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.

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.

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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.

Finishing February

There is just something about February.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rural Bike - Part Two - my Candidate

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

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

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

The Recumbent Trike

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Recumbent Trike with a Trailer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Long Distance in Comfort

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contending with the Weather

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

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

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

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

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

Stability

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

...And then: pain.

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

Carrying that Load

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

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

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

Speed

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

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

The Other Stuff

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

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

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

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

Disadvantages

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

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

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

Summing Up

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

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

Ok - time to ride...

Rural Bike Part 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well... no and yes.

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

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

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

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

(I love ya, Mom!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Setting Criteria

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

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

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

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

  • Some type of effective fender system.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok - time to ride...

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

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

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Trike Storage Revisited

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok - it’s time to ride... (my trike).

Cat(trike) Fight - Expedition vs. Pocket

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

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

Size

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speed

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

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

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

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

So what is the deal with speed? Well:

Yeah - The Expedition is faster.

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

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

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

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

The outcome: The Expedition is faster.

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

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

So yeah - faster.

Shifters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mirror Mounts

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

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

Neck Rest

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

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

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

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

Clipless Pedals and Shoes

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

They are... ok.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok - off the soapbox...

To Sum Up

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

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

Time to ride...

Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns

In my day-to-day life I think of myself as a person who is somewhat technically inclined. If you are having issues sorting out how to do something with your technology - your iPhone, your Mac, and yes, even (grudgingly) your Windows or Android device - odds are good that I can help you out with that. I’m even somewhat mechanically inclined, or at least I was in a past life. For much of my 20’s and early 30’s I did the lion’s share of maintenance on my own vehicles - oil changes, spark plugs, brakes - and only went in to the mechanic for more involved activities and repairs (Honda timing belts, for example, were beyond my ken).

Bicycles and other HPV’s are relatively simple machines. Yet despite my technical history, I am often surprised - and frequently stymied - by how little I actually know.

Some of this is simply due to experience. As a kid I learned to do things like raising and lowering my seat, and adjusting bent handlebars, both from necessity (the former due to growth, the latter typically due to misadventure). I got considerable practice with re-seating slipped chains as well. But when it came to other skills, like changing tires, and certainly when we move on to the more mechanically intricate components of a derailleur system, I confess to have been largely mystified.

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As a kid, issues with these components would simply have to wait until I could get my Dad to help. As an adult, returning to cycling after a hiatus borne by focus on work and schooling, I found that it was generally preferable to let the local bike shop handle the areas where my knowledge base and skills were lacking.

This worked out fine when I first started back riding. While I was enthusiastic and enjoyed it, in those early years of return my riding time and distances were relatively modest. My need for LBS intervention was largely limited to annual checkups and occasional rear wheel straightening on my relatively ancient Cannondale SR400.

However, a couple of related factors have caused me to have a change of perspective on this front. The second of those factors is the fact that my riding time and distances have increased considerably over the past two years. My records in Cyclemeter go back to 2011, and before 2017 my highest mileage year was 752.47. What’s more, that was in 2014, and my mileage dropped in 2015 and 2016 to 547.18 and 260.49, respectively.

Come 2017, however, my mileage increased - to 937.51, followed by another bump to 1372.14 miles in 2018. I’m on track to do a similar distance (and hopefully further) for 2019.

That increased distance is undeniably due to the first of the factors: In June of 2017 I got my recumbent trike - a 2012 Catrike Pocket. As I’ve detailed elsewhere here, while I’ve always enjoyed cycling, the recumbent trike really kicked that into high gear.

I’ve realized, though, that the trike does provide some interesting implications from a maintenance perspective. About a decade ago we made the call to move to a rural setting. This is a great thing when it comes to going riding - instead of piling things into the car and driving to a trail, most of the time I literally just head out of my driveway - it’s miles and miles of riding pleasure at my doorstep.

However, living in the boondocks also means that everything is far away. While I talk about my LBS, in reality the localest bike shop is a half-hour drive. And while they are great and always helpful, the Pocket is somewhat of a specialty item, and the nearest Catrike dealer is nearly an hour’s worth of travel time distant.

None of that is to complain - I knew what I was getting into when I moved out here. What it does, though, is help to refocus my attention on the need to learn some things about maintenance and repair. Realistically, now, if I can’t fix it myself it means that I can’t ride the trike, at least not until I can fit in a trip to the shop. It’s a different situation than back when I lived in a city with a bike shop nearby, and amplified a bit by the specialized nature of the trike.

(I do still have my Cannondale as a backup, but in general, I’d rather not take that option).

So - I’m learning. I’m quite certain I still have a ways to go. As I detailed here, a couple of weeks ago, I managed to successfully change a tube myself for the first time, along the side of the road. But I’ve now also had to change that tube twice more since, leaving me trying to figure out what the unknown unknowns are about the situation, and realizing how little I actually know about wheels and tires. With the help of some of the very friendly folks on the Facebook recumbent trike groups I’d gone through and done my due diligence in terms of inspecting the wheel and tire itself for debris. But I’ve now also realized that I didn’t ever know what rim tape was or what it was for, and it appears that mine is in need of replacement... (more on that in the near future).

Making that particular potential issue now a known unknown. And if that fixes the recurrent problem, it will move the the known category. If it doesn’t, well, then clearly there’s another unknown unknown...

Bottom line, however, I have to gain a wider base of knowledge and practice - remove the unknowns - if I want to continue to ride and ride further distances.

And I do.

Arizona Recollections

I use a journaling app called Day One, and it offers up an "On This Day" feature which shows you what you’ve written about on, well, this day, in the past. I sat down with it over coffee this morning and brought up a journal entry about biking in Arizona five years ago.

I wrote about that ride and posted it here back at the time. It starts out like this:

This was my view on my bike ride this morning.

I’d never been to Arizona before. In their younger years my child - LB - participated in competitive gymnastics, and one of the nice side effects of that was that we had sort of enforced family trips once or twice a competition season. I don’t think we would have been likely to travel there without this as a reason. That would have been unfortunate - it was truly beautiful - we spent time in Tonto National Forest and saw the cliff dwellings near Roosevelt Dam.

And while all of that was wonderful I, of course, also wanted to have the opportunity for bike ride while I was there. It just seemed silly to squander the opportunity, so I searched for a place that would rent me a bike for a short ride the morning ahead of our flight home. This was easier than you’d think - there were, in fact, several places in the Phoenix area that rented out bikes. I went with Arizona Outback Adventures (AOA).

I was a little concerned that any rental place would see me primarily as a pain in the ass. I mean here I was, rolling in to rent a bike for something like an hour. I had no biking gear - no shoes, no helmet - and I was not a local or routine traveler to the area, so I represented no likelihood of repeat business in any volume. But I wanted to ride.

My concerns were for naught. The folks at AOA were wonderful - polite, helpful, gave me everything I needed. I really felt like I was working with folks that understood that need for a riding fix before taking that trip home. Afterwards I signed up for their email alerts for cycling trips, and I’d love to get out on one with them. I can’t recommend them highly enough.

While I wrote about that for Applied Life back then, I sometimes include things in my journal that don’t make it into the posts. At the time my regular ride at home was my Cannondale, and this gave me the opportunity to experiment with multiple "new" (to me) features. From my journal:

This was also an opportunity to try out a modern carbon fibre road bike - something I've been interested in. The bike they gave me was a Specialized Roubaix Elite Apex. This was a comfortable bike, lightweight, with the more current click-shifter setup. They put on toe clips for me. It was a nice bike, and worked very well, the new shifters took a little getting used to - they are more precise - one click equals one gear - but it takes a second for it to respond, as opposed to the immediate response from the older, rotation style shifters. All in all, very nice.

This was my ride before we hit the road:

I was out for just shy of an hour, and logged about 15 miles, give or take. One of the nice things about Cyclemeter is that it makes it relatively easy to go back and take a look at adventures like these, and that Arizona ride is marked off in there under its own route:

In a way, this ride also saved me some money, because while I liked the Specialized, I didn’t fall in love:

Interesting to me was that it did not seem significantly nicer than my 1987 Cannondale. I liked it, to be sure, but not enough to, say, drop a couple thousand on it to trade up.

There was some unintentional foreshadowing there as well, because that statement was followed by this one:

This is a nice thing to learn, as it means I should wait until I can get something that offers a significantly different experience - here in thinking either mountain bike or tadpole trike (I so very much want a recumbent trike... )

Still, I really enjoyed that ride, and I found Scottsdale to be quite accommodating:

I asked about the traffic - many of the lanes were on 4-lane roadways. The folks at the shop assured me that Scottsdale is a "pretty bike friendly town". This was absolutely the case - all traffic treated me as if I was supposed to be on the road with them, with no horns, no angry passers-by. Probably my favorite example of this attitude was from the roadside maintenance crew. Two gentlemen were out there alongside the road, next to the bike lane, running weed whackers. Each of them stopped as I rode by to keep from hitting me with debris.

I really appreciated the cycle-friendliness of the area, as well as the sights. I also missed the weather back home, but I was considering the trade-offs:

All that, and the view! I wouldn't move to Arizona just for the weather - I mostly enjoy winter in Illinois. But for that sort of biking environment... Well, that might be something to consider.

As one might expect, the Arizona weather from five years ago contrasts considerably with the Illinois weather of today. I don’t have the exact temperatures from that day, but suffice to say I was riding in short sleeves. And this morning?:

None of which is to say that I’m pining for Arizona. Even as I’m writing this and reminiscing my winter riding gear is going through the wash, getting ready for today’s Sunday ride.

...But short sleeves in January... ?

Recumbent Trikes - Growing In Popularity?

MLW and I were chatting a bit the other day about recumbent trikes (what do you talk about at home with your spouse?), and she mentioned that they seem to be becoming more popular.

I wasn’t sure whether that was a real thing, or just a household effect of having gotten a trike myself. So I did some brief internet research, and the proliferation of companies that make recumbent trikes does seem to be something of a more recent phenomenon.

I don’t remember exactly when I first heard about recumbent trikes, but it was at some point in the early to mid-1990’s, I believe. I’d come across an article about a human-powered airplane flight looking to break a previous record. I think it was The Raven Project, which got press in 1996, it fits time-wise; but I’m linking here to a Chicago Tribune article about it without a picture because it’s website seems to have become some sort of soccer fan-site (?).

At any rate, that article led me to the International Human Powered Vehicle Association (IHPVA) site, which then led me to recumbent trikes. At the time the only brand I recall seeing was Greenspeed. I couldn't speak to model names at that point, just that they looked exotic and very cool; and they seemed expensive and hard to find here in the States. And I wanted one.

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In fact, when I found my Catrike Pocket on eBay it was literally the first I’d ever heard of Catrike. I’d been searching for a new bike of some type and, after being outbid on a couple of Trek road bikes it occurred to me that, if I was looking for a new machine, maybe now was the time to find a trike. Once I came across the Pocket I did a crash course of research on the brand. I knew next to nothing about recumbent trikes, but what I saw about Catrike spoke to the road cyclist in me - aluminum frame, relatively lightweight (about 11lbs heavier than my Cannondale), etc. - so the rest was history.

But looking back on that, when MLW mentioned them become more popular, it made me wonder where all of these trike companies were back in the mid-90’s when I first looked. So I did a brief bit of homework just checking the About and/or Wikipedia entries for the companies, and this is what I found about when they were founded:

• Catrike - 2000
• TerraTrike - 1996
• HP Velotechnik) - 1993
• ICE Trikes - 1999
• Hase - 1994
• GreenSpeed - 1990

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And a couple of disclaimers about the list:

• I know SunSeeker makes trikes as well - I didn’t include them on the list because I couldn’t easily find a founding date for them.
• The ICE Website indicates that they took over a company called Trice, and I know some of their earlier models carried this name, but it was hard to find info on Trice online.

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So - given when I started looking, it makes sense that I’d only have come across GreenSpeed - the others hadn’t started yet, or were just beginning. But the fact that there are now multiple companies producing trikes, and that the youngest of them has been in operation for nearly 20 years, does suggest increasing popularity.

To me that’s encouraging. While I certainly don’t mind being outside the typical, it’s great to see this thing I enjoy as a growing market, with active development and experimentation. This suggests that we can expect an ongoing availability and progression of trikes in the future.

2018 Cycling Year in Review

It’s our tendency right about this time of year to look back and consider what the past 12 months have looked like. Now, to be clear, this is a review of my year in cycling, not, say, the industry or the race scene, or what have you. It is most certainly not a review of your year in cycling (and how creepy would that be if it were?).

It is always important, I believe, to remember to compare oneself to oneself, not to others. I periodically have to remind myself of this, particularly when undertaking something like this. And with that in mind, with some Decemberists playing in my headphones, and with the help of Cyclemeter, I took a look at the data:

Distance

Perhaps the simplest, but most telling, data point to look at is distance as compared to previous years. For better or worse, for this year I set myself a personal goal to get to 1000 miles. This seemed reasonable, given that my distance for 2017 was 937.51 miles - I knew I wanted to increase my riding time overall for 2018, and I wanted a distance that would represent improvement over the year prior year, but was attainable. And I suppose I should note that, while the goal represented only 62 or so additional miles over the year prior, 20 17’s mileage reflected my greatest distance since I started keeping track. Prior to that my best year - 2014 - was 752.47 miles.

To make a long story short, I’m pleased to say I met the goal. Mileage for 2018 as of this writing sits at 1358.29 miles.

I say "as of this writing" because it’s the 30th of December, and I’ll take at least one more ride before the end of the year (today), two if I can squeeze them in. There’s a part of me that would like to bring the number up to an even 1400 (I also like things to be at right angles on my desk - don’t judge me...), but while that’s not impossible, it would be pretty challenging for me - my average distance per ride for the year is just under 13 miles.

So - this year compares favorably to prior years. I first started using Cyclemeter back in 2011, with the first entry appearing on July 30th of that year. Years across that time are shown in the graph below:

Obviously there’s a pretty sharp increase in 2017 that continues into 2018. This may be due, in part, to a change in activity focus. Back in 2014 my child and I started taking martial arts - specifically Tae Kwon Do - together. This was a new activity for LB and a return for me, and I suspect that’s the reason the years subsequent to 2014 see a drop off in riding time (time in class, at tournaments, etc). As LB moved in to high school, however, their interest (understandably) waned, and I made the difficult decision this year to stop going and focus more on riding. I want to note, also, that this is due primarily to convenience - the school we attended was an hour away (this made sense with respect to my work activities) but is otherwise a great place with wonderful instructors. But that hour drive contrasts with the fact that I can ride right out of my driveway at home.

Still, while that definitely played a role, more of it has to do with what I was riding...

Machines

Breaking down the riding distances narrows down when the increase in riding really took place:

Looking at things this way shows a pretty significant uptick in riding distance back in June of 2017. There’s one particular event that occurred in that month that speaks to why...

I got my Catrike Pocket in early June of 2017, and took my first documented ride on June 4th. I say "documented" because, of course I had to ride it around the yard a bit when I first got it home. But the 4th was the first I’d gotten it fully up and running with Cyclemeter tracking it.

My primary machine prior to getting the Pocket - which I still have and ride - was a 1987 Cannondale SR400. It’s a lightweight, 12-speed aluminum road bike. It’s a machine that I have professed my love for many times over the years. It’s elegant and simple and visually (to me) always looks like it’s ready to move.

I’ve said here that this is a bike that I still have and ride, and this is true. But it’s less true than I would have thought. If you’d asked me to estimate how often I’ve ridden the Cannondale this year, I’d have estimated it at a half-dozen or so times.

It’s once. Exactly one time.

I took out the Cannondale last on October 14th, for a ride into town to take a picture of a historic marker and to pick up something from the grocery store. And I took it explicitly because the Catrike was in the shop getting new tires put on. What’s more, looking back thru the data, the last prior ride was October 10th, 2017. I had literally not ridden it for over a year before that outing.

I actually rode rental bikes more frequently in 2018 than I did my Cannondale. Not much more (three outings), but more. The only more neglected machine was MLW’s Schwinn, which I would occasionally take out for snow or gravel, but which hasn’t come off the garage hooks since December of last year (and that only because I wanted to compare it to the Pocket in the snow).

I can’t really decide whether I should feel bad about any of that or not. What is clear, however, is that the recumbent trike has had a huge effect on the amount of riding I’m doing, as well as what it looks like. I like to recline.

Trips

While, as I noted above, most of my rides this year start and end at my driveway (this is an advantage to living out in the hinterlands), I did manage to get out and see some new things. Mostly this involved exploring new trails and routes. Probably my two favorites were the Illinois & Michigan Canal and the Hennepin Canal paths. While they are both canal paths, the experience between them is quite different, with the I&M Canal path offering access to multiple communities along the way, and Hennepin offering mostly nature and solitude.

Occasionally traveling offers opportunities to explore less familiar areas, and a trip along the Rend Lake bike path did just that for me, as did a longer ride along the Military Ridge Trail last month.

For that last trip I also learned a thing or two about transporting my trike on the outside of my vehicle. ...and it’s clear I have a bit more to learn on that front. Or perhaps I just can’t ever take more than one person with me...

I also rode in the Farmondo again this year, a group cycling event put on by Tempo Velo cycling club and sponsored by Mead’s Bike Shop. For the second consecutive year I was the only person on a recumbent trike in the event. That it’s the only group event on my roster for the past two years says much more about my temperament than the event, which is actually well organized and a lot of fun. And while it’s not technically a competition, the experience provided (for me) a handy reminder about who it is I should compare myself to (see above).

Next Year?

So where does that leave things for next year? Broadly, that’s fairly simple. I’d like to ride more and further. 1500 miles seems like a safe goal, and that’s probably what I’ll set for the year.

I think I’d also like to find more trail routes and try them out. This is often a little more challenging for me simply because, like martial arts, driving to a trail or path competes with riding right out of the driveway. But it does offer the opportunity to see new and different places, and (at times) to chronicle them here.

Along those lines, I think I’d like to travel further along both the I&M and Hennepin Canal trails. The notion of riding the I&M to Ottawa and stopping in at the tap room at Tangled Roots or getting some sushi at BASH is appealing (though riding back might be more challenging afterward. If the opportunity presents I’d love to get MLW a trike so she can join me for those types of trips.

The Hennepin Canal route has a visitor center that I stopped a few miles short of and would like to see. It also has campgrounds, which suggests the opportunity to bike pack and camp. This is a notion that I find romantically attractive, though might struggle to fit in to my actual schedule. We’ll see what time allows.

Comparisons...

A couple of weeks ago I was pulling my Catrike Pocket out of the back of my car, and noticed something on one of the front tires - a bit of greenish coloring. I rolled it into the garage to get a closer look. At first I thought it was something that had gotten on to the tire from the road. As I looked closer, however, it became clear that it was the layer under the black rubber peeking through. A spin of the wheel found that it was showing in spots all the way around.

I got my Pocket in June of 2017 - about 19 months ago. It’s a 2012 model that I found on eBay. Technically it’s used, of course, but the person I’d bought it from had been given it by someone else who hadn’t ridden it, and he got it for his wife who also decided she didn’t want to ride it. The tires on the trike still had the little nubs around the outside. My little Pocket had seen very little action.

Since then, according to Cyclemeter, I’ve ridden 1861.02 miles on the Pocket. This may seem like a lot, or not that much, depending upon the circles you travel in - to avid, regular cyclists this type of distance in 19 months is no big deal. But it’s important to compare yourself to yourself, and for me last year was my biggest mileage year ever up to that point; and this year I’ve already ridden further. This owes in no small amount to my trike - I love riding this thing.

So: it makes some sense that it would be time for new tires. I took the trike in to the always helpful folks at Meads Bike Shop in Sterling to perform the feat (a bike mechanic I am not). Because the tires needed to be ordered it was going to take a couple of days. (I did actually take a couple of rides on the worn tire, but I figured I was really increasing my odds of having to call for a pickup each successive time).

This meant, when it came time for last week’s Sunday ride, I had no trike. I do, however, have my road bike - it’s a 1987 Cannondale SR400 that I’ve had for years, and was my primary ride until I got the trike. Here she is:

I looked back in Cyclemeter later and realized that it had been over a year since I’d ridden the Cannondale. This week’s Sunday ride was on October 14th, and my prior ride on this bike was October 10th, 2017. The ride prior to that had been on June 27th and, in both cases it was, then as now, because I’d had the trike in the shop.

Now, to be clear, I didn’t get the Catrike because I was unhappy with my Cannondale. Quite the contrary, I’ve always been very fond of it. It’s lightweight, it has an elegant simplicity, and even with only the 12 gears it’s age allows it, it is a fast, capable machine. And I love the clean, simple lines of its design. Heaven help me, I even kind of like the 1980’s pink neon lettering.

I didn’t get the Catrike because I was unhappy with my bike. I got it because I think recumbent trikes are cool. I mean really cool. As I’ve said here before, I’ve wanted one pretty much since the day I realized they existed.

That said, I figured it would be good to get the old girl out and take her for a spin. Of course, there’s been nothing to stop me from doing that over the past year - she’s always waiting, patiently, there in the garage. But still...

I pumped up the tires (it had been a year, after all), put some oil on the chain, and rolled her out down the driveway. The Cannondale rode perfectly, as if no time had passed. But for me, there were several things I noticed on this ride that I likely wouldn't have a year and a half ago:

• Wind noise. It was immediately clear to me that this was going to be a louder ride than usual due to the wind in my ears. We live in out on the Illinois prairie, in a wind farm, so this is always a factor, but it was so much more noticeable here.
• Speed - I was still as fast, or perhaps a bit faster, as on the trike. This isn’t necessarily surprising - the Cannondale is lighter and has larger wheels than the Pocket, and my speeds on it are historically higher (though I’ve been getting closer).
• Comfort - My tuchus was sore well before I reached the end of my 12-ish mile ride (perhaps a loss of callous over time?). And I do not miss the riding position - cranked over and tilting your neck up to see the road ahead is not a bonus.

I had noticed the wind issue from a different perspective last winter when I took my wife’s mountain bike out for a comparative ride. In that case, being up in the wind was noticeable because of how much colder it was. Out here on the prairie, lower is definitely better when it comes to dealing with that wind.

Speed, as I noted, was not an unexpected difference. Here, I suppose, what’s nice to see is that a year away on a different type of machine hasn’t really affected my ability to ride the Cannondale - I suppose it’s true that you never forget how. But I’ve gotten faster on the Pocket since I got it, and it makes me wonder how much closer I’d be with a more comparable machine. Would an Expedition or a 700, with their larger rear wheels, be more comparable machines? (This also leads me to wonder what the valid comparisons are between different bikes and trikes - a question we certainly won’t answer here today...).

The comfort issue is also unsurprising, I suppose. One is actively choosing to make a trade-off when one chooses to ride a road bike. And there will undoubtedly be people out there who suggest that I’d be more comfortable on my Cannondale if I got a fitting for it. For them, let me say here: this is possibly true. Did I mention that I love my Catrike, and that it wasn’t for reasons of comfort that I bought it? A fitting on my road bike isn’t going to get it back off the hooks any more frequently.

The Pocket is back now, fully shod with new shoes on all three wheels. The Cannondale is back in the garage. It is a fine machine, and it did a wonderful job of standing in when needed. But I’m afraid it’s going to remain on the backup bench.