Recumbent Trikes

Garmin Varia RTL515 - Mounting and Using on a Recumbent Trike / August 14, 2022 by Erin Wade

Garmin offers a small group of radar products under the name Varia for cycling that are designed to detect approaching vehicles from behind. These range from the simple Varia RVR315, which is just a radar sensor, to the RTL 515, which adds a rear taillight along with the radar sensor, and then to the RCT 715, which has the light and a camera to record road incidents.

I’ve been interested in this product line since the original device - the RVR315 - first came out. The overwhelming majority of my riding is done on rural roadways here in northern Illinois, so I routinely share the road with a variety of vehicles - from motorcycles and tractors to 18-wheel grain trucks and combines. While people out here are generally polite and give room when they pass, I still spend a lot of time watching my mirrors. Politeness aside, it pays to know when something is coming up behind you.

Having a good set of mirrors goes a long way towards helping with this. Still, with the mirrors and vigilance, there are still those rare occasions where I find myself being startled by a vehicle as it passes me. This is what drove that interest in the Varia.

So I ordered one up this spring - I went with the middle ground and got the RTL 515, with the light but with no camera - and I was excited to start using it. Unfortunately, one of the immediate challenges was sorting out how to mount it on my Catrike Expedition.

On their website, Garmin says:

It’s small, it’s easy to mount, and it works with just about any bike.

It is built to use Garmin’s specific quarter-turn mounting system, which in and of itself is a pretty cool setup. But what comes in the box is an seat-post mount with an array of adapters for different sizes of seat post:

Of course, recumbent trikes don’t have seat posts. So - When Garmin says “just about any bike”, it would appear recumbent trikes aren’t in that immediate mix.

So I set about sorting out how to get the mounts to work for my trike. And there are some additional requirements for the device that enter into the process. It is designed to be mounted vertically - the lengthwise aspect going up and down - and perpendicular to the road. And it is supposed to be between 250mm and 1200mm (9.84” to 47.24”) above the ground.

Oh - and also - buried in the product safety materials is an indication that it should be operated at least 5cm (2”) away from your body.

Long story short, there are no surfaces on my Expedition that will work with the included mounts and still meet these requirements. The rear frame arms coming down to hold the rear wheels are at too steep an angle to allow you to mount the Varia there, and my pannier bags would have been in the way of it anyway. Mounting it to either my PowerOn Cycling headrest (where I have another light mounted) or the rear rack would have been feasible, but the seat post mounts would have had to have gone on sideways, which would have mounted the unit sideways as well - horizontally rather than vertically.

My initial approach was to dig into my batch of bike accessories and to repurpose an accessory mount that I had previously used on my Catrike Pocket. On the Pocket I’d attached it to the accessory mount to get my front light a little higher, and leave room for my phone mount. Here, however, I figured I could use it to approximate a seat post off the back of the rear rack. It took some finagling, but I was actually pretty pleased with the results:

I liked that it got it all the way to the back of the trike - well beyond that 5 cm threshold, and much further back than it would have been on an upright bike. And I liked that the articulated arm allowed me to center it over the rear wheel…

But the proof, as they say, is in the pudding (tho I don’t know why they would put it there - isn’t that kind of messy?). In practice, what I found was that bumps and vibrations would rotate the Varia around the post, causing it to be “looking” off to one side or the other. Sometimes I’d notice this at breaks in riding, but at other times I caught it because it was alerting to things that were not directly behind me, while missing approaching cars.

I did try using tighter rubber bands with it, but the issue persisted. I also found a couple of adhesive items to stick to the tube alongside the mount, but it managed to move around them as well. It just wasn’t working.

So it was off to YouTube to search for solutions - I figured someone else might have come across this issue. I… didn’t find much, initially. But I did find Monty at Sportive Cyclist with this video that described how to mount it to the flap on a cargo bag. I don’t have the seat bag he shows in the video, but my panniers do have similar flaps at the back.

They are lower than I’d like, but do sit above the lower limit for the device. I set that aside as a fallback while it tried the other solutions I described above.

When they failed, I came back to Monty’s video, watched it again, and went out to try it on my panniers. The fabric flaps on my panniers are horizontal to the ground, as is the one in the video, but try as I might - and this at various times involved pliers and invariably a fair amount of swearing - I could not find any way to get the seat post mount to attach for a vertical orientation with the rubber bands going thru the flap.

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So I went back and watched the video again. Looking closely this time at the quarter-turn mount he attached to the bag, what became clear is that it wasn’t the seat post mount.

Now, I found Monty to be delightful in this video, but at no point did he mention that the mount he was using was not the one that comes with the Varia (I watched it again as part of writing this to make sure and nope - it’s not in there). It is possible, I suppose, that people who use a lot of Garmin products just have these other types of mounts laying about. The Varia is the first and only Garmin product I’ve ever owned, so this was non-obvious to me.

First I looked thru the box to make sure they did not include this mount with the device, and it was not to be found. So it was off to Amazon where, sure enough, they were readily available under the name Garmin Bike Mount, Quick Release, Quarter Turn.

Garmin Bike Mount, Quick Release, Quarter Turn

Once they came in and I looked at them I realized that they were much more flexible than the seat post mount, and that I had options now besides the very low-sitting flaps on the back of the pannier. And, in fact, I was able to set the light on my rack in a similar position to what I’d gotten with the accessory mount:

It’s not centered over the rear wheel, so I lose some of that symmetry, but sitting to the left side of the trike actually puts it a tiny bit further out into the lane of travel.

I like this position because it puts it up at a reasonable height for the radar to pick up oncoming vehicles, and to make the light visible. And it actually puts it nearly an entire wheel further back on the trike than it would be on a diamond frame’s seat post so, hypothetically speaking, I should be getting alerts a little sooner than the upright riders are. The package from Amazon had two mounts, so I can easily transfer the Varia to my Pocket when I’m using that, and I can still use the seat post mount for my Cannondale if I ever ride it again (my poor, neglected Cannondale).

Now, this is a popular product, so there are a ton of reviews out there explaining how it works and so on, so I won’t trouble you with a lot of detail on that here. But I can offer a few tidbits on how it works for me in my usage.

First - as I said, I own no other Garmin products. I use Cyclemeter on my iPhone as a bike computer. For this setup there is a Garmin app that you must use to pair to the Varia via Bluetooth, and if you use the app it will give you visual alerts in addition to audio alerts for oncoming traffic. Unfortunately, to see those alerts you must have the Garmin app active on the screen, which precludes seeing the information on Cyclemeter. There are some apps that work with the Garmin - Ride with GPS among them - and add the visual alerts in those apps. Cyclemeter does not offer integration with it at this time.

However, once you open the app to connect the phone to the Varia, the app continues to run in the background and give audible alerts. I find this works very well for me, because the audio alert automatically cues me to check my mirrors. This is going to offer more real-world information than looking at the phone in that moment. And I generally ride with one earbud in (right ear, away from traffic), so the audio alerts are loud and clear for me.

In terms of protection, I find that the majority of the time I see the vehicles in my mirrors before the Varia detects them. This is due both to a long-developed habit of frequently looking in the mirrors, and abetted by living in the relatively flat territory of Illinois - there aren’t a ton of hills to block the view. But it has largely eliminated any moments of being surprised as I’m being passed, and the device has a separate auditory alert for vehicles which are approaching very quickly, which is a nice cue as well.

So - it works just about perfectly for my application. I did have it in place - albeit on the accessory mount that I later replaced - during my Hennepin Canal Trail ride. I didn’t really use it for the ride out and home, which was virtually entirely on the trail. But for the second part of day two I spent a fair amount of time on unfamiliar, heavily traveled roadways. In areas with a medium level of traffic it worked fairly well, but on busy roads it essentially alerted all the time. In that situation the light flashing on it was probably a benefit, but the alerts were not. But then again, in that sort of a scenario you are watching your mirrors the entire time as well (and trying to get out of the situation as soon as possible).

All-in-all, it works well. It can be mounted on a recumbent trike, and arguably further back, extended the radar range further behind the machine. But for most trikes you are probably going to need to order the additional mounts as well. They aren’t terribly expensive - less than $10 before tax - but for the price of these devices, I frankly think Garmin should include one or two of them in with the box along with the seat post mounts. But now at least I have a way to use it on all our rides - even the one I don’t ride any more.

Hennepin Canal Trail East to West and Back Again - Day Two, Part One / July 10, 2022 by Erin Wade

The Idea: Recapitulate the original purpose of the Hennepin Canal - connecting the Illinois River to the Mississippi at the Quad Cities - by riding it from its eastern end in Bureau Junction to where it empties into the Rock River at the western end at Timbrook Field in East Moline, and continue on from there to the Mississippi River and across into Iowa. And then, of course, turn around and reverse the trip back to Bureau Junction.

6/24/2022 - Geneseo Campground to canal end at Timbrook Field in East Moline IL - 13 Miles

I woke the morning of day two surprisingly well rested. It’s been years since I’ve actually been camping, so I was a little concerned that I might find that sleeping in a tent was no longer something that worked for my middle-aged body. But the combination of the shower the night before, and liberal application of ibuprofen seems to have done the trick.

I started the day with Biscuits and Gravy by Peak Refuel, paired with a large mug of French Press.

As with the Beef Pasta Marinara I’d had the night before, it was excellent. After years of picking charcoal and grit out of campfire-prepared bacon and eggs, the freeze-dried foods seem like quite a luxury.

The Campground

It just so happened that I had planned my ride over the same weekend that a vintage camper group had reserved space at the campground. I’d been made aware of this when I checked in the night before, but I’d rolled in later than I’d hoped, so my focus was on getting cleaned up and getting my campsite up for the evening. But the morning of the second day I took a look around on my way to and from the bathroom. There were an array of vintage campers - the Aerostreams and similar that you’d expect…

…to these massive trailers…

…and a couple of folks really threw themselves into the theme, adding vintage tow vehicles to the mix as well:

Old Trucks - tho I’m almost old enough myself not to think of that Ford as “old’…

On the Trail

I managed to get everything put together and get out on the trail by about 9:30 in the morning. The entrance to the trail is literally just off the main drive into the campground, which made it very convenient. The trike was a bit lighter for this segment - I left the tent, sleeping bag, and inflatable pad behind at the campsite - and I could feel the difference. This had been part of the plan, since day two was the longest distance of the three. All of which meant things were moving a little faster as I rolled out onto the asphalt of the trail outside the campground.

I knew that I was moving towards a more populated area of the canal trail. It’s not urban, per se - I don’t think you can use that term to apply to any part of the trail. But as you move westward from Geneseo you see houses, side by side, on the opposite side of the canal, and you get less of a sense of isolation.

Which is why I was a little surprised when, a half-hour after leaving the campground, I came across this:

You could call it gravel, I suppose - there are stones on the path - but it would be a generous description. But while it was an unexpected surface - and maybe, given the rest of the Canal Trail, it shouldn't have been that surprising - it was a fair trade-off for the view:

The purple coneflowers give the impression that there has been an active effort to put in native prairie plants in this area. It was definitely making the pollinators happy, but for some reason I wasn’t able to convince any of them to stay still long enough to pose for a portrait.

A few miles after the prairie plot, however, the “gravel” gives way to relatively well maintained asphalt. And, in fact, from that point westward, solid surfaces are the rule - either asphalt or concrete, depending upon where you are at.

As this starts, the trail also starts to arc in a northwesterly direction, bringing you up towards, and eventually across the Green River:

This is actually the second of two meeting points between the Hennepin Canal and the Green River. The first is a little more than 28 miles to the East, where the Hennepin’s feeder canal is carried over the Green River via a massive cement aqueduct. I was at that spot a few years ago - it’s something to see, with one body of water essentially floating overtop another. It is a decidedly unnatural thing. Unfortunately, the Aqueduct at this point is lost to time, replaced by a piping system that runs under the river to maintain the flow of the canal.

As far as being unnatural goes, this is a feature that the Canal and the Green River have in common. The Green River is largely a made made waterway itself, coming to life around the turning of the 19th century as part of a project to drain the former Inlet Swamp almost sixty miles to the east of this point. This project was undertaken to gain additional usable farmland, and, astonishingly enough, even back in the late 1800’s there was debate over whether the swamp should be maintained as a recreational wetland instead. I’m a little reluctant to admit that I have an ancestor - one Benjamin Franklin (yes) Johnson - who was, at one time, the commissioner of the Inlet Swamp Drainage District.

…So I guess it’s easy enough to determine where the family fell in the recreational wetland vs farmland debate.

But all that being the case, there are still wetland areas in the region, as is ably demonstrated a short distance further down the trail:

And in this area, as well as in others along the way, the canal has also taken a turn towards something more along the lines of a wetland:

But not long after this point things get - and remain - decidedly more civilized:

As I worked my way towards the end of the trail I was definitely in “town”, with settlement all around me. And not far from the end I encountered this:

It says that this is the finish line, but I was pretty sure that didn’t apply to me. I had places to be at the time, but I looked it up later on. The Hennepin Hundred is “Illinois’ only point-to-point, all-trail ultramarathon”.

I didn’t know this was even a thing, but that’s not surprising. I love cycling, but I’d sooner have my eyes gouged out with hot pokers than go for a jog. The event doesn’t occur until October, which is fortunate for me - if I’d selected an autumn date for this ride I might have ended up pedaling along with a pack of runners.

It was shortly after that sign that I came across the only underpass on the trip that I wasn’t willing to brave:

All of them have their own idiosyncrasies - uneven floors, sometimes a bit muddy at the start and end, a puddle right in the middle where it’s too dark to see - but this looked a little more… damp than I wanted to contend with. I rode up over the top.

It was a short distance from that point to the end of the canal trail. The trail itself signals that you have no choice but to turn around:

There is one final lock at the end of the canal - Lock 29 (you just know that somewhere in the mix there had to be that one guy who was just looking for a way to add one more lock to the system to get a round number at the end…):

And from here, the canal empties into the Rock River:

At this point I wanted to be sure I took my lesson from Day One. I stopped, sat down on a bench, ate an apple, relaxed, and enjoyed the location, which included the rushing water from one last man-made waterfall:

And I contemplated moving across to the other side of the lock - which the map indicates is the trailhead. But the bridge across the canal had other ideas…

I can sort of imagine the discussion that led up to the presence of this bridge:

Bob: “Uh, Bill, the plan says that we need a bridge across Lock 29.”

Bill: “We’ve got about 50 feet of metal left, and maybe five bucks worth of scrap lumber. Will that do?”

Bob: “Its good enough for government work!”

I would hear my Dad say that last phrase often when I was a kid, usually at the point where he had decided he’d worked long enough on something that might not be a finished as it could be. It was only later in life - when I see a huge sign on the highway that says “bump”, or a bridge like this, that I fully appreciated what he meant.

The completist in me briefly considered carrying the trike across, but the realist immediately imagined dropping it into the canal and told the completist to shut his pie hole.

From this point the Rock River follows a somewhat winding course for another 13 miles before it empties into the Mississippi. When I had started thinking through this ride, my initial idea was to follow the Rock from that point, fully recapitulating the course from the Illinois to the Mississippi. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to make that work that looked at all attractive from a riding perspective. While there are streets that get you there, large portions of the roadways looked to be major highways or at least heavily traveled, and in commercial areas. So I laid out a different path to get to the mighty Mississippi.

Once I’d had my fill of fruit, and I was rested and relaxed, I headed out to reach - and cross - the Mississippi.

Hennepin Canal Trip - Working Thru the Checklist / June 12, 2022 by Erin Wade

I’m now a little less than two weeks out from my start-to-finish and back trip along the Hennepin Canal Trail. Given that, I’m making preparations and reviewing my checklist to make sure I have everything put together.

In many ways this has been an adventure in discovering the world of products designed for lightweight, outdoors travel. As a younger person I went camping periodically and I still have a fair amount of equipment from that era. However, pretty much all of it assumed that one was going to be piloting some sort of automobile either directly up to the campsite, or at least very close to it. I love my old green Coleman camp stove, but lightweight it is not.

Several weeks ago I ordered a lightweight tent and air mattress, and I already had a sleeping bag that I’d purchased for car camping at the Hilly Hundred last year. So I’m good in that department, but I still need to get practice setting it up and taking it down so I’m not learning that in the moment. I’ll plan to do that over the next few evenings.

When discussing what to do about food with My Lovely Wife she first suggested looking into whether MRE’s are something that can be ordered from Amazon.

It turns out that they can, but that search also opened the door to freeze-dried meals designed for backpacking (and hence, suitable for trikepacking). There are a variety of these available, and with no experience with them I decided to order one and give it a try. I went with Peak Refuel - they have good reviews on Amazon - and specifically tried the breakfast scramble. It was easy to make - just add the specified amount of boiling water, stir, and wait - and surprisingly good. I was a little afraid it would suffer from the Turkey Bacon Problem, but I was happy to be proven wrong. I suppose this is due, in part, to the fact that it is made of the real, expected ingredients.

Obviously I am not just going to eat breakfast skillet for every meal, so I ordered up a batch of these to cover breakfast and supper:

It would have been rather costly to try each of these in advance, so I picked some things I was pretty sure I would like with the hope that the breakfast skillet meal is a fair representation of the overall product. We shall see.

For lunch on day one and three I’m planning on bringing along granola bars and/or trail mix. This has been my strategy for longer day rides and it’s worked well for me. Lunch on day two will be at a restaurant in the Quad Cities. I haven’t picked one yet, but I’m planning on eating somewhere along the Mississippi. And I may just leave that up to spontaneity and serendipity. Tho, honestly, that is not my way, so I may break down and plan something…

To prepare those freeze dried meals, and more importantly, to be able to make coffee on my ride, I also need to be able to heat up some water. As mentioned before, it was clear my old Coleman camp stove was not going to do. There are a number of single-burner camp stoves that incorporate the fuel tank into the stand. I landed on the Jetboil Flash.

There’s a lot to like about this product for trikepacking. In addition to being lightweight, it’s relatively small, and entirely self-contained when it is packed. Literally everything you need fits inside it:

As the name implies, it heats water to boiling very quickly. I should be able to get my breakfast started and then heat up a second pot for coffee well before the food is ready to eat. It has a couple of other neat features as well. The lid is also a drink cover - you could make soup in it, for example, and simply drink it out of the Jetboil pot. The protective plastic cover on the bottom is also a measuring cup and can be used as a bowl. And there is also this:

The side changes color as it heats up as a temperature indicator. It’s clearly a thoughtful design, and it seems sturdy. We’ll see how it stands up on the ride, but I’m optimistic based on my experience with it so far.

I do have a handful of remaining items to obtain. This morning I ordered a first aid kit and a fresh batch of tube patches. Obviously I hope not to need either, but I can just about guarantee that I will need them if I don’t have them.

I’ve debated about ordering a solar panel for charging battery packs. It’s on my list, but I have three or four battery packs I can bring along, and my camping site is supposed to have electric access, so it may not be necessary.

I also need to sort out how much water to carry. I should be able to get water at the campsite in the afternoon/evening of day one and two, and there will be spots to buy it during the day on day two. That would suggest I’ll be fine if I bring along enough to cover the ride in on day one, and fill those bottles again for the ride out on day three.

I am getting a little concerned that my side cargo bags - the Radical Design Banana Racers that I ordered - may not come in on time for the ride. They were supposed to come in the last week of May, but when I checked on it earlier this week I was told that it was still in transit from The Netherlands. If they are not in by the end of this week I’ll have to pivot - either use the backpacks stacked up like I tried earlier, or maybe break down and get the bags in a non-orange color (the horror!).

And finally, this weekend and next I’ll be working in extended rides - in the 40-50 mile range - to build up conditioning a bit for the trip. And now it’s time to check that item off my list for today…

Tagvault: Bike by Elevation Lab / May 22, 2022 by Erin Wade

As I’ve been preparing for my upcoming Hennepin Canal Trip, one of the things that has been on my mind is security for my Catrike Expedition. With a few exceptions, most of my riding takes place starting and ending from my driveway. Still, when I do have the opportunity to use my trike as transport and I have a situation where the trike is going to be out of my eyesight, I always lock it up. But those situations are few and far between, and they are situations where the Expedition is only out of view for a few minutes.

For my upcoming trip, however, I’ll have a couple of nights where I’ll be asleep with the trike in a more or less public view, and I’m hoping for at least an opportunity to stop somewhere in the Quad Cities to get some lunch. I’ll lock it up, of course, but these situations made me start thinking about a means to find my machine if it were to “walk off” on its own.

I’m largely an Apple guy when it comes to technological solutions, so when the AirTags came out it was a natural fit for this type of need. Not only does the AirTag allow you to track a device that is missing, but it also has a “Notify When Left Behind” feature. This gives an alert on the phone if you are moving away from an item that is expected to be within a certain proximity of yourself. Or - more importantly - if that item is moving away from you. This feature has saved my AirPods Pro from disappearing on more than one occasion, and you can picture the application here - you’ll be notified if your machine is unexpectedly moving away from you.

The challenge was finding a way to hide or attach the AirTag to the trike without it being easily found and removed.

Enter the TagVault: Bike by Elevation Lab. Elevation lab is a Portland, Oregon, based company that makes a variety of accessories, mostly (but not exclusively) for Apple products, and that includes products designed to securely contain AirTags. In addition to the bike mount, they have them for your keychain, wallet, and even for your fine, furry companions.

The TagVault: Bike is designed to hide in plain sight by sandwiching between the bottle mount and the bottle cage. Elevation Lab indicates that it is lightweight (26 grams) and waterproof. It came out towards the end of February this year, just around the time I started to think about this trip, so when the company sent the promotional email it hit my inbox at just the right time. I ordered up two - one for my Expedition, and one for My Lovely Wife’s Catrike Pocket.

I ordered them not long after they came out, but it’s taken me a little while to get around to installation. It comes with pretty much everything you need to get it put into place:

What you see here is the TagVault itself, plus the two titanium torx mounting screws, and a torx driver, along with the envelope they came in. It also comes with a second set of shorter mounting screws, which are not shown here.

The AirTag is not included, of course. You’ll have to order that separately, either directly from Apple or a third party like Amazon (you’ll probably find them slightly cheaper thru the third party options).

Installation is pretty straightforward. The black TagVault: Bike separates lengthwise, which exposes the holding center for the AirTag. Once you place the AirTag inside you can close it up and line it up on the bottle mount.

AirTag in the TagVault. And like so many Apple products, the AirTag is a pretty thing, but immediately takes on fingerprints…

I placed the first one on my Expedition, which currently has the Terracycle Adjustomatic Bottle Mount in place. This is what it looked like before:

I pulled the mount off and lined the TagVault up with the mounting points:

Then I returned the Adjustomatic Bottle Mount on top of it (I had to take the bottle cages off so I could get to the screws to remove it - that’s an Adjustomatic thing, not a TagVault thing).

Once it was all lined up I screwed in the new screws using the included torx driver. The screws are longer than standard to compensate for the additional distance the TagVault adds to the arrangement. Then I added the cages back on:

For easier comparison, here is the before and after, top to bottom:

I think it’s relatively unobtrusive - it raises the bottle mount about a quarter of an inch, but I don’t think that’s going to be noticeable in day to day use. I like that the screws are titanium, and I would note that they are a different size of torx drive than the size on the Park multi-tool that I carry in my pannier bags. Because of that, for just a second I almost added the driver to my kit, but then I realized I probably did not want to have it with me - otherwise the prospective trike thief would have a tool at hand to remove it. As noted before, the company heralds it as being waterproof, and it doesn’t add much weight to the trike. They also describe it as being “aerodynamic”, which is, perhaps, why it is rounded along the sides.

I’ve used a number of products from elevation lab in the past. They’ve always been high-quality, and this device also fits that bill. If there is any critique to give, it would just be that they have “ELEVATION LAB” carved into the top of it. I understand being justifiably proud of your product, but part of the point to this is that it’s supposed to be something you don’t really notice…

But some of that is an artifact of using the Adjustomatic Bottle Mount. One a more standard mount the bottle cage covers the TagVault more completely, as you can see on the Pocket:

Catrike Pocket - After TagVault- From the side

Catrike Pocket - After TagVault - From above

The TagVault:Bike is $19.99 thru Elevation Lab’s website, with free ground shipping. It’s also available thru Amazon, but it’s oddly a little more expensive there. The AirTags run $29 each, and you can usually get a bit of a discount if you buy them in a four pack. Overall, it seems to me a pretty good deal for some added security.

Trike Packing - Storage Options / May 1, 2022 by Erin Wade

A couple of weeks ago I spent some time testing out how well the rack on my Catrike Expedition would manage the weight and mass of the materials that I would be taking on my Hennepin Canal Trip by filling my existing panniers and stacking the additional items up in backpacks on the top of the rack. Then I went out for a ride.

Aside from a bit of swaying back and forth, the trike handled the cargo just fine. This meant that I wouldn't need to purchase a new trailer or bear the burden of my existing, perfectly functional but somewhat less than svelte, DIY flatbed trailer.

That post, however, got several comments from folks suggesting that I look at a different type of cargo bag specifically designed for recumbents. Essentially, there are bags that take advantage of the laid back position of the trike seat and use that as the support frame, laying straps saddlebag-style across the back of the seat and hanging off of each side.

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The benefit to these over my existing approach is that they move the weight both down, and more to the center of the trike. While what I had set up was working, there was visible movement in the backpack stack as I was riding. I don’t think this was at risk of a catastrophic failure, but it would suggest that I might have to periodically stop to straighten things up and re-secure them on a longer ride. In addition, with my approach pretty much everything is weighing down on the rear wheel, while these bags spread more of it across all three wheels.

In addition, these look to be relatively easy to put on and take off, which will make them easy to use any time I need to carry more stuff, but allow me to keep the weight down when I don’t. I can see them replacing the use of my trailer for grocery trips and similar types of activities. So they have real utility beyond just trike packing.

There are a couple of different versions of these that looked like they might work for my purpose. One is the Smokey Mtn Saddlebag Max (linked here at Utah Trikes, which also has a video about them), and the other is the Radical Design Banana Racer. There are smaller versions of these as well, but those wouldn't have offered the space I would have needed.

The Radical Design bags are quite a bit larger than the Smokey Mtn bags, so I fairly quickly moved over to looking at those.

The company is based in The Netherlands, but I found that they were available through The Hostel Shoppe. I’ve ordered things from them before - most recently my Windwrap Fairing - so that seemed like a good option. They also have a video that shows the bags in detail (the Banana Racer comes in at about 1:35).

The video really was the thing that finally sold me on these bags. It clearly shows them as being capable of holding a large quantity of stuff, which is what I am looking for. They also have a bottle carrier at the top of each bag. I found that kind of hard to resolve in the pictures on the company website (which is where the pic above comes from), but it was very clear in the video. I have a very nice T-Cycle Adjustomatic Bottle Mount on my trike, but those mesh pockets would be very handy for keeping other things at hand.

The only challenge for me was the color options. At the time that I looked at the site, The Hostel Shoppe only had a couple of colors available - I believe red and blue - with others being out of stock. And none of the out-of-stock colors included the all-important orange option. However, I could see on the company website that orange was offered, so I emailed The Hostel Shoppe to see if they would be able, and willing, to order one for me in the appropriate color.

And indeed they were. They estimated that the bags will come in about the middle of this month (May 2022) which is plenty ahead of my planned trip in June, so that’s all looking pretty good. Now I’m just keeping fingers crossed (metaphorically of course - otherwise I couldn’t type) that shipping and supply chain issues don’t get in the way.

Trike Packing - Putting it on the Rack / April 10, 2022 by Erin Wade

Last week I spent some time obsessively weighing things with my new scale, and came to the conclusion that, proud of it as I was, at nearly 29 lbs my DIY flatbed trailer was not going to be a good option for ride carrying all my gear on a multi-day ride.

This leaves me with a couple of options - either I buy a lightweight cargo trailer for the ride, or I try to get everything on the rear cargo rack.

Getting everything on the rear rack is almost certainly the less expensive option, and my Catrike Expedition is built to be able to do this very sort of thing (it’s right there in the name, after all). Other people do trike packing this way - Sylvia Halpern and her trike Myrtle the Turtle and Matt Galat at Jayoe being some more public examples of this. I’ve watched Sylvia’s videos, and one of the things that is clear is that she has much bigger panniers than I do.

The bags currently on my trike are Axiom Seymour Oceanweave P25’s. I ordered these when I ordered my Expedition back in 2019, and they have served me well for carrying my everyday stuff - tools, tubes, patch kits, extra water bottles, clothes (particularly in winter) and sundries. They’ve even been up to the task for small volume grocery runs. I liked them as an option when I ordered them because they are a single unit - the two bags are connected by a somewhat rigid fabric section that connects to the top of the rack. The center, connecting section has a handle on it, and that all seemed like it would be pretty handy as a way to easily allow you to pick up the bags and carry them around if needs be. And it is, tho it’s a feature I’ve only rarely used.

The “25” in the name is the number of liters they can carry between the two bags. In actual capacity that’s on the relatively small side. It’s certainly adequate to my everyday needs, and has been more than capable for longer single day rides, but I’ll need more space than they can offer by themselves. One option, obviously, would be to get larger panniers. The challenge with this is that any decent set of bags that are sufficiently larger than my current option starts to get somewhat pricey. Combine, for example, a set of 40L Ortlieb Panniers with a Rack-Pack bag and your price starts to come very close to the cost of a Burley Trailer. That’s not necessarily a problem if it meets your needs, but it does make one want to investigate A) how well the trike does at carrying things in general; and 2) whether stuff you already have can meet the task.

So this past weekend I set about searching for answers those two questions. I am a backpack person - I use a backpack for my professional work (as opposed to a briefcase, for example), and have routinely used them for carrying sports gear, travel, etc - if you can get everything you need for a trip into a backpack it’s a lot easier to navigate thru the airport. What this means, ultimately, is that I have a backpack or two that I could apply to this purpose.

The first thing I tried to sort out was what the best way would be to array things on the back of the trike. I played with the idea of setting one backpack upright and the other flat:

But this really seemed to take up too much horizontal space. The upright bag was not on the rack - it was sitting between the seat frame and the rack on the top of the fender. And the rear bag was hanging off of the back. I briefly thought about fashioning an extension for the rack in each direction - I have some aluminum tubing left over from the framing of the child trailer that I built my DIY trailer from. I played with that idea long enough to do an Amazon search for tubing benders and such, but then decided maybe I should just try stacking them and lashing them down with bungees.

And that worked:

(I replaced the orange backpack in the first picture - which is my work backpack that I grabbed initially because it was handy for thinking things thru - with a red Lands End one that I had in the closet). Both backpacks are bungeed down - e.g. I put the bottom one on the rack, bungeed it down, and then put the red one on top of it and strapped it down. The bottom one has my sleeping bag and sleeping pad in it, as well as the two battery packs I will take along; and the top one has the clothing I would take along on the trip. I have a tent for the trip as well, but I’d set it up inside to allow it to air out, so I put an electronics bag (cords, adapters, etc) that weighs about the same as the tent does into the top bag to simulate it’s weight. I weighed the two backpacks (of course), and together they came out to 16.9 lbs. I oriented the top backpack backwards so that the red material would face oncoming traffic for visibility. And I did have to move one of my rear flashers from the neckrest handle to the backpacks so it could be seen.

In the panniers I always have extra tubes, a patch kit, and tools. I put a couple of extra bottles of water, which I would plan to carry for the ride as well. They also still have my winter support gear - extra layers of clothing, some chemical warmers and such - in them. I left that in them to simulate the remaining items that I do not have yet - e.g. a small cook stove, food, and a first aid kit. I suspect the winter gear is a little lighter than those items will be, but not a lot. But with all of this the trike was definitely heavier. I often pick it up by the rear rack to wheel it out of the garage and turn it around, and that was noticeably harder than it usually is.

With all that in place I headed out for a test ride.

I wanted a route that was a little further distance - I wanted to have a sufficient length of time to get a real feel for the extra weight and how the stacked backpacks would behave. I picked a 21.5 mile route with a few hills on it. It’s also one of the only routes I have that also has a short section of gravel on it (which I usually avoid like the plague). The gravel section is poorly maintained:

Which is to say that its mostly a dirt road with a bit of gravel residue on it - the sort of road sometimes referred to as “hero gravel”. Much of the Hennepin Canal trail is more or less this sort of surface. I think it’s described as “crushed stone”, but if that’s true, that was one heck of a crusher… At any rate, it was an opportunity to ride it on a bit of surface similar to what I’d be encountering on the trip.

All in all, it went pretty well. The extra weight was detectable, but not terribly so. I could see the backpacks in my mirrors, and they did noticeably sway back and forth in synchrony with my pedaling motion. However, they stayed in place very well - there was no real shifting during the ride, and they looked to be in essentially the same place at the end as they were in the beginning. As long as the lighter weight items - like clothing - are at the top I think the arrangement will be fine for a longer trip.

I’ve ridden this route once before, and my time on the route this time was slower, but only by slightly over two minutes. Speed for it was 13.11 mph, down from 13.4 on the prior ride. This may have been abetted somewhat by a lower wind speed - 0 wind for this day, compared to a 10 mph on the prior ride - and the fact that I have my Windwrap fairing on the trike (which I’m anticipating leaving on for the Hennepin ride as well).

Overall this suggests that I should be able to get everything on the back of the trike, and that the additional weight shouldn't slow me down too much. This feels like proof of concept for packing on the trike itself as opposed to buying a new trailer.

The next thing to consider is whether I just go with the bags I have for this trip, or whether I shell out for something purpose-built, like the aforementioned Ortlieb setup. I go back and forth on that. New bags are pricey, but there’s a get-what-you-pay-for factor with them - they are waterproof and designed to work together. I’d need to pack stuff in garbage bags and/or figure out how to set up a small tarp over the backpacks to hedge against rain otherwise. I think if I was certain that I’m going to enjoy the camping component it would be a no-brainer to go ahead and get them, because I’d want to do more of it going forward. But if 50-ish me finds that he doesn’t enjoy sleeping on the ground the way that my 20 and 30 year old self did, I’ll have laid out the cash for something I won’t really use again.

So - continued thinking required.

Trike Packing - Weighing My Options / April 3, 2022 by Erin Wade

As I mentioned last week, I’ve begun thinking my way thru the idea of a trike packing trip down the Hennepin Canal Trail.

What I’m looking at would likely be considered pretty modest by the standards of people who do this regularly - three days of riding punctuated by a couple of nights of camping. But for me it’s very new, and what I’m discovering, not for the first time, is that the idea of the trip, and the planning for it, makes it all fun even before I put tires to trail.

One part of that planning is figuring out how to carry everything along with me. I’ve been debating whether to try to get everything on to the panniers and rear rack of my Catrike Expedition, or to put it in a trailer to pull behind me.

I’m going to continue to explore the idea of using the panniers and rack, but given that I’ll be traveling down a pretty rustic trail with pretty limited resources, I’m starting to mentally lean towards using a trailer. This gives me a couple of options. I can use my existing, hand built flatbed trailer, or I can look at purchasing something new - such as a Burley Nomad - for the trip.

To that latter point, I’ve started to think about weight. I’m pleased with how my DIY trailer turned out, and it has turned out to useful for hauling a variety of things back and forth from town, it is not a dainty item.

Last week I estimated that it was probably in the 20-25lb weight range. It turns out that was a little optimistic:

It moved around a bit, but it seems like it centered at 28.28 lbs.

I first weighed it by asking my Dad if he had a scale we could use for the purpose. It turned out he did - he had a fishing scale that goes up to 50lbs. But, given that it was a fishing scale, it was designed to be held in one hand while taking the weight. We managed to make it work (thanks Pop!), and got a weight - 26lbs, 14oz - similar to the weight on my own scale above. But once I’d seen the results I decided it was time to get my own scale, because it was clear I was going to want to weigh more stuff, and weigh it with more precision.

There are a couple of factors at play here. First, because my home built trailer is a flatbed, I will probably need to put some sort of container on it to hold and make weatherproof anything I’m carrying. That will compound with the original 28.28 lbs of the trailer itself.

For example, I have a couple of existing Rubbermaid Action Packer containers that I purchased several years ago to store camping gear. I bought them at the time because they are rugged and lightweight. I pulled them down, and two of them fit quite nicely atop the flatbed.

But while they seem lightweight when they are something you are hauling in and out of your outdoorsy motor vehicle, the scale tells a different story for this application:

Action Packer - yeah, it’s been in the rafter of the garage for a long time…

The container comes in at 5.3 lbs. This means that, where I to set myself up with two of them on the home built trailer I’d be pulling almost 39 lbs (38.88) before adding any actual cargo to it.

Obviously there are other possibilities. I could stack items on the flatbed directly and cover them with a tarp and strap them down instead of putting containers on it. This would lose the 10.6 lbs worth of container weight, but would leave things potentially more exposed to the elements. And it would still leave me pulling a 28+lb trailer.

An other factor is that the home-built trailer is… bouncy. The hitch hookup uses a flexible nylon connector, and it has a fair amount of give to it. When I am riding with the trailer on the road I can see the trike wobbling gently from side to side. This undoubtedly is distributing energy in a way that isn’t just directed at forward motion. It hasn’t been enough to bother me for the short utility rides that I’ve been using the flatbed for but I suspect it would be an energy drain on a longer trip. I’ve been aware of this since I built the trailer, and it could conceivably be addressed by using a different type of hitch connector. Still given the weight issue, I doubt that fix would change things enough make the flatbed an attractive option for this trip.

Long story short, then, I think my home built flatbed is out of the picture for the ride along the Hennepin Canal. Next question is whether I can get everything I need on the rack, or whether I’m ordering a fancy new trailer…

Time for Spring Planning / March 27, 2022 by Erin Wade

We had a bout of faux spring here in Northern Illinois last week - multiple days in a row with temperatures in the 60’s and low 70’s (F). Predictably, that has turned out to be just a tease (projected high today of 36°), but it was enough to allow for some longer rides, which gets me thinking about what sort of riding I want to do as the weather warms up in earnest.

Something that has been on my list for a long time is to do some type of trike packing - e.g. a trip covering some distance, with overnight camping stops along the way. And despite the fact that the onset of spring turned out to be a lie, it’s gotten my wheels - my mental wheels, anyway - turning on what goes into such a trip.

Where to Go

My first area of consideration was where I would want to go. I do most of my riding out of my own driveway, on the backroads of northern Illinois. But while this is a pretty friendly area for the riding itself - generations of sharing the road with slow moving agricultural equipment makes for people who are pretty accommodating on the tarmac - it’s not a region that offers much by way of camping opportunities off the side of the road. The land here is generally privately owned, and engaged in active farming use.

This led me pretty quickly to trails, which then leads me to the Hennepin Canal Trail.

It’s a place I’m already somewhat familiar with (at least along the eastern end). It’s a state park, and it has designated camping sites along the route. Most of these are pretty rustic, but there is one site along the way, outside the town of Geneseo, that has showers and similar facilities. And while the teenage boy inside me loves the idea of the adventure of rough camping, the middle-aged dude typing this post knows that having a place to shower and plug in his stuff is going to make things a lot nicer, especially for a first time out.

Exploring more of the canal trail in general has also been on my list, so this gives me an opportunity to kill two goals with one ride (I may have mixed - or possibly butchered - that metaphor a bit…). This has, of course, led me to spending time poring over the trail map on Google Maps and I think - if I plan it right - I could actually make this a ride from the trailhead in Bureau Junction to the end of the trail, and include a side trip up to cross over the Mississippi into Iowa.

The total distance from start to finish in Iowa - one way - is about 80 miles. My longest single ride distance to date was just over 75 miles, which was at the hairy limit of my conditioning, even after several weeks of training. Given that, I’m looking at probably two nights of camping, breaking the 160 miles across three days of riding. This makes for three days at just over 50 miles (53.33333…). Thanks to The Hilly Hundred, I know that this should be doable for me, especially since the canal trail lacks the hilly part. And it should mean that I can ride with an eye towards enjoying the trip, with plenty of time to stop, take pictures, and generally enjoy the nature as opposed to trying to push to reach a given goal or destination.

Equipment

The other question is what to take along. My Catrike Expedition is definitely up to the task - it’s right there in the name, after all. And this sort of riding is why I chose the Expedition specifically. I’ll want to make sure everything is in good working order, of course, but that is something that should be done on a fairly routine basis anyway.

I’ll need equipment to support the trip as well. Among the things I’ll need to take along will be:

Tent
Sleeping bag & mat
Change(s) of clothing
Towel
Food & water
Tools and tubes
Battery packs for the phone and lights

And this, of course, is just my initial list. I’m absolutely sure there are things I’m not thinking of yet. Some of these things I already have, of course. Others I do not - I don’t have a one-person tent yet, for example (but I’ve wanted one for a long time, and here’s my reason to get it).

The next question that pops up in my head is how to carry all of this. Essentially there are two options - I can try to get it all into my panniers and/or on the rear rack, or I can pull a trailer behind me.

Part of me likes the simplicity of just using the bags and rack on the trike. I know that the trike can carry a fair amount of weight on the back - I’ve managed, for example, to haul a full grill-size LP tank on the top of the rack with my regular backup gear still in the bags. And I am not currently using most of the seat pockets - the zippered containers on the back of the Catrike seat - because I have always had plenty of space in my bags. If I plan for efficiency, I might be able to just haul it all as a self-contained unit.

The alternative option is to use a trailer. I do have one - I built a flatbed trailer out of the frame from a very run-down kid-carrier and a selection of palettes I had at the Homestead. It works well, and can carry a fair amount of weight. I’ve carried up to 80lbs on it - that being softener salt from the hardware store. But while I’m somewhat proud of my DIY trailer and it’s capabilities, it is… shall we say, it isn’t a dainty item. I’m not sure exactly what it weighs, but I’d guess it’s in the neighborhood of 20-25lbs unloaded, and I’d need to add a container (more weight) to it to use it. I’m sure to feel that on an extended ride.

Which then makes me think about buying something like a Burley Nomad. These are lovely little trailers, clearly well designed and specifically built for the sort of thing I’m trying to plan. And, at 17lbs, almost certainly lighter than my DIY trailer. The big “but” in the room, tho, is that you definitely pay for that special design and lighter weight. And to be clear, I think they are worth what they are asking. But I’m not sure I want to make that kind of investment for my first time out - I might find, despite the inner teenager, that the middle-aged dude doesn’t like camping out any more.

So - my plan for now is going to be to optimize my use of the storage space on the trike and see whether I can comfortably haul what I need that way, and take a few longer practice runs like that. If that works, great! If not, then I’ll start to work in the trailer and see how much it impedes my progress.

Curing the Shakes / March 13, 2022 by Erin Wade

It’s a beautiful winter day - the sun is shining, the snow is glistening white, a resplendent blanket over the earth. You see all of this because you are riding your recumbent trike thru it, taking in the scenery.

And it occurs to you that this moment would make a good picture. You take your hands off the handlebars to grab your camera. This should not be a problem because you are on a trike - three wheels on the ground, inherently providing stability.

But then it happens - perhaps a wheel hits a road imperfection - and the front end begins to tremble, the wheels shimmying back and forth, jostling you about. It stops when you put your hands back on the handlebars, but it returns the next time - and each time - you let go. Your trike has got the shakes.

I’d been dealing with this for the better part of four months, and it was getting progressively worse. What had been an occasional issue, just occurring on certain types of surfaces if my hands were off the handgrips, had progressed to the point where it would start to shake over every bump even with my fingers securely wrapped on the handles.

There are a number of things that this can be due to. Recumbent trikes are more complex than bicycles, especially at the front end, so in addition to the things you might think of on an upright - loose headset or bent wheel - there are things like tie rods, axles, and alignment to be considered (and a special “thank you” to the helpful folks in the Catrike Owners Group on FB for compiling that list).

For my part I was pretty sure I had loose headsets (that’s plural because there are two of them on a trike, one on each front wheel). In part, this was because I’d been messing with them - back towards the end of September I’d ordered a second B&M mirror for my Catrike Expedition, and they mount directly on the top of the headset. And in part, it was because I could see and feel that the headset was loose. I could feel it move when I hit the brakes, which prompted me to pick up the trike and see if I could move it around. Sure enough, it jiggled in place.

Given this, I did what any red-blooded American would do when something is loose: I got a wrench and tightened it.

Which did… nothing? That couldn't be the case, I told myself, it probably did something, but I just hadn’t tightened it enough. So, of course, I tightened it some more. And then some more. And then…

Then I learned that what is inside the headset is called a “star fangled nut” (or just “star nut”). And I also learned, entirely coincidentally, you understand, that it has an upper limit to the torque it can withstand.

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In a way one could consider this a good thing, because it did afford me an opportunity to learn new things about my trike, and an opportunity to buy a new tool. I’d never heard of star nuts before, never seen one in the wild. Now I’d not only become aware of them, but would get to learn how to replace one!

(These are the things I say in my head in order to get the swear words to stop coming out of my mouth. It’s only a moderately successful approach…)

So I ordered a tool (that was clearly made for upright bikes, but I got it to work), replaced it, learned about the torque rating that it’s supposed to be tightened to, dusted off my torque wrench, and… still shaky.

Over the subsequent weeks I continued to gently tighten it, trying to get some improvement without springing the star nut again. The result of this was:

A. It never got any tighter; and 2, I managed to pop the star nut on the other side.

I studied the diagrams in the Catrike Owner’s Manual, asked the folks at Utah Trikes how deep the star nut should be placed (thinking maybe I hadn’t put it down far enough). But nothing I tried helped, and it just kept getting worse, reaching the point I described above - getting shaky even with my hands on the grips. It started making me wonder if it wasn’t approaching the point where it was a little unsafe to ride.

So I broke down and did something I’m always reluctant to do: I asked for help. Specifically, I described my problem to the folks in the Catrike Owner’s Group on FB. I got the list of possibilities that I described above - all of which made sense, and included my loose headset. So I asked a second question: why can’t I get it to tighten?

I don’t know exactly why it always takes me so long to ask for help. It’s a congenital thing, and it happens across the board. I’ll spend an hour in a hardware store looking for the thing I want rather than ask an associate for assistance. I could charitably call it an independent streak, but in many cases - like this one - it’s an impediment.

Why? Because this was an issue of two bolts and about three minutes worth of work. As is invariably the case, when I ask for help I find that the solution is often simpler than I thought, and I feel like an idiot for not asking sooner.

It turns out, as was gently pointed out to me, that you cannot tighten the headset without first loosening the handlebar mount.

They seemed so simple and unassuming. I had no idea they had such power!

Two bolts and three minutes per side. One minute to loosen the two bolts on the handlebar, another to tighten the headset, and a third minute to tighten the handlebar back in place. Six minutes of work and my three year old Atomic Orange Expedition steers like the day it arrived.

I understand, in retrospect, that the handlebar keeps the headset from tightening because it cannot move - it’s held in place by the handlebar. But I’m quite certain that I could have looked at diagrams, and started at it on my garage floor, till the end of time and not seen that. In fact, I was well on my way to that outcome.

I had also begun to wonder whether the issue might actually be the mounting of the B&M mirrors on the headset. They are actually made for a different make - HP Velotechnik. I didn’t want to believe that, because they are so much better than the Mirrycle mirrors the trike came with, but I’d considered removing them to see if that made the difference. And now I know it wouldn't have, so I was able to skip that experiment.

So - back on the road, without the shakes! In fact, now that it’s tracking straight, I’m becoming aware that this has been a longer-term issue than I realized. It’s been a very long time since I was able to let go of the grips and not expect that the trike would at least wander aimlessly, following the curve of the road, if not shake me silly.

All in time for a high of 50° and sunshine here on the northern Illinois prairie!

My Faired Lady / March 6, 2022 by Erin Wade

Regardless of what they are riding, every cyclist has a love-hate relationship with the wind. The gusting atmosphere can have a significant affect on your forward progress either to the positive or the negative, and often both across the course of a given ride. If you ride into the colder seasons, it can also provide a biting chill that you have to bundle against to keep your extremities safe. Out here on the northern Illinois open prairie we have that wind in abundance year round, but particularly in the winter and spring months.

One of the benefits a recumbent trike has over a standard upright is that it provides a more favorable profile to that wind. I realized fairly early on, when comparing my first trike - a Catrike Pocket - to riding our upright Schwinn Mountain Bike in the snow and cold, that when the wind was blowing and cold, it was just better to be lower down and out of the wind.

But while they are indisputably better in terms of aerodynamics, they are not perfect. A strong enough wind can still push a recumbent trike around, and in the winter your feet, for example, are out in front of you, right at the front end of the wind you are creating with your own movement. But there are ways to further enhance the aerodynamic profile of one’s Human Powered Vehicle.

Enter: The Fairing

In simplest terms, a fairing is essentially a windshield built to improve the aerodynamic profile of a machine - human powered or otherwise. You’ve probably seen them on motorcycles (but may have just thought of them as windshields - I know that I did), and they’ve been applied to all sorts of other machines, including recumbent bikes and trikes.

In addition to the potential aerodynamic benefits - improving speed, or at least decreasing the effort needed to work against the atmosphere - they also provide some weather protection. Moving the wind around you in the winter means less wind chill effect on your body, and in rain and snow, being at least partially covered means less moistening from the elements. All of which is to say that getting one for my Catrike Expedition has been on my mental list for some time.

The Search

I’d started looking for a fairing in earnest in the winter of 2020-2021, but it didn’t work out financially (this is not an impulse-buy level of accessory). This winter proved to be more amenable, and I decided to go ahead and pull the trigger.

…and what I quickly realized is that my decision to move forward wasn’t going to be the only factor in this scenario. The ongoing supply chain issues and the Great Resignation that we are experiencing appears to have had an affect on the availability of fairings in general. As best I can tell there are currently two main makers for these items for recumbent trikes in the US, and contact with both found that they were currently not available.

This past summer I ran into a similar issue when I wanted to get a chain gobbler for MLW’s Pocket - I had money in hand, but they were listed as out of stock on the manufacturer’s websites. Back then I put in a request to be notified when it came back into stock, and after waiting several weeks, it occurred to me to check with some of the bike shops that sell recumbent trikes to see if they might have them in stock. That worked - the Hostel Shoppe in Stevens Point Wisconsin did, in fact, have one. I ordered it up, and had it a few days later.

Given that success then, I decided to try it again, and found that both Utah Trikes and the Hostel Shoppe (again) had them in stock. I’ve had good luck with both companies, but I decided to go with the Hostel Shoppe simply due to proximity. Stevens Point is a few hours to my north, while Springville, UT, is half a country away - I was hoping it being closer would get it to me sooner.

Windwrap WINTR Fairing

There are a couple of different types of fairings. Some of them are small affairs that mount out on the front of the machine and direct wind away from your feet - which would provide some decreased chill in the winter. But I wanted a more full-body fairing, to provide a greater aerodynamic benefit and to get some additional weather protection. Both bike shops had only one option available that met this description, and that was the Windwrap WINTR fairing by TerraCycle.

Now, TerraCycle makes some great products, a couple of which I already own, including the aforementioned chain gobbler as well as their Adjustomatic Bottle Mount. So, while it would have been nice to have some additional options, being “stuck” with one of their products was hardly a hardship.

It arrived in a box that is a little smaller than I expected, and lighter than it looked:

Getting it On

As is sometimes the case, it arrived a couple of days before I could find the time to actually install it. But once I did, things went relatively smoothly. I had my helper crew ready to go, and opening up the boxes found, among other things, more boxes and lots of packing paper:

(You know, they always join me for these projects, but every time I actually try to get them to offer actual assistance they demure, offering up some lame excuse about not having thumbs…)

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One of the things that quickly became clear as I started pulling things out of the box is that you wanted to check the packing paper carefully - several of the parts were wrapped up in the paper. I actually have held on to the boxes and the paper for the short term to make sure I don’t discover a piece missing only to have inadvertently thrown it away.

Once it’s all out you see that there are multiple pieces, each nicely packaged:

The rolled up item you see is the fairing - it’s made of Lexan, and is quite flexible. The rest of it are the items that make up the frame and the mounting points.

Terracycle makes a very handy installation video for the Windwrap WINTR fairing. I watched this section by section as I installed it - which is to say that I watched them install the first piece on the video, then put that piece on, then repeated with each section. I will sometimes watch an installation video all the way thru first, but there were only a few pieces to work with, so this seemed a reasonable strategy.

Long story short, this essentially involves putting a mounting clamp on to the boom, and then mounting the different pieces of the frame to that clamp in a given order. This went relatively quick:

In the video, when the put the frame together, they mention that you want to do your best to center the upper crossbar when you attach it. A very nice touch is that TerraCycle has explicitly identified the center point on the bar for you:

From there the next step was to unroll the fairing itself and mount it to the frame.

Probably the single most challenging part of the process was getting the protective blue film off of the fairing:

The fairing attaches to the frame with rubber expanding nuts that “mushroom” around the opening they are inserted into in order to hold it tight. These are designed to be hand tightened and easily loosened for removing the fairing.

It’s a Wrap

With that it was all mounted on the trike:

And if you are (understandably) looking at this picture and wondering “how are you supposed to get into that thing?”…

…it is designed to fold forward for just such an occasion.

There are multiple small adjustments to be made to ensure that your feet and knees clear the fairing when pedaling. I’ve found these to be a multiple step process - first measuring things out as described on the video, but then making a handful of adjustments out on the first ride as well. These were simple and required only the Allen wrenches on the multi-tool I always carry on the trike. I also had to move around my phone mount, as my (big-ass) iPhone was now in conflict with the edge of the fairing.

One of the other things I’ve wondered about is transporting the trike with the fairing. I typically both haul and store my Expedition in my Mobile Trike Garage (my Subaru Outback). To get it into the Outback I have to lower my neckrest already, and the trike pretty much fills the available length of the back of the car. The fairing adds both some height and some length to the trike, so I wasn’t sure how well it would fit.

And: it doesn’t.

Or, at least it doesn’t with the fairing on the frame. As noted above, the fairing is designed to be easily removable by hand, and with it off, the frame does fit under the roofline.

The frame itself still adds length to the trike. I usually store the trike in the back of the car in a diagonal orientation, which allows me to have some view out of the inside rear-view mirror. It won’t fit that way with the frame on, but does fit with the rear wheel sitting dead center, between the front seats:

This is workable, at least for the time being, tho it wouldn't be comfortable for longer trips. Fortunately, removing the frame is a two-bolt job with an Allen wrench, which I can do in those situations. I wouldn’t want to do it every time - removing and replacing both the frame and the fairing each time I go out for a ride would start to be more futzing than I want to engage in - but seems a fairly low effort set of tasks for traveling with the trike. And frankly, my day-to-day solution for the first week of having the fairing on the trike has simply been to leave the car outside, with the trike in its spot in the garage, fairing in place. This is actually a fairly common arrangement for me in general, particularly in the warmer months, as it lets me get out and ride at a moment’s notice.

I’ll be keeping track, over the next few weeks, of what the impact is from having the fairing in place, both in terms of comfort and speed. And I’m fortunate - in a way - that I was able to get it now, as we roll into spring, which is our windiest time of year here in northern Illinois.

So - more to come…

Got Your Back / October 3, 2021 by Erin Wade

Comfort is one of the hallmark features of riding a recumbent trike. When one moves from an upright, or Diamond Frame (DF) bike to a recumbent trike, one of the things one realizes fairly quickly is all of the things that don’t hurt anymore when riding. Your hands aren’t numb from resting on the handlebars, your neck and shoulders aren’t sore from being hunched over on the road bike, and the idea of chamois butter never occurs to you any more.

For this reason I was rather surprised this summer when I started to experience pain in my lower back on a ride. I was on what is, for me, an extended ride of about 50 miles, but the pain started about 25 miles in. I took a couple of breaks on the ride to get off and move around, which did help, but the issue kept recurring. As I thought through it while riding it finally occurred to me to consider that the seat mesh might need to be tightened. So I found a spot to pull off to the side of the road and I gave them a yank, and sure enough, I was able to tighten them and regain the lumbar support that the mesh seat had lost. The seat instantly felt better, and I was comfortable for the remaining 8-10 miles of that ride.

But while I initially thought all was better, what I found was that it was now a recurring - and seemingly worsening issue. Over subsequent rides I found myself stopping at least once or twice per ride to adjust it, and during the Freemondo I had to stop and adjust it at least four times over the 63-mile course. Given that I had other extended rides coming up, I wanted to find a way to address the issue.

My Catrike Expedition is only three years old - I received delivery of it in July of 2019 - but I have put over 6000 miles on it since it arrived. It seemed that I’d perhaps reached the lifespan of the original seat. Before I made that assumption - and dropped the $200 or so for such an item - I decided to take the question to the Catrike Owners Group on Facebook. I got several suggestions for addressing the issue - means for repairing rather than replacing the seat, and multiple suggestions for a product that I’ve seen referenced before - the Ventisit.

But one suggestion (thanks John!) struck both my curiosity, and my simplicity and cheapness genes all at the same time. The idea was to take bits of pool noodle and cut them to size to put inside the seat in the general lumbar region. This idea was not only inexpensive and easily obtained (e.g. Amazon or swing by your local big box store), but actually, for me, free and at hand as my offspring had brought home a batch of them a couple of years ago. They’ve been occupying space on the back porch for a while now - I figured I might as well put one of them to work.

This was a simple operation - I got a noodle and a utility knife, eyeballed the size of the space between the space frame bars on either side of the seat, marked it with my thumb, and cut it (yes - you should probably measure twice before you cut once, but I was rich with pool noodles, so I threw caution to the wind). In eyeballing I did make it a little long, figuring it was going to need to press against the bars to stay in place.

Once I got it cut I inserted it into the space between the front and back of the seat. I had to loosen the straps just a bit to do this. I positioned it in the general lumbar region by feel, getting on and off the trike a couple of times. Once it was in place I tightened the straps back up and took it out for a ride.

That first ride was a bit of a revelation - it felt much better! But over the next couple of outings I began to notice that, after a few miles, the noodle was acting as a pressure point. Now instead of a dull ache I had a sharp pain in that spot, which was not a reasonable trade-off. I tried moving it up and down a bit, which helped, but only temporarily. And stopping periodically to move the noodle wasn’t really any better than stopping periodically to tighten the straps.

What I reasoned, though, was that it was becoming a pressure point because it was too small - a bulge in a single, small vertical area. So I went back and cut a second section of noodle to put in with the first one. This made for a larger lumbar area, and reduced the amount of pressure on any single point in my back.

You can see where it falls for me on the seat - the noodle is where you can’t see thru the mesh:

The non-see-thru part is where the noodle is at.

All of this experimenting happened between the Freemondo and TŌSOC, so that second extended ride through scenic Ogle County was the testing ground for this approach.

The long and short of it: It works!

I got through the 62-miles of TŌSOC without any significant back pain, and without needing to adjust the seat. The noodles seem to stay in place without issue, so once you have them positioned where they work for you it seems to be essentially a set it and forget it arrangement. And it’s far less expensive than alternative solutions.

TL/DR:

In sum: If you are finding that you are experiencing lower back pain while riding your recumbent trike, you may be able to address the issue quickly and inexpensively by cutting pool noodles to size and inserting them in the space between the front and back sides of the seat. Some things to be aware of with this:

There are different sizes and shapes of pool noodle. I used ones with a sort of clover shape to them because those were what I had at home already. You may find that a different size or shape works better for you.
You may need to insert one or more of them into the space depending upon your height and how the noodle impacts your back.
Expect to spend a bit of time adjusting the location between and during rides while you dial-in the correct position for you.
The trike I did this with is my Catrike Expedition. It’s clear to me that it would work nicely with other trikes of a similar frame and mesh seat design - for example, I can easily see using this on my Catrike Pocket if I needed to, as it’s a very similar design. Your mileage may vary depending on how your machine is designed.

The value of learning how / September 6, 2020 by Erin Wade

The eponymous Red Green would often offer a very sage piece of advice:

Red Green

When I have said this to My Lovely Wife she has typically looked thoughtful for a moment and said “well, I find you handsome...”.

Funny how timing and delivery can take a comment that could be flattering and make it, well, not.

With my trikes, at least, I’ve been trying to rectify this. Our rural setting has many benefits, but proximity to bike shops is not one of them, so the more I can do myself, the better off I am.

Back over Independence Day weekend I’d undertaken a maintenance day in order to address a couple of different issues. The first was an ongoing issue with toe-in that I thought I had fixed before. The second was a derailleur adjustment.

Sorting out whether or not I’d been successful with the alignment was not something I could determine right away. It was clear from the tire wear that it was off, but it wasn’t far enough off that it was causing any other perceptible issues - for example, it didn’t seem to be slowing me down.

Now, two months and 720 miles later the tire looks like this:

Does it look tired to you?

You can be forgiven if you are looking at that picture and thinking “that’s not in great shape”. Because it’s not.

But the thing is, this is pretty much what it looked like two months ago. I did order another pair of tires just in case - I really wasn’t confident, particularly given that I’d “fixed” it once already. Fortunately, I haven’t needed them yet, and I’m now beyond the mileage I got out of the first set, with some life still left in them. I’m marking this one down as a win.

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I adjusted the derailleur with some help from this video by Utah Trikes. This one was a work in progress. The process turned out to be pretty simple - much simpler, in fact, than I’d anticipated. (I’ve always thought of derailleur adjustment as sort of a black art). But while it was better on my first try, it wasn’t perfect yet, and it took a couple of additional adjustments before I got it right. But once I got there it was spot on - each click of the shifter up or down snapping into the next gear.

This actually made me feel a little like a hero, and reminded me what a joy it is to interact with a properly operating machine. At its best, pedaling and shifting, reading the road, anticipating the need, and selecting the right gear becomes a wonderful relationship where rider and machine become like one.

It also really brought home how much it had been bothering me. I love riding, but every time the gears jumped would pull me out of that moment of integration; each time was a tiny bit of irritation. Multiply that across a 20-mile ride, for example, with many, many shifts, and it adds up.

In no way do I think that I’m even close to not needing a bike shop ever again. But learning more about how to do these things means that I can spend more time on the trike with it operating properly - that’s a bonus.

New Old Roads / August 23, 2020 by Erin Wade

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

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

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

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

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

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

Possibilities

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

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

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

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

Gremel Sign

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

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

Hay!

...To the derilects...

Derilect

Lee Center School

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

Save me!

There were tiny town treasures...

Johnnie’s Garage

...A little cemetery...

Woodside

And Yogi Bear:

Way to go there, Booboo!

(It’s a local campground)

Camp sign in context

Camp sign up close

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

Shriek! Get it off, get it off, get it off!

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

Veggies and trike

Mitchell Mellons

Price List

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

Paying up

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

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

What to Wear / August 1, 2020 by Erin Wade

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like an animal

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

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

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

Yup - you can get them in orange

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

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

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

Waiting Impatiently

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

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

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

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

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

Maintenance Day / July 5, 2020 by Erin Wade

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

Trike on the Bench

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alternate Cycling Universe / June 21, 2020 by Erin Wade

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Roadsides for Wildlife / June 14, 2020 by Erin Wade

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

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

No. But again, you can understand it.

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

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

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

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

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

a channel of prairie

clover

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

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

Yes:

Fox at Rest

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

outstanding in his field

Here’s a bit of a closer look:

a closer look

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

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

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

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

Putting the Trike to Work - Trailer Project Follow-Up / May 25, 2020 by Erin Wade

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

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

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

The big rig

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

Loaded up

Hauling on the road

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

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

Siri knows her fuels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trike in the tall grass

Hennepin Canal Trail - Further Exploration / May 10, 2020 by Erin Wade

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flooded

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

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

Not flooded

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

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

Trail surface

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

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

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

Speed graph

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

Speed graph with circle

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

Cardinal

Cardinal closer up

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

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

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

Green River Aqueduct

Green River

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

Green River Aqueduct

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

Well shit - that’s a big tree...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trailer Project Part 4 - Finished-ish / May 3, 2020 by Erin Wade

Trailer Project Part 4 - Finished-ish

Trailer Project Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

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

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

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

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

Finished?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mounting system

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

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

Does the Subaru look jealous?

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

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

hitch in my get along

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

Jaunty angle

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

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

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

Until then, it’s time to ride!