My Faired Lady

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:

Valencia checking out her new outfit

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:

The crew at the opening ceremonies

(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:

A fairly nice job of packaging

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:

All framed up

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:

I am feeling very centered

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

Wrapped up in itself

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

I’m so blue…

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:

My Faired Lady

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

It knows yoga

…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.

This one is too big

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.

If I fits, I sits

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:

Dead center

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…

Taking the Temperature of the Moment

We’ve reached that time of year here in Northern Illinois where late autumn just cannot decide whether it wants to hang on and work through the end of the season, or give it up and cede to winter already. As such, high temps are ranging between the low 20’s to the mid 50’s (F) from one day to the next. For cycling, this can make it especially challenging to determine what to wear for a given ride.

Once you get into the heart of winter here you know that, for the most part, it’s just going to be cold. This allows you to get into an easy pattern of dressing in more or less the same multi-layered approach from one ride to the next. But when one day is 55° and on your next ride it’s 23°, that just isn’t the case. In these cases, it’s not just about knowing what to wear, but more about knowing which level of it to wear today.

Inevitably, for me, this leads to miscalculations. Mostly this involves the extremities, as one might expect. I can generally keep my core warm enough (though too warm is a definite possibility), but I will find myself realizing, in the middle of a ride, as I begin to feel that characteristic spreading, borderline painful chill in my digits, that I’ve chosen the wrong gloves or shoes for the temperature.

For my hands this is an easy enough fix. Gloves are a lightweight, low volume item, so it’s easy enough to pack along different weights of hand protection in the pannier bags. Often I will simply start out with more than I need - I like to put mittens over insulated gloves, for example, and if I reach the point where my hands get too warm (and yes, that does happen) I can simply pull off the mittens and tuck them into the front of my jacket. This location is handy also because sometimes that changes. Out here on the prairie one might find that one’s hands are too warm when one is riding with the wind, but that they cool right back down when the wind is striking from the side or head-on. Then I can pull the mittens back out of the jacket and slip them back on.

It’s the feet where things get more challenging. In part, this is because I resist the transition to heavier shoes. I’m a sandal person for nearly 3/4 of the year. I break the Keens out in March, and try to keep them in service into November if at all possible. To do this requires committing the fashion crime of wearing socks with the sandals, of course, but enforcement of that particular ordinance is relatively low in my jurisdiction, so it’s worth the risk.

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Even with my hot feet and wool socks, sandals stop being comfortable on the trike somewhere a little south of 60°. At that point I move to hiking boots (these are also my regular daily footwear through the late fall and winter) with varying levels of wool sock. If the sandals are Level 1 for foot gear, I suppose the hiking boots would be Level 2. And that Level 2 covers that space between, say 55° and ~30-35° pretty nicely.

It’s the transition between Level 2 and Level 3 where I really begin to struggle. Level 3, for me, is a set of heavy winter boots. These are an affair with a leather upper, rubber lower, lined in wool felt. They are everything you need in a winter boot. All that said, it is somewhat challenging to get myself to want to move from the hiking boots into the these items, particularly early in the season, when I am mostly not wearing them at any other time. They are heavy and require adjustments to the sizing on my foot retention system (this can result in an extra 1-2 minutes of setup time before I ride - excruciating!). This means that, on a 25° day I find myself looking over at them and debating putting them on, before then putting a second layer of socks on and just wearing the hiking boots anyway.

Ultimately what this means is that I then find myself halfway through a ride realizing, as the spreading chill once again emerges, I should have worn the heavier boots. But unlike the mittens, the boots won’t fit easily into the panniers. And then an idea occurred to me:

Strapped on

This was my solution for the past couple of rides where the temperatures dipped below that 35° mark. While they won’t fit in the bag, they can be strapped to the top of the rack. It’s not nearly as quick and efficient as pulling the mittens on and off, but I have them with me if I need them. And from an exercise standpoint this is good too, because the boots add approximately 50 lbs* to the weight of the trike.

But this is an interim solution. I realized, as I was working through this, that part of the difficulty is that I while I’ve sorted out cold weather gear in general, I don’t really have a clear idea of specifically when to move from one level to the next. I think that I get to the point, towards the end of the winter, where I’ve just got it down, but in the long months between, say March and December, I forget, and have to learn it all over again.

So - over the last few rides I have started to collect data on what I’m wearing on my extremities, and how they work. I had considered putting together a spreadsheet for this (I do love a good spreadsheet), but for the moment I’ve just been keeping it in the notes section for the ride on Cyclemeter. This is handy because the subscription version of Cyclemeter also keeps track of weather information for the ride - temperature, humidity, wind speed, and level of sun (e.g. partly cloudy, etc). And, conveniently enough, you can export that information - including the weather data, separated out each into its own cell - into a spreadsheet. This should help me not have to relearn this over and over again each winter.

I think I am also going to consider using chemical warmers with the hiking boots. These are always an available part of my kit, and I keep extras in the panniers throughout the winter riding season in case of emergency, but I don’t usually break them out until it gets cold enough that the winter boots aren’t enough by themselves. It might be that I can extend Level 2 - maybe we could call it a Level 2.5 of sorts - further into the season with a bit of help.

*This may be a slight exaggeration.

Least Favorite Sort of Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ugh.

For Love of Fenders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finishing February

There is just something about February.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which Conditions?

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

This is one of mine:

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

In February. In Northern Illinois.

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

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

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

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

Anticipation

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

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

The other factor is that we have snow.

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

But there is also a problem: we have snow.

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

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

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

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

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

Frostbike - A Review

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

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

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

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

That’s right - Finland. in February.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rural Bike - Part Two - my Candidate

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

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

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

The Recumbent Trike

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Recumbent Trike with a Trailer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Long Distance in Comfort

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contending with the Weather

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

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

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

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

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

Stability

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

...And then: pain.

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

Carrying that Load

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

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

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

Speed

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

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

The Other Stuff

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

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

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

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

Disadvantages

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

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

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

Summing Up

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

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

Ok - time to ride...

Winter Cycling Unpreparedness

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

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

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

And there lies the struggle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Practicality with a Side Order of Good Luck

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I set to strapping the tank on.

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

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

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

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

But I kept pedaling.

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

The price: $16.99

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

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

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

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

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

So: bonus luck!

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

Rainy day cycling

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

But the ride must go on.

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

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

Hennepin Feeder Canal Trail: Martins Landing to Rte 172

The Hennepin Canal in Northern Illinois has garnered some attention in the cycling media of late, given its designated status as the "gateway" trail for the Illinois portion of the Rails-To-Trails Conservancy’s Great American Rail Trail Project. The Hennepin Canal Trail makes a great deal of sense in that role, given that it runs predominantly east to west, connects with the Mississippi River at the westernmost end, and covers over 100 miles of distance.

This is not that Hennepin Canal.

To be clear, it’s a part of the same canal system, but what I’m writing about in this post is actually the feeder canal - the man-made ditch that was dug to supply water to the Hennepin Canal itself. Back when the project was undertaken, it was designed to take water from the Rock River nearly 30 miles to the north, and divert a portion of it southward to fill the shipping lanes of the canal itself.

What does this mean, in practical terms, for the person going cycling on this trail? Mostly it means a slightly different view from the main canal (a portion of which I wrote about here, a little while back). Because it was not really designed to be a shipping lane the feeder canal has no locks along its distance - with the notable exception of the lock set at the entryway into the canal from Lake Sinnissippi on the Rock River. This is different largely because the locks make an interesting, historical set of distance markers as you progress down the main canal. But this small difference does not keep this portion of the canal parkway from being a beautiful place to ride. It’s also notable that Rock Falls and Sterling make for a fairly sizeable municipality for northern Illinois, which means restaurants, hotel accommodations, and a handy local bike shop - Meads Bike Shop, which recumbent trike riders may find handy, as they sell and services Catrikes - none of which you will find along the main canal.

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The Canal Parkway technically begins in Rock Falls, Illinois, just south of the Rock River, and there is municipal parking there for folks to begin their journey along the trail. However, I wanted to start in Sterling, Illinois - just across the River - because it also offered the opportunity to cross the bridge that runs across the dam. I suppose technically I could have parked in Rock Falls and gone back over the bridge, but that just seemed... silly.

So my ride started at Martin’s Landing in Sterling.

This is essentially a trail head sited just to the side of the historic Dillon Home Museum. Be aware, if you go, that there’s no public parking here - the lovely brick lot is specifically for the Dillon House - but street parking is readily available just East of Martin’s Landing on 2nd street.

Martin’s Landing sends you straight down to the Rock River, with a stone tunnel that takes you under the train tracks at the north end...

...and puts you in view of the lower side of the dam and the bridge that spans it.

It also puts you in view, in the springtime, of pelicans and other waterfowl plying their business along the waterway. The pelicans themselves are a fairly recent phenomenon for the region, but a welcome one. They keep their distance, making a clear shot challenging with an unaided camera phone, but with some zooming you can see them.

At the entryway to the bridge there is an information sign off to the side.

And the bridge itself appears to be constructed in two sections, with the longer, wood-based portion covering the spillway, while a cement and steel component takes you over the gates.

The change in the current makes itself known both visually and audibly.

Once you get to the other side you are at the entryway into the Canal Parkway. as you enter, you see the lock that controlled flow into the canal itself.

This particular lock is interesting, in part, because of the machinery that is still present at the sides.

At least for the section of the main canal I rode, I do not recall any clear machinery on the locks.

From there you can see the trail ahead.

The first portion of the trail is asphalt, and that continues along the Canal Parkway for about 3 1/2 miles. For those familiar with asphalt trails in Illinois, this is a predictably mixed bag. The harder surface lets you pick up some speed, of course, but our weather extremes have a tendency to buckle and bend asphalt in unforgiving ways. This trail is no exception. However, that aside, the trail moves out of the view of small town life into the appearance of remote nature in a hurry.

It’s mid-spring here in the northern hemisphere, and the plant life is abundant along this trail. Much of it, as can be seen in the trail pictures, comes in various shades of green, but there are patches of other colors along the way:

And along with the flowers there are long stretches of wild grass ranging from green to reddish brown.

Maybe my favorite part of the nature on this ride was the ongoing game of tag I seemed to be playing with a Great Blue Heron. I tried to get a picture of it, but every time I rode close it would take off again. But she did show up on video...

After Buell Road the trail switches from asphalt to gravel.

Later on it shifts from gravel to... less gravel, I guess (it’s dirt. Good dirt, but dirt). It’s a softer surface that gives the impression of perhaps having been last been graveled some time ago. But honestly, the gravel is more forgiving than the asphalt, and the latter surface more forgiving still than the gravel. The trike handled it well, and anything from a hybrid on down to mountain bikes will be fine. In the rainy season, at least, road bikes are probably going to struggle.

The other thing that goes with spring is rain, and this year has been exceptionally wet. Riding along a canal means water is a part of the mix, and the DNR has actuallyclosed portions of the main trail:

TRAIL CLOSED from Lock 26 (900 E Rd) all the way through and past Colona to Lock 29 at the Rock River due to the Green River flooding into the canal. ​ TRAIL CLOSED from Bridge 3 (2160 E Rd) to Bridge 4 (2050 E Rd) just east of Tiskilwa, due to a levee break at Lock 7

There were no closure notices for the feeder canal, but this didn’t mean there were no impediments along the way. Multiple roadways cross the canal, and those crossings are punctuated by underpasses. These vary from culverts...

...to more intricate affairs:

But while they aren’t closed, that doesn’t mean that the rainy season doesn’t bring the water level up. On a couple of occasions, this meant fording my way through overflow:

In most cases there is an alternative option - you can ride up to the road and cross there. Most cases, but not all. On occasion you can see the route, but there simply isn’t a trail up to the road. But the deepest area that I forded was the underpass for interstate 88 - so obviously, crossing at the road grade was not an option. I rode thru, slowly...

On the trike you sit low, so there’s a risk that you are going to drag your tuches through the water. But if you lift at the handles and push your back against the upper part of the seat you can remain above it. But while I was able to keep my backside dry while fording my way through the I88 underpass, my heels were definitely dipping in the water while I was pedaling.

Speaking of rain, it’s been doing that routinely this spring, and for most of Memorial Day Weekend as well. I really wanted to get out to try this trail, so I got up early, eyeballed the weather reports, and timed my travel time and ride so that I’d finish up ahead of the incoming rain.

...I failed. Almost completely. I was able to catch most of my pictures and video in the first part of my ride. That was important, because it rained on me for about two-thirds of the ride. Now - to be clear - that’s no fault of the trail; that’s all on me.

I will ride in almost any weather, but rain is my least favorite riding situation. But I was dressed entirely in synthetics, and I was on a trail, so visibility was not an issue. And importantly, it wasn’t cold. So, you know, ride on.

Well, I rode on until I came up to this:

This was the underpass at Route 172. Unlike the other flooded passageways, I couldn't easily tell how deep it was. To be fair, I could have ridden up and over the road - the trail offers this option, and there’s a parking area at this point. But I’d planned on a 20-mile round trip, and this point was 9 1/2 miles (ish, ok - 9.45) in, so it seemed like the right point to turn around.

The route back up was damper (err - more damp?) than the way down, but I ended up playing Heron Tag on that direction as well. I have no idea if it was the same bird, but I like to think so...

It’s a good ride, but you’ll want to be aware that it’s pretty remote once you exit Rock Falls. There are a handful of minor facilities - trailside benches, an occasional picnic table. In the 10 (ok, yes, 9.45) mile stretch I rode there was one site with a porta-potty, and another (at 172) with an outhouse. However, aside from these options, outside of town there were no formal shelter options - if I’d wanted to take shelter from the rain I’d either have had to sit in one of the underpasses, or taken refuge in an outhouse. I don’t think this is uncommon for rural trails, but it is something you want to be prepared for when you go.

And if you like rides on remote trails, this one has a lot more to give. As I noted at the beginning, the feeder canal itself offers up more distance than I traveled by a factor of three; the entire canal system could readily offer up a half-century or more for the interested rider.

Seasonal Goals

Last Wednesday took us over the calendrical hump into official Spring, and thus far the weather seems to be agreeing. Here in Northern Illinois we’ve seen temps in the 40’s and low 50’s over the past wee, with suggestions of numbers sneaking into the bottom end of the 60 degree range next week. Skies are also appropriately gray and threatening much of the time - depressing, but on track.

I am, of course, a year-round cyclist, so the riding never really stops. However, it would be fair to say that the variety of riding changes during the winter. When the snow falls and the air bites I tend to stay closer to home, and the routes available naturally become limited to what is cleared and open. Given this, the arrival of the fairer season gets me thinking about what type of riding I’d like to do in the warmer months. Given that, I thought I’d share some of the goals that are running through my head for the next couple of seasons.

More Trail Exploration

In my region we have two long-distance trail systems - the I&M Canal Trail and the Hennepin Canal Trail. I’ve ridden on each of them, but only one time each, and for shorter distances. I’d like to get back to each of them and spend more time and distance on both.

For the I&M Canal trail I’d at least like to extend out my rides to get from LaSalle all of the way into Ottawa and back, and I’d like to do that more than once, incorporating some sight-seeing into it. The trail passes through Utica on it’s way, which offers some interesting options, as well as Buffalo Rock State Park.

The Hennepin Canal trail is much longer than the section that I rode along last summer, and it is also listed as a primary component of the Rails-to-Trails cross country course. I’d love to go further along it as well. In addition, Hennepin has both the primary east-west course, as well as a feeder canal system that runs from Rock Falls southwards to the main canal. Lots of territory to explore and enjoy there.

There are other trail systems in the broad region that I’d like to get myself out to see, if at all possible. I’m primarily a road-rider, in part because getting out on trails requires car travel, which I often have plenty of during the work week. Still, the trails offer an opportunity for variety that I’m sometimes missing at home. Likely there will be reviews of these if and when they occur.

New Road Routes

A while back I put up a post about Ogle County’s cycling website. I think this is an excellent resource, and it’s a credit to the county that they provide it. Unfortunately, similar resources don’t exist closer to home. I’m hoping to establish some routes closer to home that provide a similar experience to what is detailed in their site. This will take some work, so it may not happen quickly (or I suppose, at all), but I’m hopeful.

Longer Rides

As is perhaps hinted at in the sections above, I’d like to see if I can’t incorporate longer rides into my routine. I had my highest mileage year on record last year, but my average ride was just under thirteen miles (12.94 for you sticklers out there). I am always impressed with the people who do century rides, and that’s something that I aspire to, but my available riding time makes something like that pretty challenging to fit in without significant planning.

Most of my regular rides are in the 8-14 mile range. I do have a couple of regular routes laid out at longer distance, but I think I’ll need some variety to make them more interesting to do with any sort of regularity.

Looking Forward

I’m sure there will be more to come as well, but this is where my head is at the moment. Spring brings hopes and possibilities!

A Final Gift for the Season

I am not an early morning exerciser. Virtually every Sunday I try to get myself out for a ride, and this is so ingrained in my head at this point that I think of it by name - my Sunday ride. But it’s not an early morning activity, because I reserve Sunday morning for coffee, contemplation, and writing.

But this morning was different - I was out before virtually everything (well - except the coffee. Nothing happens until I’ve had at least one cup of coffee...)

This winter has been an odd one, even for the extremely variable Midwest. The first third or so of the season was unusually warm - perhaps to lull us into a false sense of security - and then became a powerhouse of snow and wind off and on for a couple of weeks. That polar vortex was followed by a shift into the wrong kind of winter, giving us an ugly patchwork of tired, retreating drifts and frozen mud.

But we’re now moving on to the end of the season, spring is right around the corner on the calendar, and most of the snow has melted away.

Well - I guess I should say had melted away.

When I got up this morning and looked out the window it became clear that the weather gods had offered up a winter cycling gift for the last part of the season. The ground was covered in a blanket of snow - and not just an odd, out of character late-season dusting. No - this was a solid inch to inch-and-a-half or so of actual powder.

In short - real snow for real winter cycling.

But it’s mid-March. Snow at all this late in the season in northern Illinois is - or at least was (thanks, climate change) - virtually unheard of and, when it occurs, it’s flurries or at most just a light dusting. The abundance I was seeing out my window just doesn’t happen. And it certainly wasn’t going to last.

I checked the handy-dandy weather app to find that it was 30°, working its way up to a high of 41°, and the above-freezing temps were set to start showing up in the very near future. This meant if I wanted to play in the snow it was going to need to be soon. So I took the drastic action of deciding to set aside my Sunday routine, completed only my most necessary of necessaries, and geared up to ride.

You would think that, by this point in the season, the novelty of a ride in the snow would have passed - that this is something that one would feel only as the calendar rolls us into those early days of winter. Some years that just might be true, but this really did feel like a gift, it’s ephemeral nature making it all the more precious.

Undoubtedly because of the warming trend for the day, the road was untouched by plows, offering only tire tracks from the occasional passing vehicle.

Because of the lateness of the season, this ride offered an auditory extravaganza that one does not typically experience when riding in the white stuff. Yes, you do have the crunch of the snow under the wheels (a thing I comment on often and always love), but today all of that was accompanied by the bird calls, most notably those of the returning Red Wing Blackbirds.

These well-dressed gentlemen of the prairie are the true harbingers of spring out here. You can have your silly robins with their garish outfits - they don’t hold a candle to the toughness and determination of the RWB. And besides, you can hear the blackbird’s trilling call for miles. You know they are here by sound long before you see them.

I took a little longer on the route for this ride than usual, taking some final pictures and so on. This was likely my last opportunity to lay my tracks in fresh powder for most of the remainder of the year. It seemed reasonable to savor it a bit.

Rare Opportunity

This past Friday offered up a rare home office day, and an even rarer opportunity to ride my trike for actual transportation.

The overwhelming majority of my riding is recreational. Though I’m on country roads most of the time, it’s on loops designed to get me back around to my start, and to enjoy the trip along the way. This is a reality of my work situation - I travel a lot, and none of it is within a reasonable ride distance from home. When I’m not off-site I work out of a home office, which is wonderful, but my spouse objects when I bring the trike inside to ride the 10 feet from the bedroom to the office...

Friday presented with the perfect confluence of location and opportunity - working from home, and enough open time to ride, rather than drive, to the post office.

It’s an eight-mile ride one-way, almost entirely on rural backroads. It’s about a half-hour round trip by car, all things considered, and takes somewhere between an hour and 10 minutes to an hour and a half cycling (depending upon the day and depending upon me).

I always enjoy riding, but there’s something extra-special to me when I get the opportunity to ride to an actual destination. This might sound odd to the folks who commute via pedals on a regular basis, but it makes for an additional feeling of purpose to the ride that I really enjoy.

Now, to be clear, I’m not trying to claim any particular level of virtue here. While I try to do what I can for the environment - driving fuel efficient cars, using LED lighting, etc - I don’t for a moment delude myself into thinking that this very occasional 16-mile trip even rates as a drop in the bucket in comparison to my routine motor vehicle usage. This is, in fact, one of the things that people often don’t think about with respect to country living - a natural consequence to being away from everything is that you have long distances to get to everything. You spend a lot of time in the car.

But that sense of purpose is there, and I enjoy it.

And so I gear up for the ride and get the trike ready, checking the bags to make sure I have enough room in there for any mail that I might be bringing back. I also check and double-check to make sure I have the mailbox key (which I have forgotten at least once on on of these forays). Then I hit the road with my sense of purpose in hand (or maybe in the bag - my hands are occupied with steering after all - have to re-think that metaphor) and head out.

I ride the same route that I drive for the trip, but it’s all different at cycling speeds. You get a chance to see the things along the way and enjoy them at a more human level. This can be, of course, both for the better and the worse.

The better is this hill, which appears early in to the third mile of the ride.

It’s a relative high point that drops rapidly into the valley carved by Bureau Creek. It is, unsurprisingly, the source of my top-speed measure for this ride (coming in at 34.55 gravity-assisted mph). It’s warmer, at 39°, but still winter, and the snow still sits along the sides of the road and banks of the creek.

The bad is the dogs which chase the trike - virtually every single time on this route - a mile or so afterward. They chase the car as well, when I drive this way, though the feeling is very different, as any cyclist knows. I’ve been riding in the country a significant portion of my life, and I’ve been chased by dogs many a time; You learn to contend with it. But I always worry about the dogs where this is allowed to occur. Whether car or bike, when they are chasing they are in the middle of the road, and there is no variation of this scenario that is safe for the animal. Growing up out here I lost two dogs to the road, so perhaps I’m particularly sensitive to this, but still...

A few miles later and I’m rolling up to the post office to check the mailbox. Lock the wheels on the trike, get the key from the bag (which I have ensured has room for any mail I might pick up), go inside and open the box to find... nothing.

This is not a terribly uncommon occurrence, opening the box and finding it empty. On most days, when I take some time out of the work schedule to drive to the mailbox I’m frustrated to find it bare, my efforts fruitless, my time wasted.

But this day is different. This day I got to ride, and ride with a sense of purpose. The fact that it is empty doesn’t take away from that. If anything, it means that at least I didn’t have to spend still more time sitting in my car just to find out there was nothing there.

This day I got to ride.

Tailwinds

So. Last week I wondered how windy was too windy to ride.

In a lot of ways that post was part of my process of trying to decide whether to brave the elements, or whether I finally had found an excuse (besides lightening) for not going out on my Sunday ride.

The thing is, you can only read so much about a person riding across Antarctica in higher winds and lower temperatures for days before all the mental whingeing about whether or not to head out for an hour or so seems, well, a little pathetic.

So - you know - I rode.

I decided to head out on the route that I’ve now come to call Rocks 8. This is the gravel route I put together to take advantage of snow cover and freezing mitigating the unpleasant effects of the gravel. I reasoned that it was a relatively brief route and remained close to home, so if safety became an issue I would be an easy rescue. And besides, once the warmer weather comes I will likely avoid the gravel portions of this route, so I might as well enjoy them while I can.

It’s a route that runs in a square, and that square, given the Midwest road grid patterns, runs on the cardinal compass points. This means that the eight mile route is about two miles in each direction - two miles south, two miles east, two miles north, etc. Suffice it to say that my ride maps are often, well, pretty dull.

The wind last Sunday was coming directly out of the west. Westerly winds are the predominant pattern in this area, and this day was point on. The wind speed during the ride, according to Cyclemeter, was 38 mph:

Cyclemeter offers up graphs of your ride speed across the miles of distance traveled, and then compares it to your "official" or reference ride (by default, it’s your first recorded ride on a given route). On the graph, the purplish dotted line is the reference ride, and the blue line is the current ride:

Can you guess which part of the ride it was during which I had the west-to-east tailwind?

I did a more in-depth analysis of the effect of the wind on my rides a while back, but it still amazes me somewhat how much of a difference it can make. The elevated section on the graph runs between mile two and three, smack in the 20-30mph range. It’s notable too that this section is entirely across gravel and, while not involving immense climbs, isn’t entirely flat either (which accounts for some of the up and down in speed). I’d be lying if I said I didn’t push a bit during this section - how could one not? Fast is fun! But for reference, my average speed for the year prior was 11.86mph, and the overwhelming majority of that was set on my Catrike Pocket, which is what I was riding for this outing as well.

You can see the headwind section as well across miles six and seven. My average speed for mile seven was 5.38mph. That’s better than walking, but not a lot, and really gives some credence to why Maria Leijerstam chose a trike for her Antarctic ride - you’re starting to get down to speeds where it would be difficult to stay upright on two wheels. For fun, the headwind also makes it hard to catch your breath at times, and throws bits of debris into your face.

It also brings the overall averages down to earth. Despite that section running between 20-30 mph, and a top speed of 30.60mph on mile three, the average speed for the route was only 8.95mph. This is still better than two minutes over my median speed for this route, but it illustrates how much the headwind cuts into the time.

At the end, though, you definitely know you had a workout. Maddeningly, Cyclemeter does not appear to take the wind into account with respect to calorie burn. How exactly it counts calories does not appear to be explained on its otherwise very detailed help section, but you have to enter your weight for it to work, so it seems to be based upon that vs. your ride speed and distance. For this brief, slow ride, then, it credits me with using 399 calories. I suspect that, in reality, I burned that or better during the headwind section alone.

Overall, tho, west to east, I’m not even sure the trike needed me...

How Windy is Too Windy...?

I begin my Sunday mornings in a similar fashion most weeks. I get up earlier than I intend (by force of habit), make some coffee and perform my ablutions, and think about where I will go for My Sunday Ride.

I try to get out to ride at least two days a week. I’d love to do more, and I do if the opportunity presents, but my goal for bare minimum is the two days. My Sunday Ride is an important component of that goal because Sundays are, all told, the day that I’m most free to get that ride in.

As I ponder a ride here this morning, however, that contemplation is accompanied by a soundtrack of howling and gusting wind. My iPhone’s weather app tells me that we are sitting at a wind speed of more than 30 miles an hour, and my ears are in general agreement with that assessment. All of which suggests the question: how windy is too windy to ride?

Any cyclist knows that the wind can have a huge effect on the degree of forward progress one experiences when riding. (I spent a little time going over my personal numbers on the effect of the wind here a little while back). Still, I’m not riding for transportation, I’m riding for my physical and mental health and the general enjoyment of the activity. And as far as that physical health part goes, the resistance a strong headwind offers is really just a bit of frosting on the cycling cake.

...right?

Having my Catrike does make a difference in this calculation, at least a bit. The lower profile nature of the trike does absolutely make the wind less of an issue, of course. This is part of the reason that Maria Leijerstam chose one for her record setting ride to the South Pole.

Of course, spending a little time reading about Maria Leijerstam’s ride across Antarctica makes one feel rather wimpy about the question one is asking for this very post. She was contending with 50mph winds and temperatures so low that the sweat was freezing in her boots. So, you know, it offers a bit of perspective there...

---

I realize, as I look back over the past couple of weeks that I’ve spent a lot of cognitive effort and writing time on complaining about the weather. I’d like to say that this is not my fault, and rather to lay the blame at the feet of, well...

...of February. That is, assuming February has feet.

Looking back over the past few years in Cyclemeter, tho, it’s clear that February has issues. While my amount of riding varies across time, the second month of the calendar year is routinely one of the lowest both in terms of riding outings and distance traveled. It is the shortest month, of course, so that may be a variable as well, but I suspect that a calculation of average distance per day across the months would also put February routinely at or near the bottom.

If it would just be more cooperative we’d get along so much better, February and I. But to be clear, this is all February‘s fault.

Be Careful What You Wish For

It’s clear that sometimes The Fates just like to give you a bite in the ass.

Of course, last week I wrote complaining that we were having the wrong kind of winter, just then in Northern Illinois. You can go back and look at that for details, but the gist is that everything was all:

... a patchwork of worn snow drifts, ice, and frozen mud underneath a steel-gray sky.

As I often do, a little while after writing and posting I geared up for my Sunday ride. I mean, I’m gonna complain about the weather, but that’s not going to keep me from getting out and riding. As my child has heard me opine on multiple occasions, if you wait for the perfect day, it will never get done.

By the time I had geared up, however, the snow gods had apparently read my post (I’m sure they have nothing better to do, right?) and decided to show me a thing or two. The snow had already begun to fall when I walked out to the garage to get my trike ready. Once I hit the road it was falling in earnest.

It quickly became the sort of weather I don’t typically do a road ride in, primarily because of reduced visibility - not mine, but that of drivers. But at that point I was already committed, so I pressed on.

I’d made the choice to go with my glasses and not goggles, which had... interesting results. I spent a lot of time clearing gathered moisture off of the glasses, which would have been the case with the goggles as well. The goggles would have prevented the ice buildup on my eyebrows, however...

That problem aside, however, it was everything you hope for from a winter ride - the peace and solitude of the snowfall, the crunch under the wheels (you really can’t overemphasize the delight of that sound), and a visual display that absolutely fits the description of winter wonderland.

It’s still, clearly, not something that the general public is ready for. The demonstration of that on this trip was provided by the car pulling up with the young man who lives down the road from me, rolling down the window and checking on me to make sure I was okay. I was halfway through the ride - well away from both our houses - so it was a chance encounter; I was clearly a sight he was not expecting to see.

Ultimately it was just under 14 miles on a familiar route with Old Man Winter thoughtfully providing just what I’d asked for. All at once.

But hey - the ice has since melted out of my eyebrows.

The Right Kind of Winter

I enjoy winter, as a general rule. I enjoy cycling in the cold, I like the crunch of snow under the wheels, seeing the flakes fall about me as I move down the road or trail. The changing of the landscape as the snow shifts and changes with the wind and temperature adds variety to what would otherwise seem monochromatic.

But it has to be the right kind of winter.

Over the past few days in Northern Illinois we’ve moved beyond the polar vortex, and had warming temperatures - so warm, in fact, that the abundance of snow that fell just before the severe cold has significantly receded - followed by a drop back below freezing. Now, what remains is a patchwork of worn snow drifts, ice, and frozen mud underneath a steel-gray sky. This is a part of winter that it’s harder to be enthusiastic about.

The warming and freezing leaves your typical uncleared cycling trails covered in a layer of uneven ice that can potentially be traversed, but is so unpleasant to ride over it resembles a roadway of randomly scattered rub strips. There is probably someone out there that wants to tackle that as a technical challenge, but I am not that someone. And this leaves me out exploring, on one of my regular ride days, city streets that are fine, as far as it goes but offer only, shall we say, uninspiring views of houses and yards.

It’s the general mood for the week, and for this morning. And it is, frankly, something that absolutely falls in the category of first world problems. I will get out and ride today. I will do so through the countryside that I enjoy. I will do it in the winter weather, which I also enjoy.

But I’d prefer that it be in the right kind of winter.

I can’t be the only one, can I?