2023 Tesla Model Y Long Range - 3 Months In - Efficiency / June 25, 2023 by Erin Wade

I am now three months in on ownership of my Tesla Model Y Long Range (MYLR). Seems like a good point to take a look in and see how things are going.

Usage

As I indicated originally, my primary purpose for this vehicle is as a work car, and that has been the bulk of its activity thus far. I’ve driven it back and forth to my primary worksite a handful of times - about a 60 mile round trip. I’ve been down to Springfield, IL on one occasion, and I’ve taken work trips into the wilds of Wisconsin as well, into the Janesville, Madison, and Milwaukee areas. My longest single-day round trip was 431.9 miles.

As of this writing the car has 3,649 miles on it. It had 15 miles on it when I picked it up, so I’ve put 3634 miles on the car myself.

That calculates out to 1211 miles per month, which puts me on track for an annual mileage of just over 14,500/year. This will probably seem like a lot to some people, but it’s actually in the neighborhood of about half of my pre-pandemic work mileage. I use cars pretty hard.

Charging and Costs

One of the biggest questions people will wonder about is what the car will cost to operate. After all, you are plugging it into your house electricity, so while there are no costs for gasoline, there is cost on the electric bill. And I know that many of us are not fans of our electric companies…

Costs for charging are reflected in two separate areas: Cost for home charging, and cost for charging on the road.

Home charging is how the car gets powered up for the overwhelming majority of my usage. I’ve established a pattern where, when I get home at the end of the day I pull the car into the garage and plug it in to the home charger. Most of the time I have the car set to charge up to 90% (this is Tesla’s recommendation), and when I know I will have a longer trip, I bump that up to 100%. The car easily charges overnight - probably the longest home charging session I’ve had, bringing the car up from 23% to 90% after a longer trip, took just over 6 hours. If that seems like a long time, keep in mind that it’s all during time that you aren’t using the car - it would just be sitting in the garage either way.

Total home charging cost for the first three months is approximately $108.62.

It’s approximate because I don’t yet know exactly what my electrical costs will be for the last 2/3 of June, so I’m estimating based on the month before, but while it varies, it’s generally pretty similar from month to month.

To put that in context of the electric bill itself, that means an increase in electricity cost of about $36.20/month. So the electric bill does go up (of course). But I’ll compare that to equivalent gas costs below.

The majority of my trips are well within the range of the car, and as such have not required a lot of charging on the road. Still, I have had some longer trips - five, to be specific - that have made it necessary to stop at a supercharger.

And everywhere I’ve gone has had more than adequate support for charging on the road. Tesla’s Supercharger network was a major reason behind my choice of the MYLR, and it’s proven out thus far. With one exception, which was ultimately a learning experience for me, I’ve had no trouble locating a charger when needed, and often times I’ve found that there are options of more than one along the way. In my five stops I’ve only had one instance where the charger I plugged into did not appear to be working, and the one next to it did. And frankly, this is comparable to my experience with gas stations, where it’s not all that unusual to pull up to an open pump only to discover a bag over the handle, and realize that the pump was “open” because it’s out of service.

That learning experience? I learned that you want to be sure to have some information about the charger location before you go there. Because they are different from gas stations - no need for tanks in the ground - they can be just about anywhere. Often they’ll be in the parking lot of a hotel or a grocery store for example.

The navigation system in the car will guide you to the location, which is great the majority of the time. But on one occasion I followed the navigation system, and when it said that I’d arrived there was… nothing. I couldn't see any chargers in the area, nor an obvious spot for them - no large parking lots, for example. I drove around the block, up and down a couple of side streets, and just saw nothing.

Then I pulled over and googled the site I was at. It turned out that the charger was on the third floor of the parking garage I was driving around. Once I sorted that it was a non-issue. I drove up, charged, and it was fine. But I know now that I want to get the lay of the land ahead of time when I’m going to be stopping in an unfamiliar place.

This is not hard to do, incidentally. The navigation system figures in the charging stops when you put in your destination. You can easily know in advance where it will recommend that you stop. And it’s pretty conservative - it looks to me like it tries to keep you up around 10% or more at each charging stop, so you aren’t running on empty if you are having trouble figuring out where the charger is.

In fact, it’s so conservative that I have, on multiple occasions, turned off the charging points on the map (it lets you do this), and found that I can actually get home without making the charging stop it is recommending (albeit with a lower battery charge than some people might be comfortable with). They clearly want to ensure people don’t run dry on the road.

In terms of the charging experience itself, it’s been just fine. People sometimes express concern about how much longer it takes to charge a car versus filling up with gas. The thing to keep in mind here is that, in general, you are not filling up. Most of the time at a Supercharger you are just adding enough juice to get home. My charges have generally been less than 15 minutes long, which frankly just leaves enough time to get a bathroom stop in, and maybe grab a bottle of water. On one occasion I had lunch while the car was charging, and the car was done well before I was done eating (risking an “idle fee”, which was graciously waived because it was my first time).

So, all that said, what has it cost to charge on the road? $71.13

Over five stops that comes out to an average of $14.23/stop

Add that $71.13 into the $108.62 for home charging, and my total “fuel” cost for the car over the first three months comes out to $179.75, or just under $60/month ($59.91).

Comparison to Gas Equivalent

My prior primary car (which I still have) was a 2011 Subaru Outback with the 3.6L flat six-cylinder engine. I’d argue that this is a very comparable vehicle. The MYLR and the Outback are comparable in size (the other reason I chose the MYLR - room for my trike) and cargo capacity (the Tesla technically has more room, but that’s spread around multiple cubbies; the Outback is arguably more flexible for carrying large items). So I’ll use that for comparison.

Average regular gas price in the Midwest for April and May 2023 (June isn’t available yet) was $3.415/gallon. My average in the Subaru was 22.77 mpg. To travel the same 3,634 miles in the Subaru would have used 159.6 gallons. At $3.415/gal that would generate a cost of $545.03 over 3,634 miles. That’s $181.68/month.

So - I’ve saved $365.28 in fuel costs over the first three months of ownership, or about $121.77/month. Stated differently, the Subaru costs three times more to fuel up than the MYLR.

I should also note that these numbers are based on my mpg in the Subaru. The EPA rates the 2011 Outback at 20mph combined city/highway. I tend to drive for mileage, and I have a higher than usual percentage of highway driving than most. Your mileage, quite literally, may vary.

Needless to say, I’m pretty happy with all of this. I’m saving money in fuel costs, spending a lot less time at gas stations, and I have a vehicle that is always fueled up when I leave the house. Thanks to the Tesla Supercharger network I’ve experienced nothing like range anxiety - the car can get me to where I need to go.

I’ll write more about the general experience of owning and driving the car down the road. It’s probably pretty clear from what I have here that I’m pretty positive about the experience, but it isn’t perfect - there are flaws, and we’ll discuss those too.

Will a Recumbent Trike Fit in a Tesla Model Y? / May 28, 2023 by Erin Wade

When I decided I wanted to go electric for my work vehicle, one of the top items on my list was having a vehicle that my Catrike Expedition would fit inside of. Often, when I travel for work, the end of the work day provides opportunity to ride in places that I wouldn't otherwise, so I needed my work car to facilitate that.

To sort this out I spent some time online trying to find the cargo dimensions for the (5 seat) Model Y. The challenge is that most sites that report this information give you some variation of cubic dimensions - cubic inches, feet, liters, etc. Some of them cleverly use things like suitcases or beer boxes. Oddly, none of them list how many Catrike Expeditions you can carry…

The thing is that knowing the cargo area is 68 cubic feet doesn’t tell me anything about the shape of the cargo area or the size of the opening. If you can’t get the trike into the cargo area, it doesn’t matter whether it’s big enough otherwise.

Fortunately I found the Tesmanian site, which handily provides pretty much all the dimensions - in inches and centimeters - that you could ask for, including the height of the hatch opening. In sum, with the rear seats down, the dimension are:

Length: 78.7” (200cm)
Width at narrowest point: 37” (94cm)
Opening Height: 27.6” (70cm)

2023 Tesla Model Y Cargo Area Dimensions

My Catrike Expedition’s measurements, when set up for me are:

Length: 80” (203.2cm)
Width: 31” (78.74cm)
Height: 26.5” (67.31cm) at the top of the rear rack

2019 Catrike Expedition Width (and yes, it needs to be washed)

2019 Catrike Expedition Lenght and Height

So, by measurements alone, I knew it should fit, with the expectation that the rear wheel would come between the front seats, and that I would fold the neckrest down (I have to do that in my Outback as well). And I’d seen someone post a picture of their trike in the back of a Model Y on a Facebook group some time ago, though I don’t recall where it was and I wasn’t able to turn it up again with a search.

For some reason I did not take the trike along with me when I went for my test drive of the Model Y. I did do that when I got my Mobile Trike Garage (2011 Subaru Outback), and it was great because then I knew without a doubt that it would fit.

Fortunately, it does:

Catrike Expedition on board - Trike in Tesla Model Y

Although the Model Y and the Subaru Outback are of similar exterior dimensions, the Model Y is narrower in the cargo area. The Model Y also has a sloping back end, while the Outback, true to its station wagon nature, has a roofline that runs parallel to the ground nearly all the way back to the hatch. So I was a little concerned as to how well the trike would manage with the hatch closed:

It fits just fine. Tesla uses large expanse of glass along the roof and hatch (which is why you see sky at the top of the picture). It’s visually dramatic, of course, but it also adds for considerably more vertical interior space than you would get in the same car with a traditional headliner.

And as I’m showing it here, the rear wheel does come up in-between the seats just a bit:

It isn’t far enough into the cabin to be very physically intrusive. The main downside is that the rear cargo bags completely block the view out the rear view mirror. However, the view out the back is really just a slit anyway - that sloped hatch glass is so steep that it only provides a tiny opening. But the car has back up cameras on the rear hatch and the sides, so this is largely a non-issue.

In my Outback I deal with the rear view issue by putting the Expedition in at an angle, horizontally speaking - essentially, putting the rear wheel in between the back of the front seat and the door. I hadn’t given that a try yet, so I went ahead and gave it a shot.

And it works. I could not get it to fit in and safely close the hatch with it angled to the driver’s seat in my driving position, but I could do it with the passenger seat moved up a bit:

And that gives back the tiny view out the rear:

You get the rear view back with the trike at an angle. And we also learn that I cannot figure out how to get the phone to focus on the image to the rear…

I’d prefer it behind the driver’s seat because then it doesn’t obscure the view out the passenger rear windows - e.g. where you look when you finish passing someone on the left. But again, the Model Y has side-view/blind spot cameras to help with that. And the front seat is not too far forward - at 5’8” I can sit in it comfortably, and the only likely passengers with me and the trike in the car at the same time are My Lovely Wife or my offspring, and both are shorter than I am (we are not tall people). And with the trike at an angle there’s a little more usable cargo space in the back as well.

So - long story short: It fits! Any trike the same size as the Catrike Expedition or smaller should be able to fit as well - for example, I’m certain MLW’s Catrike Pocket will fit also.

A couple of things to note here - the cargo measurements are without the aftermarket cargo area protective cover shown in the car here. The cover does eat up a bit of vertical space, but the trike still fits. And I will note that I’m reporting the length from the Tesmanian website above, but I don’t know how they decide where the end of the cargo area is at the front end - my trusty Stanley tape measure makes it seem a little longer, and obviously the front seat positions will make a difference as well.

I Did a Thing… / April 30, 2023 by Erin Wade

I did a thing…

At the end of March I took delivery of a 5-seat 2023 Tesla Model Y Long Range in Deep Blue Metallic.

Why Electric?

Although it many be difficult to tell based on this site alone, I do have interests outside of cycling. I have been a car guy for my entire life, from playing with matchbox cars and watching my dad restore a 1961 Corvette in my early childhood, to a string of similarly oriented cars of my own, starting with a 1977 Camaro and including a Triumph Spitfire, a pair of BMW’s, a Mazda RX-7, a Honda Civic Si, and a 2006 Mini Cooper S as a partial list.

And I’ve been technology oriented for nearly as long, from programming my Big Trak and typing in gaming code from the back of magazines into my Commodore 64 to the Mac Studio on my desk and the iPad Pro I’m writing this on.

(I’m also painfully aware that both of the lists in those two paragraphs also illustrate the fact that I am, perhaps, not a spring chicken).

All of that means that I have absolutely been one of those people closely watching the development and progress of electric cars for a very long time. Of course, for a long time “progress” mostly meant seeing whatever vehicle Ed Begley Jr was prepared to suffer with and then watching General Motors do something magnificent with the EV1 and then destroy that thing. In short, tho I was naturally interested in them, they generally did not fit into the performance-oriented focus that I leaned towards. Slow machines, with limited range and utility, meant they were essentially a curiousity.

All of that changed with the emergence of Tesla. As anyone with any interest in this area likely already knows, the original Tesla Roadster) was a true game changer. It was truly quick, and had a useful, real-world range. Granted, it was expensive and tiny, based on the Lotus Elise, but it was a signal that real, useful electric cars were finally a possibility, and they didn’t have to be torture chambers that only quirky, lanky blonde (and talented) actors were interested in.

And the future that it signaled is happening around us now, with multiple models from multiple car makers, including real, interesting vehicles from stodgy old manufacturers who, unlike in the 1970’s and 80’s, aren’t waiting for the competition to swamp them (tho, interestingly enough, that very competition - the Japanese manufacturers - appear to be doing the very thing now that the American car companies did then).

With all of that, tho I am still a car guy at heart, I find it nearly impossible to generate any interest in a new car that isn’t electric at this point. A decade ago the new Prius, for example, which is much prettier and much more performance oriented than its predecessors, would have been of great interest for this enthusiast who also historically does a lot of driving for work.

Now: Meh. I can’t generate any enthusiasm for it. As the electric car market has begun to truly grow, the idea that my next car would be electric began to seat itself in my mind and just get stronger and stronger. So, with the pandemic winding down and the likely need for increased time on the road presenting itself, it was time to start looking.

Why Tesla and Why the Model Y?

There are a lot of good electric vehicles on the market now, and several more to come. I wanted something with good range - ideally something that would tip over the 300-mile mark, because although I have historically traveled quite a bit for work, most of my round trips are in that neighborhood or less.

I also wanted all-wheel drive. Northern Illinois doesn’t get the snow that it used to, but when it does, it’s often dumped in a multiple-inch load that can significantly hamper the ability to travel.

And I wanted something that could carry some cargo and, more specifically, something that could carry my Catrike Expedition. This was specifically going to be primarily a work car, but I often take my trike along with me to take advantage of riding opportunities in new and different places. And when I do I want it to be stored inside the vehicle.

These three simple criteria actually narrowed the pool of options considerably. While multiple manufacturers advertise electric vehicles with 300+ mile ranges that they are calling “SUV’s”, spending some time at the Chicago Auto Show quickly illustrates that the term has become primarily a marketing device. In short, a vehicle is now an SUV simply because that’s what the manufacturer calls it.

Ford Mustang Mach-E - in what universe does this look like an SUV?

Ford calls the Mustang Mach-E an SUV, for example. But in reality, it’s cargo compartment is tiny by SUV standards, even with the rear seats folded down.

Hyundai Ioniq 5 (top) and Kia EV6 (bottom). Are these SUV’s? That’s what the manufacturers call them.

The Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the Kia EV6 are better, but they are really just big hatchbacks. At 80” long, the trike demands a bit of length in the rear, and some time with a tape measure at the car show suggests that the Ioniq 5 cargo area probably isn’t long enough for the trike, and the EV6, which is built on the same platform, has similar issues.

I did, however, consider trying them out - as in, driving myself to a Hyundai and/or Kia dealership with my trike and asking if I could put it inside. This may seem extreme, but the Subaru dealership didn’t flinch when I did that very thing a few years ago (though, given the typical customer base for Subarus, this may have been unique to them).

But I didn’t end up doing that because there was another problem: Neither of those cars have a 300+ mile range with all-wheel drive.

It turns out that you have to look very closely at the manufacturers specs to sort this out, because both of those cars advertise a range of “up to” 300+ miles. But as soon as you configure them with all-wheel drive that range drops below the mark.

So - the Mach-E is tiny inside, and the Ioniq 5 and EV6 don’t have a 300-mile range with All-Wheel Drive. This pretty much left Tesla and Rivian under consideration.

The Rivian R1T (truck) and R1S (SUV) are magnificent vehicles. They meet the range requirements and can haul my trike. And as a bonus, time again with my tape measure indicates that they would also fit into my relatively small garage. And I’ve configured versions of both vehicles on their website many times. I also like the way they look - a very honest utilitarian look, but still having that futuristic, tech-edge to them.

Rivian R1T (top) and R1S (bottom). These are undeniably utility vehicles, but at a price.

But there are issues to overcome, not the least of which is that they are very costly. Add to that a long waiting list for delivery, and concerns about the longevity of this very new company - it’s currently working on ramping up production, and is not remotely profitable. I was afraid even if I could have cleared the financial hurdle, I’d then end up with a very expensive vehicle with no manufacturer backing to have it serviced or repaired. I hope they make it, and they are on my list for a future (likely used) vehicle, but now did not feel like the time.

Also - with all of these options, there was the question of the charging network. We do have charging stations in the region, at intervals that are workable for most of my likely travel destinations. However, as someone who routinely reads and watches videos about the state of the electric vehicle ecosystem, there are ongoing issues with people arriving at third-party charging stations and finding none of the chargers work. So, say I did shoe-horn my trike into a Kia EV-6 somehow - there would be a good chance that I’d make a needed stop on the way home, just to find that I was now stranded, unable to charge.

The one charging network that does not have that issue is… can you guess?

Yup - Tesla. And from left to right, those are the models S, 3, X, and Y. Or: S3XY…

Yup Tesla. And their network is much more plentiful than any of the other options. So that’s where I looked. Specifically, I focused on the Model Y Long Range. With an EPA-rated range of 330 miles with all-wheel drive, and verified cargo dimensions sufficient to hold my trike, it met all three criteria. Add in the fact that, like all Teslas, this thing goes like snot - the Long Range has a 0-60 time of 4.8 seconds according to Tesla (and Car and Driver got to 60 in 4.4 seconds), and it was a match made in heaven.

I did hedge my bets here a bit. Since the Tesla is to be primarily a work car, I did keep my mobile trike garage - my Subaru Outback. I’ll use the Subaru for most of my non-work travel, so it will be the primary trike hauler for going to trails and events, as well as for all other family and utility uses. But, of course, it’s also a backup if I have any issues with the Tesla or need to take a road trip that I don’t think can be managed with the electric car. I’ve done a lot of homework on this, so I don’t think that’s going to be an issue I run into much. But I’m aware that I’m also an edge case for this use right now, as I’m in a rural location and would historically travel extended distances for work. I’ve had the car for just over a month now, so I’ll follow this up with a discussion about what I’ve learned and how it’s going in the near future.

FINALLY! / January 22, 2023 by Erin Wade

This was the view as I prepped for a Sunday ride:

When I got up this morning I’d been surprised by the blanket of white that covered the landscape. The winters here in northern Illinois have been notable for decreased snowfall and fewer cold periods for some time now - a change in weather patterns that caused me to switch from cross country skiing to winter cycling nearly a decade ago - and this winter has been particularly recalcitrant (two days of recreationally useless “bomb cyclone” aside), with little snow and high temperatures hovering above freezing for most of January. If it seems odd to complain about a winter season that is too warm, I will admit that I’ve absolutely taken advantage of the additional riding opportunities the unusual temperatures have allowed. But still, as a year-round cyclist, one looks forward to actual winter riding.

All of which is why, when I looked out the window and saw the coating of white, what ran through my head was: FINALLY!

I did a quick check of the forecast and saw that, while I was looking at snow out my window then, the high temperature for the day promised to be at least 33°F. This meant my window for a real snowy ride was limited. I’d have to get out ahead of the warmer afternoon hours, and ideally ahead of the snow plows (I try not to share the road with them). So I geared up and headed out.

I took a route I call Rocks 8 - an eight mile loop, half of which is gravel. This would ensure that, at least half of the time I would be unlikely to share the road with much of anyone, much less a plow. It also had this benefit:

That’s the first section of gravel road, there in the picture. If you are looking at it and thinking that it’s hard to tell that it’s gravel, well that’s pretty much the entire point. A good snowfall has the delightful effect of smoothing over the rocky surface, making it much more pleasant to ride with my road-oriented Catrike Expedition. I pretty much only ride this route when the roads are covered in snow.

Because I got out early, the snow was still falling, and the temperature was still abo freezing, but not by a lot, which means that it sticks to pretty much everything…

But it all means that I get the opportunity to see roads that I don’t typically travel down any time of year…

And ever-so briefly leave my somewhat unique footprint in the ephemeral snow.

Great Sauk State Trail - Sauk City to Devil’s Lake State Park, Wisconsin / November 27, 2022 by Erin Wade

It’s a personal tradition to take a Black Friday ride each year. It just seems like the right thing to do to work off the caloric debauchery of the Thanksgiving Day. And, most years, we are spending our holiday with family in the Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin, so it’s also an opportunity to spend time in one of the most beautiful landscapes the Midwestern US has to offer… I landed on the Great Sauk State Trail, which has its trailhead in Sauk City, and travels northward from there up along the Wisconsin river, then thru woods and prairie to the edge of Devil’s Lake State Park. All told it’s about 10 miles in one direction, making for a nice 20-mile round trip.

And - vital for Wisconsin for this time of year - it’s paved from end to end…

Music City Bikeway - Nashville TN / October 23, 2022 by Erin Wade

I ventured down to the Music City last weekend. This was a whirlwind tour - 16 hours of driving for about a day and a half actually in the city itself. But since I was driving down in my Mobile Trike Garage, of course I had my trike along.

I kid, but this was done on purpose. Once it was clear that I was, in fact, going to be heading down to Nashville I popped open the TrailLink app to see what riding opportunities would present.

It turns out that there are several trails in the region indicated on TrailLink:

I am not terribly familiar with the region - I’ve visited the area once before, several years ago, and driven through it once since. Given that, ideally I wanted something relative close to where I would be staying, but I also wanted a trail with some distance and, ideally, one that wasn’t directly in a visually urban area.

Seem like a tall order? It did to me as well, and I was prepared to compromise on one point or another if needs be. As I started looking through the trail options, it seemed like distance might be where the compromise would lie. Many of the trails on the map were 1-3 miles or so in length, with a few coming in at under a mile. In addition, many of the longer ones seemed to be outside of the immediate Nashville area.

Two of them in the area were a little longer - the Shelby Bottoms Greenway and the Stones River Greenway at 6.4 and 10.0 miles respectively. And the word “Greenway” implied that I would not be riding in amongst tall buildings or through industrial sites. And, as I dug into the map itself, preparing to decide between the two options, I found a bonus: They connect to each other.

The trailhead where both trails meet is in Two Rivers Park (presumably the Cumberland and Stones Rivers are the nominal two rivers in this case).

This is a good spot to begin - ample parking, even on a Saturday morning. Unload and roll down the trail, and choose your course - left for Shelby Bottoms, right for Stones River. I took a left.

My plan was to ride through and essentially do a loop of Shelby Bottoms, then come back and ride along at least a portion of the Stones River trail - at least far enough to cross the Stones river itself and maybe to ride along it a bit.

What I found was… not what I expected. On the map the Shelby Bottoms trail looks like it is essentially an extended city park:

And that is what I was expecting. The reality was different. And better.

As you leave Two Rivers Park you enter the Shelby Bottoms trail by passing over a long bridge:

You realize, as you cross the bridge, that this area is referred to as a “bottoms” for a reason. On the bridge you are well above the Cumberland River, and you get quite a view of that…

…and as a result, you are well above the trail system as well.

In fact, the trail curves around as it slopes downward to bring you to the Bottoms, and if you look up at the bridge you’ve just crossed, you get a real sense of the scale of things:

Once I got down below it quickly became clear that this trail was not going to be passing through the standard city park that I was expecting. The terrain this smooth, asphalt trail winds and twists itself through is a real woodland. The trees to either side of the trail are dense enough that you can’t see more than a few dozen feet into them in either direction.

Going in, for example, I knew that the Cumberland River was not far to my right, but I could only occasionally catch the briefest glimpse of water between the leaves. And I wasnt the only one who was convinced that I was in the woods:

I snapped this (admittedly poor) picture as I approached the deer. When I got up to where it had been standing, it had run into the trees, and was able to go deeply enough that I could no longer see it.

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As you go further into this section of the park, the woods also open up to other environments, including different types of grasslands and wetlands. Some of these are right on the trail…

…and others require that you venture off the beaten path:

These areas do require that you leave your wheels behind and proceed on foot. I’ll admit here that I didn’t notice the sign that said that until *after* I exited the trail, which I felt a little bad about - I try to respect the guidelines and rules in the places I go. And in retrospect it didn’t surprise me either - on many parts of the trail the tree branches cross the trail so low that they’d take out anyone on an upright machine. On the trike I was comfortably below them, giving a cool tunnel effect that I wasn’t supposed to be enjoying.

After I’d explored essentially the bulk of the trail to the south of the bridge, I returned to it and crossed over to follow the Stones River Greenway. This was also lovely territory, though it actually turned out to be more of what I’d been expecting from the Shelby Bottoms trail, as it ventures past a golf course…

…as well as briefly along city streets, soccer fields, and this:

Google Maps says that this fence is preventing entrance - and they *really* don’t want you in there, says the razor wire across the top - to the *KR Harrington Water Treatment Plant*. This would not be the first, nor likely the last, trail I’ve ridden that passes a water treatment plant. To their credit, however, I had to ask Google about it because there was nothing about the sight or smell to give away the purpose of the place. This is probably for the best all around, given that it is right next to the soccer fields.

From there, though, it crosses Stones River…

…and things quickly move back into woodland, albeit not as dense as in Shelby Bottoms. A little further along and it opens into what I initially thought was a road - it had a car parked at the end of it - lined by a stone fence. Following it a little ways found me first seeing this cabin:

And then, across from it, this magnificent home:

The cabin appeared to be a relic, but I couldn’t tell if the home was occupied. It turned out these are both historic sites. Eversong cabin was moved to this location in the 1930’s, and the home is historic Stone Hall.

My second crossing of Stones River followed shortly those sights, where the trail again opens out onto a more urban setting along a roadway. Still, I wanted to make that second crossing before turning around, and I did so.

I was glad that I did, though, because I got another view of the Stones River…

Ah the Stones, I love the Stones… Fred and Barney…

And probably the best possible view of Eversong Cabin.

This ride was a very pleasant surprise, in multiple ways. It was, as I’ve said, not at all what I expected going in, having far more natural engagement than I’d anticipated. Unlike our trails in illinois, there are real elevation changes along it, particularly in and around the Stones River, enough so that I had to drop down to the small front ring (not a common occurrence back home). Most of the trail is in excellent shape, and the scope of the trail system is truly impressive. If I were an information worker who could pick and choose my geographic location, this trail would make me strongly consider relocating to the Nashville area.

I’m clearly not the only one who feels that way. I was on this ride on a Saturday morning, and I had *a lot* of company. This was particularly true on the Shelby Bottoms Greenway, but it was rare in any area to be alone for more than a minute or two.

The volume of usage made me aware of something else that I didn’t necessarily notice right away. Because of the number of people on the trial, my little bike bell got a pretty good workout. But when passing people - even folks with headphones in - I didn’t get nearly the frequency of startled pedestrians that you see back here at home. I realized, after a bit, that this is because these trails are unusually wide. When I would pass, it was with a wide enough berth that I wasn’t really surprising people. Just one more thoughtful bit of the trail’s construction.

Sugar River Trail - New Glarus to Albany Wildlife Area (Wisconsin) / October 9, 2022 by Erin Wade

I took an opportunity recently to explore a trail in a region that those of us here in the Land of Lincoln refer to as being “up north” - in the glaciarized regions of southern Wisconsin.

The Sugar River trail is a rail trail that runs some 22.7 miles from the village of New Glarus southward to the small town of Brodhead.

If you are from the central Midwest, and enjoy beer outside of the standard fare, the name “New Glarus” may be familiar to you. Among the things the the village is known for is the fact that it is the location for New Glarus Brewing Company, a craft brewery perhaps best known for Spotted Cow, a delightful farmhouse ale that used to be available on both sides of the Illinois/Wisconsin border.

That’s right - used to be available. About twenty years ago the brewery pulled back from Illinois, citing struggles meeting demand for their beers within Wisconsin. This, of course, leaves those of us from south of the border having to engage in Smokey & The Bandit style escapades just to enjoy a cold glass of Spotted Cow.

It’s a bit of a disservice to the village itself that I’m primarily referring to the brewery. It’s a quaint and interesting place in and of itself, being founded in 1845 by settlers from the Canton of Glarus in Switzerland (hence the name)…

…and the downtown itself is focused on that Swiss heritage, with buildings and multiple fairs, festivals, and restaurants related to it. Depending upon where you are at in the town, it’s possible to feel a bit like you are actually in a Swiss village.

But for myself, I was not there for tourism or beer - I was on a different mission, as the downtown also hosts the trailhead for the Sugar River trail. Still - I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the opportunity to pick up some fresh Spotted Cow from the source didn’t factor in - it would have cut at least a half-hour off my drive time to start in Brodhead instead. And I always enjoyed picturing myself as The Bandit (though - let’s be honest - my Mobile Trike Garage is probably closer to The Snowman’s semi than it is a Trans Am).

The Trail

As I mentioned above, the trail head is situated in downtown New Glarus, between Railroad Street and Route 69. When you first pull on to Railroad Street there is a public parking area along the street, which is small and - on the weekend day I was there - completely full. Head just a little further north, past the old train depot, and you’ll find a larger parking lot that is much more accommodating.

Satellite arial view of the parking situation

That train depot is actually the New Glarus Chamber of Commerce, and handily offers up public restrooms and a drinking fountain. It’s also the place where you can purchase your state trail pass.

What’s a state trail pass, you ask? Well, it’s a pass you purchase so you can - you know - use the trail.

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It’s a five dollar fee for a day pass, and $25 for an annual pass. Its required for anyone “16 years of age or older biking, cross country skiing, horseback riding, or inline skating” on Wisconsin State Trails. Hiking and walking is free of charge, as apparently would be the use of quad skates, given the specificity of the description on the state’s website for the fee.

Oh - and there’s a fine if you are caught without a pass. Of course, it’s only $5, so one might choose to take one’s chances. For myself, I figure the fee helps fund the trail, so I’m glad to pay it.

Starting out you ride past the depot, that historical marker (above) describing the origin of the town, and this very stylized map sign:

This first part of the trail is asphalt, and rides past a pizza restaurant that appeared to be pretty popular, with lots of bikes parked alongside it. The asphalt is… not in great condition, but fortunately it yields to what the Wisconsin DNR website says is a “crushed stone” surface. And - technically, if you crush stone enough, I supposed it will eventually become dirt, which is what this trail is.

“Crushed Stone” - I mean really, really, crushed…

But in either case, it’s mostly in pretty good shape, and in better shape than the asphalt that proceeds it.

As you get further into it, particularly in the shaded areas (which is most of the trail) it turns into a two-track, with a grassy center.

One of the reviewers on the Trail Link app cited this as a reason why it it was not a good trail for recumbent trikes, but I would disagree. Over time I’ve adopted the technique of keeping the rear and right wheel on the track (or just the rear if the track is too narrow), and the left on the grass for trails like this, and I find it works pretty well. The reviewer also suggests that this makes the trail slow going, but I averaged 10.55mph for my 26 mile round trip, which is comparable to, or better than my speeds on other, similar trails such as the Hennepin Canal Trail here in Illinois, or the Military Ridge Trail in southwestern Wisconsin. In general, softer surfaces are slower. That noted, I did come across a handful of small, hidden potholes in the center lane. Those are a little less enjoyable when they occur.

But then, I wasn’t on this trail for speed. I was there to be out in nature, and to enjoy the views.

Not at all sure what that bridge is for - but it was cool to see.

But probably my favorite section in the territory I covered was this one, with an impressive rock wall just to the right side of the trail heading southward:

I was between two… well, several ferns. There were a lot of ferns.

It has an opening or indentation towards the top that, under other circumstances (say, not being in cycling gear) I would have been tempted to climb up to:

I also took a panoramic shot of it to get more of the scene into it - it takes everything in, if a little distorted by the effect:

There are also multiple bridge crossings, water, and marsh views:

Several water crossings (hence the bridges)

The trail passes through the town of Monticello, which promises food, picnic areas, and an ATM, amount other things.

I did not stop, but reviews of the trail generally say positive things here. Shortly following that crossing there are public restroom facilities, as well as a drinking fountain:

Restrooms and a urine-replenishment system

This section of the trail also has an intersection with the Badger State Trail, which comes up from the Illinois border, and continues from here northeasterly towards Madison.

I found this very cool, mostly because, at least outside of the greater Chicago area, Illinois doesn’t really have much by way of trails that intersect one another. Gives one thoughts of the possibilities - if I turned left I could hang out in Madison, right I could head towards home. Of course, with no camping gear along for the ride, I’d have to sleep on the trike…

Speaking of crossings, this trail does cross multiple roads. This is a common component of trails in Wisconsin, in my experience, so it’s par for the course. Some of them have interesting names…

…and, aside from Route 69, which you cross after the first mile, the roads were not heavily traveled.

The trail also has mile markers to help mark your progress. They appear to have been posted somewhat… casually - perhaps based on where they’d be easy to insert - as opposed to with an eye towards accuracy. I say this because I found that they matched my GPS petty closely at first, the agreement began to stray further and further - off by almost two-tenths of a mile by marker 12. Not a big deal, but a curious thing to see.

I turned around when I’d reached the 13-mile point, which placed me close to a bridge and over some water in the Albany Wildlife Area. For my purposes this was a manageable distance for the time I’d allotted for the ride, with a 26-mile trip getting me back ahead of nightfall.

This appears to be a popular trail - I came across multiple riders coming from both directions, many - though certainly not all - on mountain bikes with e-assist. There were also a few hikers along the trail. It’s a lovely ride, but it’s not a solitary one.

Oh - and what about the beer?

Would you expect that a brewery with a local store and gift shop in a Swiss-village-style tourism-oriented village would be closed for weekends during Octoberfest?

Neither would I, and we’d both be wrong. I drove back towards Illinois happy about the trail, but sadly without any Wisconsin-only suds to accompany me. Suffice it to say: if you want to ride the trail and go to the brewery, schedule your trip for a weekday and check the hours on their website ahead of time.

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

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

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

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

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

On their website, Garmin says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Garmin Bike Mount, Quick Release, Quarter Turn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hennepin Canal Trail End to End - Lessons Learned / August 7, 2022 by Erin Wade

At the end of June of this year I took a ride along the Hennepin Canal Trail from the trailhead at Bureau Junction to the western end - or what I thought was the western end (more on that a little further down) - of the Hennepin Canal Trail and back.

This three day, 150+ mile ride, involving two overnight stays at Geneseo Campground in Geneseo, and took me across the Mississippi into downtown Davenport, Iowa, was my first real foray into trikepacking. The closest I’d come to it before this was car camping for the overnight stay at the Hilly Hundred last year, but that didn’t require me to carry everything on my ride. All in all I think I was fairly well prepared for the trip, but there were definitely a few things to learn from it as well.

Distances

As those who are clever with the maths will already have sorted out, my ride was set at about 50 miles per day. Or at least that was the average across the three. It was a little lopsided in practice, with 48-mile distances on days 1 and 3, and 58 miles on day two.

I’ve taken many 50~ish mile rides over the past few years, and I’ve gotten to the point at which, while it still feels like a long ride, this type of distance isn’t daunting. And those distances usually take me around four and a half hours, including a couple of breaks for snacks and to get up off the trike and move around.

I knew the canal trail would be slower - it always is. The softer surfaces over the first two-thirds of it just make for lower speeds. I thought I’d mentally compensated for that.

But I went into the ride planning to take my time, to stop and take pictures, pose the trike strategically…

…because this was supposed to be fun and relaxing. But I didn’t account for the amount of time this would add. So - when I got just past the halfway point on day one and realized that I was going to be running out of daylight for setting up my tent at the campground, what had been a very enjoyable ride up to that point now became one where I felt I had to push and make distance. What had been fun rapidly became more like being at work, which was the opposite of what I’d intended.

So - for future overnight rides, I think I’ll set the distances in relation to travel time a little shorter to account for that, especially on any day where I have to set up camp at the end of the day. Better, it seems, to have a little extra down time at camp than to be pushing to get there ahead of sunset.

Equipment

Overall, I have to say that the equipment that I put together for my trip performed flawlessly. Everything worked exactly as designed.

The Peak meals were all good, and with one exception - Chicken Teriyaki and Rice - I would actually qualify them as excellent. I will be bringing them along on future trips, cycling or otherwise.

The little Jetboil camp stove worked as designed, rapidly heating up water for those meals and for coffee, making for multiple satisfying camp meals. It was also efficient - I made four meals and two travel mugs worth of coffee across the three days, and did not even use up the first fuel cell.

I brought along three portable batteries to charge devices, as well as cables to charge the devices and the batteries themselves. This was overkill. Because my campsite had electricity I was able to charge my battery, and one turned out to be more than enough. I could have saved a little weight in that area. Otherwise I used nearly everything I added for the trip.

MLW bought me a clothesline, which was great for hanging clothes that I’d rinsed out from day one, and a little battery fan with a light on it which did an excellent job of moving air in my single-person tent. This was a good thing too, because I ended up spending a lot more time than I planned in the tent on the morning of day three.

Which brings me to the only equipment concern that I encountered - the tent.

One single-person bright orange tent - check!

I say “concern” here, because the tent also performed nearly flawlessly. It held me and had enough room to provide protection for some of my things that I wanted in out of the weather. Paired with the lightweight inflatable pad I brought along it was comfortable - the all mesh top, paired with the little fan allowed for airflow and star gazing in the night, and the separate rain fly provided cover and protection from the elements when it was needed. It did develop a small leak during the heavy storms, but nothing unmanageable, and which probably could be resolved with a little seam sealer (which one might argue I should have applied before packing it anyway). It worked well, it worked as designed.

It’s the design itself that I’m having second thoughts about. It protected me well, even during storms. But it was clearly designed just for you to sleep in. Having to spend several waking hours inside it because of the rain pointed out to me that you cannot sit up in it. This resulted in a lot of time leaning on one elbow and then the next, swapping when the pain was finally too much to bear. For future overnight rides I may need to invest in something slightly larger to allow for the option of sitting upright.

The Trike

My ride for this adventure was my 2019 Catrike Expedition. Back when I bought it in the summer of 2019 I’d ordered it with this sort of riding in mind. That meant including a rear rack and a set of pannier bags, and I’ve routinely been riding it in that fashion since it arrived. But for this trip I needed more cargo capabilities. I considered pulling a trailer, and then did some experimentation with stacking items on the back of the rack. However, the post about that experiment led some folks to suggest a couple of different options of supplemental bags that hang across the back of the trike’s seat, bringing the weight down lower for a more advantageous center of gravity. I went with the Radical Designs Banana Racers, which the Hostel Shoppe in Steven’s Point, Wisconsin special-ordered for me in Orange (naturally).

These worked perfectly - in combination with the pannier bags they swallowed everything I was carrying with the lone exception of my sleeping bag (which I strapped to the top of the rack). And, as described, they put the weight of the cargo down low, exactly where you want it. Plus, the bottle carriers on the top of each bag keeps your extra fluids right in reach. It’s an extremely well thought out design. And - because they essentially lay across the back of the seat, easy enough to remove when you get home and aren’t in need of the extra capacity.

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As for the trike itself - it’s right there in the name. She was built for expeditions, and handled all of the weight without issue. This ride covered multiple surfaces - from dirt and sand trail to asphalt and cement roadways. I knew the weight was there whenever I tried to move the trike by hand - on a regular day, when it’s not fully laden and I need to move it somewhere I typically grab it either by the back of the rack or by the handle on the neck rest and lift it a bit to steer it where I want it to go. The first time I tried this it was clear I wouldn't be just lifting it and tossing it about. But once I was underway the weight was barely noticeable.

And - in further testament to the design, two thirds of this ride was thru the middle of nowhere, with (as far as I’m aware) nothing resembling a bike shop anywhere nearby. I had my tools with me, and I’ve gotten a lot of practice making adjustments and repairs over the past few years, but there were no mechanical issues - not even a flat tire - for the entire trip. I had a similar experience last year during the Hilly Hundred, where I rode past many a person on the side of the road, making repairs to their very fancy road bikes, while I had nary an issue. These machines are built to live up to their name.

Do your Homework

Part of the established objective for this ride was to:

Recapitulate the original purpose of the Hennepin Canal - connecting the Illinois River to the Mississippi at the Quad Cities…

In looking at this, after my entry about the second part of day two, one gentleman online asked why I was riding into the Quad Cities and across the Mississippi when there was still Hennepin Canal trial to ride up to the Mississippi.

And… he was right. I thought the canal trail ended at Timbrook Field, where it empties into the Rock River - this is the way it looks on the map. I even made a joke about how frustrating it must have been to have only 29 locks instead of rounding it up to 30…

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

I felt very clever…

For the record, there are 31 locks on the canal (also, distressingly, not a round number - but I digress). The canal stops at Timbrook field, but picks up again several miles down the Rock River and follows it till it empties in the Mississippi.

I’m going to openly admit I did not know about this last portion of the canal trail. But when I first started considering and laying out this trip, I did initially look for a way to follow the Rock River into the Mississippi. The thing is, while there are bike trails that start to appear as you get to the western end of the Rock River, much of what’s between Timbrook Field and the Mississippi along that route is major roadways and what appears to be commercially zoned territory. It did not look inviting for cycling, nor did it appear to offer anything like the very nice lunch opportunity that I found in Davenport.

In fact, it doesn’t offer a bikeable bridge across the Mississippi at that location at all, so I’d have had to backtrack and ride through the Quad Cities one way or the other to nearly the same spot to get across in either case. And I wanted to cross the Mississippi specifically at the Arsenal Bridge (also known as “Government Bridge”) because that’s supposed to be where The Great American Rail Trail marks its crossing from Illinois into Iowa.

Speaking of which…

The Great American Rail Trail

I love the concept of The Great American Rail Trail (GART) - a coast-to-coast cycling trail across the country. I love it so much that I can even set aside, and not even comment on the fact that the overwhelming majority of the trail in Illinois is based on two canal trails - the Hennepin and I & M Canal trails - and so aren’t rail trails at all.

See how I’m letting that go without even mentioning it?

The route I followed from Timbrook Field doesn’t exactly mirror, but does closely follow the planned route the GART (I used Google’s cycling directions for my route).

I wanted to get an idea of what this route was like now, an on-the-ground impression of what was still needed.

And there are absolutely improvements needed.

To their credit, Rails to Trails has done an analysis of this gap in their conceptual trail, and they pretty much peg the biggest problem correctly:

Most of the streets that are planned to be on-street signed routes are low-volume, low-speed roads, though the route is currently proposed to cross the Rock River on state Route 84/Colona Road, a major arterial road. A physically separated alternative should be explored in this section. (Emphasis added)

Yup - that section of Route 84 is four lanes of traffic and represents what appears to be the only bikeable bridge across the Rock River for miles in either direction. It is what Google identifies as their bike route across the river, and it does have a very wide shoulder. It’s only a mile of the trip in each direction, but it’s a butt-puckering mile. A separated cycling bridge is desperately needed there, along with an overpass to cross the highway where needed.

Also - for anyone looking at this route for themselves, I’d follow the course thru the towns of Carbon Cliff and Silvis laid out by the GART proposed map over the Google cycling directions. I’m generally comfortable riding on roads, and everyone was respectful of my space on my trip, but Google puts far too much of it on busy roadways.

It all leaves me wondering about the likely success of the GART, at least here in Illinois. There are only 28.8 miles of gap in Illinois, which seems like a small number. But much of that gap is between areas that are in rural and marginal land - along the Illinois river, for example. And the canal trails themselves are in need of resurfacing and ongoing maintenance attention if the intention is for the GART is meant as a realistic coast-to-coast byway.

But that depends on whether that’s really the intention. It is the concept, but if that’s meant just to drive an expansion of trails nationwide, then maybe its already doing its job. Still, I am a little distressed to see that, when they highlight the eight-of-twelve states who “will have added new trail segments since the route was initially developed” Illinois is not one of the eight.

Overall

Overall I enjoyed the trip! I was pleased to find that I still enjoy camping, and three consecutive days on the trike, with two of them deep in natural solitude was definitely a positive for me. If that sort of activity is your thing, the backdrop of the Hennepin Canal is a wonderful thing, with lots of nature available, intermittently punctuated by examples of human ingenuity in the form of the locks and lift bridges.

The things that I’ve learned in preparation for this trip, as well as by taking it, should allow me to improve and extend my enjoyment for the next time out. Shorter distances, in particular on those days where I’d need to set up camp at the end, would go a long way towards making the ride a little more relaxing.

So now I’ll be looking for additional opportunities. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to fit anything else in this summer - multiple day rides are hard to fit around a work schedule, and we are starting to run out of season. But I’ll definitely be working out something for next year, if not this fall.

Hennepin Canal Trail East to West and Back Again - Day Three / July 24, 2022 by Erin Wade

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

6/25/2022 - Geneseo Campground to Lock 2 in Bureau Junction - 48 Miles

Rain.

I felt the first drops sometime around 4:30 AM. I was sleeping with the rain fly open, so the mesh top of the tent was open to the sky; and hence, to the rain. Fortunately, those first few drops were light - enough to wake me, but not to drench or wash me out. I unzipped the mesh and pulled the rain fly down, zipped it all back up, and went back to sleep.

The tent did it’s job - I was dry and comfortable until I woke up in earnest around 6:30 or so. This wasn’t due to an alarm, or issues with the weather, just my natural wake cycle.

But while I was awake - and still dry - the world outside my tent was decidedly not. Those light drops of rain had precipitated a storm system that was still diligently pounding down on my campsite, moving along a easterly track, essentially scouring ahead on the path I was planning to follow that day.

I had planned to be on the trail by about 8:30 or so, if not earlier, trying to apply the lessons I’d learned about departure time from day one. Instead I found myself laying there, watching the radar on my phone, looking for openings in the rainfall.

About an hour later - around 7:30 or so - it opened up enough to allow me to get out of the tent, take care of personal sundries, and get some breakfast - Peak Refuel Breakfast Skillet (very yummy!) - and coffee made. But only just. As I was getting that all put together the storm started to roll in again, so I gathered up my food and coffee and ducked back into the tent.

I love the idea of this tent:

It’s a lightweight, single-person tent clearly designed primarily to provide cover and protection for its occupant and a few personal items overnight on a trip very much like this one. And it works great at all of that - I was kept safe from the elements aside from one tiny drip (which I can address with some seam sealer). It was comfortable, and had room for the little battery fan MLW cleverly got for me, which effectively moved the air in the tent while everything was closed up. It performed as designed.

What it did not do - could not do, by design - was allow me to sit up. This hadn’t been a consideration for me, since the only thing I was planning to do in it was sleep. But I hadn’t considered this situation.

I ducked back into the tent probably around 8-8:15-ish. It continued to storm until about quarter after 10. And when I say storm here, I mean wind, rain, thunder and lightning (I’ll ride in rain, but I’m a-skeerd of lightning). So I spent about two hours alternating between being propped up on one arm and laying on my back. I ate my food, drank some coffee, and did some work; and spent much of that time trying to decide at what point the pain in my arm and shoulder was simply too much and I needed to lay back down.

I still love the idea of this tent, but for the next trip I think I might need to do a search for a lightweight tent that is more upright. Or, alternately, see if there is some sort of lightweight tarp system I could bring along to allow me to get out of the tent in the rain. It would have been nice to have that in any case, since the trike - with my cargo bags - was out in the weather the entire time. But I’m pretty sure anything with open sides would have left me damp during the storm.

As the rain cleared I got out and started to get things ready. Although the trike and bags were out in the rain, pretty much anything that I was worried about keeping dry was either in waterproof bags, or in the tent with me. So mostly it was now a matter of emptying the bags out to get the water out of them, and then repacking them and taking down camp. I was ready to hit the trail just after 10:30:

This was, of course, two hours later than I’d planned. But then, they say that men planning is what makes God laugh, so at least I’d contributed to someone’s entertainment for the day.

While I wasn’t able to apply all my lessons from day one and get on to the trail as early as I wanted, I did have the two additional bottles of water along for the ride so I wouldn't run out on the way back.

And I knew the ride back was going to be slower than the ride up because the unpaved portions of the trail - the portions like this…

…would be softer - and soft is slow. But while I’d mentally accounted for the surfaces, the storm rolling along the trail ahead of me provided other obstacles. One was fairly predictable:

Fortunately, while the water was over the path, it wasn’t very deep. Most importantly, it was below the level of the seat, which meant I wasn’t dragging my backside through it. Several years ago, riding the Feeder Canal, I discovered that it was possible to hold yourself up above the seat by pressing your back against it and lifting up at the handles (though you don’t want to have to do this for very long), but that wasn’t necessary here.

The others I hadn’t expected, though I probably should have:

This is not the kind of windfall I was hoping for…

There were three of these along the way. This one was the first that I encountered, and in this case I dismounted and cleared it out of the way:

The second one I did not get a picture of, but it was branches laying across the trail around my standing chest height. There was no way to get to them that allowed me to move them out of the way, but the trike is much lower than my standing height, so I was able to pick my way under those with the trike. And the last one showed up towards the end of the ride:

Maybe, if I hadn’t been riding for hours, I would have had the gusto to pick it up and move it, but I doubt it. A brief attempt found that it was resolute in its intention to lay across the trail, and I suspect it will take a person who is equipped with a chainsaw to get it gone. So here I just shook my head and carried the trike over it.

But having the storm proceed me along the trail wasn’t all bad. The rain knocked down the tall grass on the early portions of the trail…

…so I was able to proceed along this time without becoming a grass seed collector, like I had on day one. Not as good for my future artisanal grass seed business, but it kept me from having to pick seeds out of… well… everywhere.

One might think that day three is simply a reversal of day one, and to some degree I suppose that’s true. And given that riding along the canal puts you out in nature, albeit man-made nature, all day, which means you spend a lot of time with views like this…

So the frogs don’t really sit on top of the lily pads that much - Kermit and cartoons lied to me…

…and encountering fellows like this…

…it’s hard to think of that as being a bad a thing.

But coming at things from the other direction does mean that you are seeing things from the other side. And so when I came across this, I realized I hadn’t seen it on the way up:

As you can see from the water mark on the concrete, the water is coming up under pressure in bursts. I have no idea why - I don’t know if this is a feed from a tiling system, or where the additional water would be coming from. But it was oddly soothing to see and listen to, a little like waves crashing on the shore, I suppose. I ended up sitting there and watching it for a little while before I moved on.

And it would have been behind me on day one, as well as being more towards the later part of that ride, where I was trying to get to camp, so I didn’t notice it at all. And, because of that dynamic, I was now able to spend some time on things that I did notice, but had to simply ride past because I needed to be somewhere. Most notably, this lift bridge.

Unlike most of the locks, the gates and hardware are still present at this site:

The other thing that is different going from west to east is that the trail mileage markers are counting down. Since it was the last day, and I was on my way back, it gave a real feel for where I was at on the ride, and how much progress I was making. And as I got into the last hour or so, I was in much more familiar territory; I was on the parts of the trail I’d ridden several times before. So a lot of it was simply enjoying the nature and counting things down on the markers as I pedaled along.

But while I was enjoying my ride, I was still glad to see the end when it arrived:

As I’d expected, it was slow - both in terms of riding speed, which came out to an an average of 8.15mph for this portion of the trip - and in terms of total time. I arrived at the end of the trail at a little after six in the evening. All told, between the soft surfaces and obstacles, the ride back took me over 7 1/2 hours to complete.

Of course, that’s 7 1/2 hours of nearly complete solitude, in nature, so taking a little more time is hardly a bad thing.

Hennepin Canal Trail East to West and Back Again - Day Two, Part Two / July 17, 2022 by Erin Wade

6/24/2022 - Timbrook Field in East Moline IL to Davenport Iowa via the Arsenal Bridge, then back to Geneseo Campground - 44 Miles

I’d gotten to Lock 29 at Timbrook Field on the Rock River, but that was only the first part of the trip planned for day two. The next stage is planned was to ride from there up to the Mississippi Riverway Trail, and cross the Arsenal Bridge to get to Iowa.

On The Road

The first part of this was the section in which I was least confident. Using the cycling directions in Google Maps I’d laid out a course to get from Timbrook Field to the Riverway Trail:

This would put me on public roadways and take me thru towns I’d never heard of before - Carbon Cliff and Silvis - despite a lifetime in Illinois. I routinely ride on the road, so that didn’t bother me in and of itself, but two segments of Google’s route put me on four-lane sections of road, with no clear alternative around them.

The first portion of this came up quickly - about a mile of Illinois Route 84 offering the only clear means to cross the Rock River. This was a four-lane, 55 mph roadway that I was not excited about using, even for the single mile that I would be on it. And I am a staunch proponent of the idea of taking your lane under most circumstances. In this case, however, I was honestly relieved to see that it had a very wide shoulder, and despite my usual predilections, I took to that shoulder and stayed to the far right side of it, watching my mirrors and my radar readings closely all the way across.

Safely across, the rest of the ride took me thru Carbon Cliff, which Wikipedia says is named for the coal mines that appeared on a bluff on the west side of the town. This is actually what I would have expected - Illinois was and is a coal-rich state, and you can still see the slag piles outside of some of the towns, odd conical mountains looking out of place on the prairie. But as I distantly recall from high school, much of it is especially dirty burning, even for coal, so the industry fell out of favor quite some time ago. Carbon Cliff is also apparently notable for being associated with the somewhat ironically named musician Jude Cole.

You remember Jude Cole right?

Neither did I, really, but Apple Music did offer up a couple of songs that sounded familiar, and the guy has some connections - Keifer Sutherland among them - and appears to have done fairly well for himself for a guy from a tiny town. Of course, his biography says he was born in Moline rather than Carbon Cliff, but odds are good that Moline was where the closest hospital was back in 1960 (and probably now, too).

I learned all of this later, of course. In the moment I was too busy watching the road, my mirrors, and the radar to take in much by way of the sights. Once I was off the four-lane section, though, things got better. The roadway widened again to allow access to I-92, but that was a brief interlude that was, thankfully, not too busy.

From Carbon Cliff the directions took me thru Silvis and into East Moline, home of the John Deere Harvester Works.

In fact, the course that Google gave me took me right alongside the plant. It was a little like begin back home, as two separate combines pulled on to the roadway behind me as I worked my way along Harvest Way. I assume this was some sort of test drive for them after coming off the line.

Great River Trail

Once past the Harvester Plant I quickly found the cycling path that would hook me up to the Great River Trail. I missed the first access point, and ended up following the trail to Beacon Harbor Park, adding a little bit of distance to the ride. But once I was there, the Mississippi was finally in view:

I’ve seen the Mississippi many times, but it never fails to impress - it’s a big river, even this far north. And, as one might expect, it is a constant companion for much of the ride along the Great River Trail. The trail flows through multiple parks along the way…

…and heading westward along it offers increasingly larger views of the new I-74 bridge, which apparently was just formally opened this past December.

I wasn’t aware of that at the time, but it is a visual draw nonetheless. The path I was taking also took me far enough along to see where they were taking the old bridge down:

And of course, you see rivery sorts of things along the ways, like riverboats…

…and tugboats:

Growing up we would often see the tugs and barges on the Illinois river. Then, as now, I find myself idly wondering why they are called “tug” boats when they clearly push the barges from behind. Maybe just no one liked called them “push boats”… ? (Though apparently they sometimes are called just that).

Getting across to Iowa via trike is a two step process, at least along the route that I took. First, you have to cross to Arsenal Island, via this bridge, apparently sponsored by the Quad Cities Bicycle Club, which appears to be an active group, with a calendar full of group rides and events.

Arsenal Island

This bridge gets you on to Arsenal Island itself, which is aptly named:

Well, it’s aptly named now, given that it is the largest government owned weapons manufacturing arsenal in the United States.

Preceding the current Arsenal was Fort Armstrong, which was established after the War of 1812 as a set of western frontier defenses. There is a marker for the site directly along the path:

But despite the current and former military features, the island’s history shows it as former native land, and the army seizure of it involves it as part of the disputed territory resulting in the Black Hawk War. On the island, and it’s occupation but the army, Black Hawk was quoted as saying:

This [island] was the best one on the Mississippi, and had long been the resort of our young people during the summer. It was our garden, like the white people have near their big villages, which supplied us with strawberries, blackberries, gooseberries, plums, apples and nuts of different kinds. Being situated at the foot of the rapids, its waters supplied us with the finest fish. In my early life I spent many happy days on this island. A good spirit had charge of it, which lived in a cave in the rocks immediately under the place where the fort now stands. This guardian spirit has often been seen by our people. It was white, with large wings like a swan's, but ten times larger. We were particular not to make much noise in that part of the island which it inhabited, for fear of disturbing it. But the noise at the fort has since driven it away, and no doubt a bad spirit has taken its place. - Black Hawk

Realizing that much of this occurred around and during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, he of the Trail of Tears, makes it all unsurprising, but no less sad. Incidentally, fans of US History will be well served by following that link for the Black Hawk War. It’s a long article, but the war, which I suspect is little known outside of northern Illinois, involves a vast array of names that you’ll recognize from later history, including such minor historical figures as Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, among others.

Arsenal Bridge/Government Bridge

Not far past the Fort Armstrong site you will come to the bridge crossing from Arsenal Island into Iowa. This bridge is known both as the Arsenal Bridge and - perhaps more widely as Government Bridge.

It’s an impressive steel structure, over 100 years old, serving multiple paths, with rail at the top, automotive traffic below, and foot and cycling to the side. This is the crossing that Rails to Trails originally identified as its crossing point between the Illinois and Iowa sections of the Great American Rail Trail. The current map has been updated, however, to include both the Government Bridge and the new I-74 bridge discussed above, since that also has a pedestrian and cycling bridge on it.

Even though it’s not the only way to cross any more, it’s still an interesting way to get there, and this history buff prefers the 100+ year-old option:

Davenport

Davenport is one half of the Iowa pair of the Quad Cities (Moline and Rock Island are the two on the Illinois side. Wikipedia also describes East Moline as part of the Quad Cities, but wouldn't it then be the Quint Cities? But I digress…).

I had originally planned to stay for only a few short minutes on the Iowa side and then turn around, with a goal of writing about how the air on that side of the Mississippi just seemed heavier, more oppressive than the air in my fine state of Illinois. I have family who live over there in Iowa, and this is a fond refrain that I will use with them if the opportunity presents. It’s never not funny (to me).

But the reality was that I had planned to have my lunch somewhere along the Mississippi River, and while Google Maps had suggested that there were several restaurants available, looking for them while riding found that they mostly seemed to be a block or two away from the river as opposed to begin right along it like I’d hoped. It’s absolutely possible that I’d missed something along the way, but since I was pausing on the Iowa side I thought I’d take a gander at downtown Davenport on the map to see what was available, and it appeared there were multiple options within a short distance of the trail.

I settled on The Barrel House:

The menu was exactly what I was looking for, burgers and beer being prominent components. And as a bonus, there was outdoor seating, which I always prefer in general in the summer, but it was especially nice because I could keep my ride in sight while I quaffed:

Bent River Wheat with Val in the distance

I enjoyed their variation on a blue cheeseburger, along with a Bent River Island Time Wheat, an excellent local beer I’d never had before. In fact, there may have been two of those cross my table. And, again trying to learn from day one, I sat back and relaxed for a while.

So, for better or worse, Davenport was just too pleasant and accommodating for me to make my joke about the oppressive nature of being in Iowa. But don’t let the Iowa members of the fam know, okay?

Heading Back

I’d stopped for lunch around two in the afternoon, and while I was taking my time, I wanted to be sure to get back on the trail early enough to be ahead of the area’s Friday rush hour before I got back onto the road portion of the return trip.

I succeeded in this, but only just. I did find the direct route off of the Great River Trail that I had missed on the way in, which helped. Still, things were definitely getting busier as I re-approached I-92, and I found myself spending a lot more time than usual (which is saying something) watching my mirrors. Fortunately, it was uneventful.

I did stop at a Casey’s in Carbon Cliff on the way back to buy a couple of bottles of water. Again, trying to learn from before, I wanted to be sure I had enough water for both the return trip to Geneseo Campground and I planned to fill them to bolster my supply for the trip home the following day.

And, once I got there, it was nice to be on the trail itself again:

Once I was back at the campground, it was all a simple case of making up some food with the JetBoil - Chicken Teriyaki and Rice this time, which turned out to be the only mediocre meal of the bunch, with the chicken coming out just a bit dry. But I suppose it’s possible that I didn’t use enough water.

The Vintage RV folks appeared to have hired either a band or a DJ, which played a little past the 10pm quiet time, though that seemed reasonable enough for a Friday night. I gave thought to going up to listen for a bit, but, well, I didn’t want to. I’m a solitary person by nature, and when I spend time alone - as I am on this trip - instead of becoming satiated I tend to get progressively better at being alone. So instead I fired up the iPad, where I’d downloaded Doctor Strange and The Multiverse of Madness ahead of the trip for just such an occasion, popped in my AirPods, and packed it in for the night.

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

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

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

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

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

The Campground

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

…to these massive trailers…

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

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

On the Trail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bob: “Its good enough for government work!”

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

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

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

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

Hennepin Canal Trail East to West and Back Again - Day One / July 3, 2022 by Erin Wade

6/23/2022 - Bureau Junction Lock 2 to Geneseo Campground - 48.99 Miles

I chose the end of the last full week of June for my three-day, two-night trike packing trip along the Hennepin Canal. I’d been idly considering a trip like this for several years, and actively planning it for the past three months. I picked the end of June in hopes that it would be far enough past the spring rainy season that the trail wouldn't be waterlogged (always a concern along canal trails), but not yet into the hottest part of the summer.

The easternmost point of the canal trail is at Lock 2 in the tiny town of Bureau Junction, IL. The completist in me would prefer that sentence to say “Lock 1”, but as fate would have it, Lock 1 is on private property and is apparently submerged much of the year. So: Lock 2 it is.

The starting point immediately includes a bridge crossing to get you on to the canal trail proper.

It’s a steel bridge with a wooden deck, and the rustic feel of the trail asserts itself immediately as you enter the bridge and feel, hear, and see the slats bouncing under your wheels.

Yes - I do mean bouncing, as in they are moving freely underneath you, breaking free of the nails or fasteners that once held them down. It was evidence of entropy that, little did I realize, would re-assert itself multiple times along my three-day ride.

I started just before noon on the 23rd. That probably sounds kind of late in the day, and it was, but it was by design. The campground in Geneseo didn’t have check-in until three in the afternoon, and I didn’t want to arrive there leaving an over abundance of empty time, so I got some things done in the morning before I left to give myself a buffer against that possibility.

And once I was rolling it was all that I remembered from prior rides along the trail.

The Hennepin Canal Trail is rustic and remote in all the best ways that go with that description. Each time I’m on it I quickly find myself transported to a place and time that has never really existed - where people travel along rural byways under their own power, in an age that would have fallen between our movement away from horse-driven travel and the advent of the motor vehicle, had not time and fate seen fit to make the innovations - pneumatic tires and gear sets, among others - that would have made a cycling-centered era possible also correspond to the emergence of the automobile.

It’s a good place to be, at least for a time. Although the canal is, at its core, an inherently unnatural thing, nature has nonetheless embraced it. The birds are always among the first things I notice when I head out, and this trip held true along that front. I saw my first blue heron within the first three miles or so - the trike always spooks them, so they fly up and away from it when it approaches, often affording an opportunity to see them that I would have missed if they had the temperament to stay still. And they are joined by a variety of others, some common - red wing blackbirds abound, turkey vultures circle overhead, ducks and Canada geese are easy to find (tho the geese are sometimes reluctant to give right of way…); others less so. I’ve put up many a backyard feeder in my time in order to catch glimpses of cardinals and goldfinches, but here they both flit in and out of the trees, flashes of red and yellow frequent occurrences in and out of the trees that often line both sides of the canal trail.

And then there are the orioles - or so I assume. A flash of coppery orange; they are shy and flighty - as soon as you see them they flit away, not even allowing for the opportunity to capture an image. My Peterson Guide shows Baltimore and Orchard Orioles to be in northern Illinois, and they are the only birds I find on the list with this particular plumage. It says they are “fairly common”, but they don’t seem to frequent the farmland around my home - I only ever see them along the canal trails.

And, as if the bird play were not enough, about 40 minutes in I came across this fine fellow:

I tried to strike up a conversation with him, but he was not overly impressed with my efforts, so I snapped my picture and moved along.

And this is very much how the first half of day one went. I had told myself going in that I was not in a hurry, that while I did have a destination for the day, it was just to a place to rest and recuperate. I alternated between appreciating the wildlife and taking pictures - of the turtle above, and of other natural things along the trail:

As well as catching pictures of the more man-made components of the area, including this mystifying marker:

I have a friend who is, himself, a Steelers fan despite have grown up nowhere near Pittsburgh, and this item makes me think of him every time I ride by it.

And of course, there is the canal itself to marvel at. The Locks come along an uneven intervals, but most of them well marked…

…each providing its own bit of human-modified natural enjoyment:

And of course, bridges abound to carry trains and cars over top:

And then you have the remnants of the past, there to testify to what once was, such as the pilings under Lock 12, where an aqueduct once carried the canal over top Big Bureau Creek:

This spot is always of particular interest to me, as my Great-Grandfather Percy worked as a Lock Tender on this very spot. This site was my goal the very first time I came to ride the canal trail, and I still pause here for just a bit to appreciate the life he and his family must have led when they were here.

The Tenders lived along the canal, in purpose-built homes, some of which still stand, albeit in disrepair:

And as you get out further along you see some of the mechanical marvels of the canal, including the lift bridges that were put in place to ensure farmers could get to their lands without interrupting barge traffic:

It was just about 4:00 in the afternoon when I reached the confluence of the feeder canal - the portion that flows south from the Rock River in Rock Falls to supply the water for the canal itself - and the main canal:

I had never ridden this far along the trail. I’d tried to make this spot a goal once before, but it was a day trip in later autumn, and I ran out of time, needing to turn around before I ran out of both daylight and favorable temperatures. It wasn’t exactly what I expected. Like the rest of the canal it’s lovely and peaceful, but I was expecting something that suggested the bodies flowing together - perhaps a visible rushing of water in multiple directions, since canal falls both to the east and west from this point. Instead it presents as a small lake or large pond - you have to know what it is to know that it’s something different.

But then, except where it drops at the locks, the water flows slowly - so much so that in places nature is working to regain the canal for itself:

It was also at the confluence that I started to realize I was behind. Now, I specifically had planned to not have any type of a hard schedule, and that was still the case. But the confluence is about 27 miles into a nearly 50 mile ride - just past the halfway point - and it had taken me four hours to get there. If I continued at a similar pace, I’d be rolling up to the campground around 8 in the evening, and risking having to set up camp in the dark. My plan to limit my unoccupied time appeared to be coming together a little too well.

My later start time also put this second half of the ride in the hottest part of the day, with me riding directly into the afternoon sun. And shortly after the confluence the trail moves from the south side of the canal to the north side, which places the open water to the south, and significantly reduces the likelihood of shade trees.

All of this conspired together to put a feeling of pressure on to the second half of the day-one ride that I didn’t really expect. And I aided and abetted that pressure with a decision - or lack of one (but when you choose not to decide you still have made a choice…). Because i was starting later in the day I picked up fast food from the Golden Arches on the way to the trailhead (you can see my iced tea cup in the pictures from the start). That being a high calorie meal I didn’t really see any need to stop and eat along the way.

Or at least I didn’t until I began to flag in the heat of the late day sun. It took me a while to sort this, and I actually ate the first half of the Apple I’d sliced up as a supplement to the water I as drinking. But then I felt so much better after eating them that the light clicked on and I realized my mistake. And I was sure to insert another snack break along the way.

The other struggle was that I started to run out of water. I’d brought along 48 oz of water across three bottles in addition to the extra-large iced tea that I’d started out with. This is typically more than enough for me over a 50-mile ride, even in hotter weather. But as it went on, what I realized that it wasn’t the distance as much as it was the time. A 50-mile ride on the road usually takes me less than four hours, even fully loaded for the trip (I’d done a test-run the week before with everything on the trike). But here it had taken me four hours to go half that distance, and the supply was running very low, making me have to ration it out.

I did think, for a brief moment as I got closer to the end of the first day that I’d been saved by this:

But it was not turned on. There may have been some swearing at that point.

The last portion of this was also where the trail started to work against me. The trail is composed of a variety of surfaces across this first section, ranging from asphalt to dirt and sand, with rough gravel tossed in from time to time as a repair, of sorts. But the last 10 miles or so ahead of the campground yielded this:

What you are seeing is an asphalt trail that has a healthy crop of grass growing in it. As I looked at, and rode thru it, the phrase that kept turning over in my mind is that this type of trail construction with asphalt could be called “pour it and forget it”. It did have two single-tracks in it (double-track?), on either side of the trail. Neither track was as wide as the trike, but I did what I usually do when I come across this, and lined things up so that the rear and one front wheel were always on open trail. This worked as well as it usually does, but myself and the trike were so covered in grass seed by the time we got to the campground that I did wonder about maybe opening an online seed store: Specialty in Hennepin Canal Grass.

In all honesty I’ve come across similar conditions on multiple trails and it didn’t bother me. I suspect it would have been the same here if I hadn’t also been running low on water and running behind. As it was, tho, I was silently cursing for much of those last 10 miles.

I rode into the Geneseo Campground at a little after 7 PM. The folks there were friendly and I was quickly checked in and got things set up:

I had chosen the private campground over the rustic sites along the trail mostly because I wanted access to a full bathroom with a shower - an accession to my middle-agedness. Unlike my earlier issues with calorie and time management, this was a decision that paid dividends. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a shower that felt as good as the one I took at the end of day one.

And I think it got almost all of the grass seed off of me…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catrike Pocket - After TagVault- From the side

Catrike Pocket - After TagVault - From above

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

The Dollar Bill Trick / May 15, 2022 by Erin Wade

It’s been coming for a while - I’ve been expecting it.

The tread on the front wheels of my Catrike Expedition has failed to be visibly present for some time now, resembling in texture something more like what you might see on the rear of a top fuel dragster. But those with experience know that there are a lot of miles yet to be had, even as the wheel starts to get smooth.

For a while, a year or two ago, I struggled with an excessive amount of tire wear. It turned out that my front wheels were not in proper alignment - one of the hidden joys of riding a recumbent trike is that you have to maintain alignment between the front wheels in a fashion not dissimilar to that of an automobile. But I’d resolved that issue, and I’d gotten upwards of 4800 miles out of the current tires. They just kept on going. And going.

Until they didn’t. Of course.

I noticed it about three miles into a ride. As I was rolling along I suddenly got a repeated “thump-thump-thump” coming from my right wheel. I briefly thought it might be an imperfection in the pavement, so I moved into another part of the lane to see if it went away.

“Thump-thump-thump”

It was hot out - almost freakishly so for this time of year. Here in the upper Midwest we went from the low 60’s to the low 90’s (F) in a day. Given that, I thought (well, hoped, if I’m being honest) maybe I’d just picked up a chunk of tar. So I pulled off to the side.

Nope. Not tar.

That wear pattern was not on the tire the last time I rode it. Because they were far along in their rubbery lives I check them fairly regularly. I’d like to say that I checked it before heading out for this ride, but I did not. But in either case, I suspect the heat may have accelerated its inevitable demise.

I actually have spare tires - I ordered them a while back. Given the wear they were showing, and the supply chain issues of our current era it just seemed better to go ahead and get them. I did not, however, have the foresight to keep them on the trike. This essentially meant my ride would need to be cut short.

I texted my support crew (My Lovely Wife) to put her on alert, but I figured I would try to limp home. I was only about 3 1/2 miles out, and the tire had not yet failed, so it seemed like it was worth a shot, taking things very slowly.

I made it another mile. What’s more, although I knew it was imminent, I still screamed like a child when the tube popped.

I could have given up then and texted for MLW to come get me, and I did consider it. But, while I didn’t have spare tires with me on the trike, I did have tubes (always). So I could swap out the tube and try to make it the rest of the way home. But I knew that, if I just put another tube inside that damaged tire it would almost certainly pop again, the worn spot not providing sufficient protection from the road.

I’ve seen the idea of the dollar bill trick described and discussed multiple times on social media. In general the idea is that our “paper” money is actually made of a durable combination of cotton and linen, the better to help it survive all of that folding and re-folding, and so can function as a temporary tire patch to get you home.

I was certain that I had some denomination of paper currency with me, but I wasn’t sure how well the bill itself would come thru the adventure (I wasn’t excited about trying, say, the twenty dollar bill trick…), so I did spend a few minutes casting about for other options by digging into my panniers. I did have a roll of rim tape in there, and I made a brief, abortive attempt to fashion a patch using that. It was very quickly clear that the tape was not going to do the trick, so I started sifting thru my cash. As luck would have it George Washington was in fact present and ready for duty.

I folded the bill in half and inserted it into the tire over the hole, between it and the tube. I rotated the wheel so that the patch fell towards the bottom of its arc to better keep it in place. Then I used my Kool Stop Tire Bead Jack (seriously one of my best purchases ever) to get the tire seated on the wheel, and headed out. Slowly.

It worked - I made it home without further incident. While I was riding, I noticed that the thrumming had stopped. Apparently the dollar bill was evening things out enough that the tire was behaving more normally. And when I arrived home, George was definitely a little more worn for the wear, but still in good enough condition to return to his more… typical service.

My trip back on the dollar bill was about three miles, and it’s clear that I probably could have gone a little further. It’s also clear that what I should have done is gone forward with the dollar bill trick when I first noticed the thrumming and saw the damaged spot. Then I probably could have saved the tube that was already in place. Hopefully I’ll remember that the next time around.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that worked:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So - continued thinking required.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where to Go

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

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

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

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

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

Equipment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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