about the rapid deterioration of the front tires on my Catrike Expedition, and how I was fortunate to have made it back without encountering a debilitating failure. But while I’d made it back, having enjoyed one more ride, it was clear that the trike was going to be out of commission until A) the new tires I ordered from Utah Trikes came in; and 2) I could actually get them put on.

The getting them put on was going to be the more challenging part given that, as indicated above, I am someone who’s skills at technical labor indicated that I should go to college... It was also slightly complicated by the fact that I had another issue to deal with. Shortly after I posted that story last week several very helpful folks in the Catrike Owner’s Group on Facebook pointed out that I needed to check my toe-in.

Like my father before them, they were right - shout out here to everyone who offered the idea and suggestions, but especially Jim Aliano, who brought it up first and had multiple helpful suggestions, as well as Bob Richardson who’s practical solution was invaluable.

And I did go out for a ride that day, pressing my trusty 1987 Cannondale SR400 back into service. A little air in the tires and I slid my feet into the stirrups and she was off, ready and raring to go...

...and all the ride really accomplished was to make me miss my trike. It’s honestly the first time in a very long time I can remember being ready for a ride to just be over. It’s not the Cannondale’s fault - she’s doing her best. Its not her, it’s me.

All of which meant that, when the tires arrived this past Wednesday I jumped at the chance to get them on the trike. It also means that Wednesday was when I was once again reminded of my skill level when it comes to working with my hands.

To begin with, I started out with the worse of the two tires, the right side, which had the tear and the bulge in it. In the intervening time between the end of my ride on Saturday and getting to the repair the tube - which had miraculously held while I was riding it - had given up the ghost. I could hardly blame it, so I thanked it for its service and pulled out my spare tubes.

I had three - two new ones, and one that I had patched last summer. But I had one flat, one intact tube on the other wheel, and two new tires. So all good, right?

As I set to getting the old tire off I started by setting the trike on its side and removing the brake caliper, figuring that was the first step towards pulling the wheel off the trike. However, after I did this I realized, looking at the trike sitting sideways, that I didn’t need to remove the wheel. So I stopped with that approach and decided to work with it _on_ the trike.

The old tire came off relatively easily and getting the inside bead set for the new one went by pretty easily as well. I put one of the new tubes in, and then went to getting the outside edge on to the wheel. And that - as always - is where the challenges began.

The recommendation is always that you set the tire in the wheel by hand. I understand the logic behind this and, while I’ve seen it done on multiple occasions by the skilled technicians at bike shops, I lack either the hand strength, the technique, or perhaps both, to do it myself.

So I employed tire levers. Well, if I’m being honest, I employed tire levers and a prodigious amount of swearing. Rosie - who is my frequent companion when I am working in the garage - may have learned a new term or two that evening. Fortunately, she generally keeps these things to herself.

With the levers and the swearing dutifully employed I managed to snap the tire on the wheel. I pulled out the pump and...

...you already know what’s coming right? The tube gave a disheartening hiss as the air came out of wherever I’d managed to pinch a hole with the tire lever.

There may have been more swearing at that point. I think somewhere in there Rosie actually covered her ears with her paws.

But I still had one new tube, and one patched tube to work with so, swearing aside, it was all fine. Just fine.

It becomes a bit of a blur after that, but suffice it to say that I ended up putting a hole in the second new tube, and somewhere in there I managed to snap a plastic tire lever in half (lots of swearing then, let me tell you) and had to default to steel levers and the patched tube to successfully replace that first tire.

That’s right - the first tire.

But there it was, now, mounted on the wheel and holding air - success! However, it was also the case that I’d mounted only one of two new tires, and I had no more spare tubes. Sure, the tube in the other tire was still intact, but given my track record on this task, I was not confident that I’d end up with a new tire on with an inflatable tube.

So I made an executive decision. The tire on the other wheel was worn, but not nearly as badly as the one I’d already replaced. The center was bald, but none of the cord or Kevlar was showing. So I decided to leave it, figuring it would be good for a couple of rides while I waited for more tubes to arrive.

I’m sure that’s the sort of decision that would make some people’s teeth itch, but I’d already been several days without a ride because the Expedition was out of commission and because the Cannondale and I are broke up. I’d reset the toe-in, and though it was an ugly solution, it would get be back on the road.

Itchy teeth or not, I’m pleased to say that this worked out just fine. I was able to get rides in on Thursday and Friday. And Saturday, the tubes arrived:

I wanted some insurance, and hopefully to have tubes left over to put in the pannier bags for another day. And now that the tubes were in, I went ahead and changed the other tire.

Astonishing to no one more than it was to me, I managed to get it in one - and that using metal tire levers. So now things are even again - new shoes on both fronts.

None of this is to say that the struggles will dissuade me. I realized a couple of years ago that, if I was going to keep increasing my riding time I was going to have to build my skills as a bike mechanic. Our nearest bike shop is twenty minutes away and, while they are always very helpful, they do not sell trikes. The nearest trike dealer - Meads Bike Shop - is also very helpful, but it’s an hour one way for me, and so not ideal for everyday problems. The reality is that rural cycling - like many other things rural - means learning to do for yourself.

Tired

I am running just a little shy of 1400 miles on the Expedition since I got it last July. I noticed, as I was extracting it from the mobile trike garage the past couple of rides, that the front tires were starting to look pretty worn.

(With Shelter in Place orders, the mobile trike garage doesn’t go much of anywhere lately, but I’ve found it’s easier to just leave the trike in the Subaru than to back the car out in order to get the trike down from its hooks. I’ve definitely been riding more than driving).

In fact, I’d been noticing the progressive loss of tread on the fronts for the past month or so, but I figured they still had some life in them. By yesterday, tho, it was starting to look pretty bad.

Still, I wanted to ride, and all a blown tire on a trike does usually is strand you - unless you are going very fast downhill there isn’t the risk of wipeout there is on an upright machine. Besides, right now both My Lovely Wife and my child are, like most of us, perpetually at home. A rescue mission would, instead of a hardship, likely seem a welcome opportunity for some variety .

So I rode.

I rode 16 miles out and back, give or take, and rolled back into the driveway without a hint of a problem. I did my usual tear down on the trike - take off the flag, remove the lights to put them on the charger, fold the headrest forward - and put the Expedition into the back of the Subaru. And then I did a tire inspection and found this:

So: It didn’t fail, but failure was imminent.

---

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

---

It was clear that I was going to have to get new tires. These are the original tires the Expedition came with - Schwalbe Marathon Racers 20x1.50 - and I’ve been pretty happy with them. My criteria for tires is not terribly strict, but I haven’t had a single flat (including, by some miracle, on this last ride) since I’ve gotten them, which wasn’t true on the Pocket with its Marathon Plus’s.

My localest bike shop (about 20 minutes away) doesn’t sell trikes, and so typically doesn’t carry tires or tubes in trike sizes, and they are currently open only by appointment. The closest shop that does carry trikes is an hour away.

So I went online.

A search on Amazon for these tires was... frustrating. Even with the full name of the product and size entered, it was difficult to find an item that was clearly the correct size (e.g. with too many different pieces of information in the description), and the search still returned multiple items that were not matches. Obviously you can return things if they aren’t right, but I really didn’t want to risk waiting through multiple purchase cycles to see if I had the right items.

So I went over to Utah Trikes and ordered them there. I could have tried cross shopping at other online bike shops - I’ve done so for other cycling items I’ve purchased to be sure - but I was A) already frustrated from trying to find things on Amazon; and 2) the information on the Utah Trikes page was extremely clear about what I was ordering; and besides: iii) they were cheaper than on Amazon even with having to pay shipping, so...

And so now I wait, Expedition grounded. I gave brief consideration this morning to applying duct tape across the bulging section - it’s what Red Green would do, after all, but I suspect I used up all of my good fortune on the last ride. The Norns have already smiled upon me, but they are fickle - no need to tempt them further.

It’s a bummer, of course, but I do have options. The Pocket is still here - it belongs to MLW now, but she might let me ride it if I ask nicely. However, I’d have to re-set the boom and re-size the chain to make that work. I also still have my Cannondale road bike always at the ready to ride if needed. I’ve actually gotten fairly good at re-setting sizes on the trikes with practice, so I’m confident that I could do that with the Pocket fairly easily, but the lazy guy in me ensures that I’ll go with the Cannondale first. All I have to do with that is take it down and pump up the tires.

Sometimes people think that they will gain a renewed fondness for a thing that they’ve stepped away from and are now returning to. I’ve been a victim of that impulse in the past, but I’ve been through this with the Cannondale since getting trikes - I already know it won’t happen.

Still, I guess I’ll struggle thru (I can just feel your - understandable - lack of pity for me). Now it’s time to ride... something.