Mid-Year Check-In

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

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

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

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

I’m certain I’m not the only one.

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

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

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

My other goals for the year included:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Putting the Trike to Work - Trailer Project Follow-Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trailer Project Part 4 - Finished-ish

Trailer Project Part 4 - Finished-ish

Trailer Project Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until then, it’s time to ride!

Trailer Project Part 3 - Getting on Board(s)

Trailer Project Part 1

Trailer Project Part 2

Trailer Project Part 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2019 Cycling Year in Review

So it’s that time when we look back at the year that was and consider where we’ve been, what we’ve done in regard to our goals, and consider where you’d like to go from there. And here at Applied Life it’s now an annual tradition. You know, cuz I did it once before, last year.

We’ll set aside the fact that there’s nothing actually special about the end of the month of December, and further set aside the fact that a more reasonably designed calendar would end the year either on the winter solstice or the vernal equinox. But that’s what you get when you have a calendar designed by committee, so, you know, I won’t even bring that up here.

As always, it is always important to remember to compare oneself to oneself, not to others. I periodically have to remind myself of this, particularly when undertaking something like this. With that in mind, what follows is a look at _my_ year in cycling.

Distance

My goal for this past year was to get to 1500 miles. This seemed a reasonable, achievable increase from my ultimate 2018 total of 1372 miles (well, technically 1372.14, but who’s counting...).

That won’t seem like a huge increase - 1372 to 1500 - for some people, I realize. In the cycling groups I follow there are people who literally have tens of thousands of miles per year. But keeping in mind that adage of comparing oneself to oneself, it seemed reasonable at the time.

I may have undersold myself. I met the goal this year, and then sailed past it a bit, to hit a year end mark of 1722.34 miles.

In terms of the how and why, according to Cyclemeter I rode both more often, and for longer distances per ride on average. Last year I managed 106 rides, with an average distance of 12.94 miles. For 2019 I came in at 121 rides, with an average distance of 14.23 miles.

That may seem pretty elementary, and in some ways it is. But rides and distance both take up time, and it can be challenging to squeeze additional riding into my schedule. But I did make a conscious effort to increase the length of my Sunday rides, which seems to have had an effect. I’ve also tried to do a better job of taking riding opportunities where they present - for example, riding to my mailbox on days when I am working from home (it’s a 16-mile round trip to a PO Box - I’m not just riding to the end of the driveway).

It also helps sometimes when you have a new toy, which brings us to...

Machines

I know that a lot of cyclists are N+1 types (as in the right number of bikes to own is the number I have now - _N_ - plus one more). I am not. I think new bikes are cool and all - they sure do look pretty sitting there on the showroom floor. But I’m really much more the sort of person who establishes a long-term relationship with a machine. I rode my 1987 Cannondale for at least a decade before getting the Catrike Pocket, and I was set to ride off into the sunset with the little blue machine.

But I didn’t.

At the end of July I took possession of an Atomic Orange Catrike Expedition.

To be clear, was absolutely nothing wrong with the Pocket, and I’d been happy riding it for the past two years or so. But I’d purchased the Pocket as my entry into the world of recumbent trikes, a chance to see whether or not I liked it. My selection of it as a particular model was one of convenience - it came up as available on eBay, was in my price range, and was only an hour away.

It’s worked out well for all of that, but when I felt like I was finally in a position to consider getting something different, I decided to take a more considered look at what I thought would work for me and my cycling goals, and the Expedition seemed to fill the bill. I’m liking it a lot, as anyone looking back across the posts this year can see. And I suspect this will be a long-term fling.

And this doesn’t hang the Pocket out to dry. I resized it for MLW so she can have her own triking adventures.

Trips

This year, as usual, most of my rides started and ended at my driveway. But between opportunities offered by work travel, and some additional general adventurousness, I did get out to a few new trails, as well as revisited some more. Those included:

• The month of May offered an opportunity to drive down to the pointy end of the state, so I took a ride on the Tunnel Hill Trail, riding from Vienna to Karnak.
• In June I made the trip over to Sterling to tackle the Hennepin Feeder Canal trail. I managed to get very wet. Incidentally, the feeder canal provides the water supply for the Hennepin Canal. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because it’s Illinois gateway trail for the Rails to Trails coast to coast path project.
• In July I returned to the I&M Canal trail and learned a thing or two about what the rainy season can do to a trike. And then I returned again to go hunting for my lost flag (ugh).
• In August the opportunity to ride the Des Plaines River Trail presented itself.
• I rode in the Farmondo again in September.
• On Black Friday this year I decided to give the Expedition a shot at the Military Ridge Trail in southwestern Wisconsin. I did not distinguish myself in terms of either speed or distance, but I did learn a thing or two about the rolling resistance provided by wet sand, and got quite a workout in the process.

There were a couple of others that I returned to or tried but didn’t find the muse to put them down here, including two return trips to Rend Lake (one on the Pocket, one on the Expedition), and a late day adventure riding north to the titular Tunnel on the Tunnel Hill Trail (that one may still get its own post). One of my goals for last year was to explore more trails and, all in all I think I managed to get there.

Miscellaneous

I had a couple of other areas of more technical exploration in 2019:

• When I ordered the Expedition I also ordered up a pair of Shimano Spd sandals and decided to give being clipped in a try. That experiment was not successful, but I did learn some things along the way; and
• My desire (okay - need) to sometimes have coffee along for the ride led me to add a Terracycle Adjustomatic Bottle Mount to my Expedition. Besides having a product name that is just delightful, it also works very well; and
• The addition of a second trike required me to rethink the storage setup in our comparatively tiny garage. And finally
• Serendipity brought along the opportunity to get a new mobile trike garage in the form of a Subaru Outback. That experiment is more successful than the spd shoes thus far...

Next Year?

The end of the year is also the time to set goals for the new one coming.

In terms of mileage, last year I set my goal at 1500 miles. In retrospect, that seems like it may have been too safe a number, but I also find myself mentally wanting to make excuses about how I’m not sure where or how I would fit much more riding into my schedule. I’m sure I’m not the only person that struggles with that issue - as I said before, distance equals time. Still, I think I need to at least shoot for a 2000 mile goal.

There - I said it. Now we’ll see if I can actually _do_ it...

Last year I said I wanted to explore more trails. I’d like to do a little more of that for 2020 - I think there are a handful of routes in areas I visit that I haven’t yet taken advantage of. But I’d really like to manage a couple of options that I didn’t achieve from last year:

• I would really like to finally make it from LaSalle to Ottawa along the I&M Canal Trail. I tried this year, but was stymied by mud and... well... just so much mud. And I didn’t make it back later in the season, when the rain finally had tapered off.
• Similarly, I didn’t make that trip further down the Hennepin Canal Trail. I did, as noted above, take a ride along the feeder canal, but I didn’t make it back down for the main event. Portions of the Hennepin Canal trail were closed during the rainiest parts of this spring (this is something that, hopefully, Rails to Trails has a plan for sorting out), but again, didn’t take the opportunity to return to it later in the season.

And along these lines, I’d like to see if I can’t find a way to fit the occasional stop in at restaurants or taverns along those routes. This is a thing that I’ve often considered, but with one exception - the Lodi Tap in Utica, following my struggles with the mud along the I&M canal trail (did I mention the mud?) - I usually just keep going (I’m a fairly solitary soul by nature). But I think that would add to the variety along the way.

And finally, I need to finish my trailer project. I’ll be honest here and admit that part of the issue is that working on the trailer directly competes with riding - both are spare time activities, and faced with doing one or the other, I’ve generally chosen to ride. I may need to bring it inside and do some work when the winter snowstorms rise up.

So: that’s it for 2019. Come on 2020 and show us what you’ve got!

Rural Bike - Part Two - my Candidate

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

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

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

The Recumbent Trike

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Recumbent Trike with a Trailer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Long Distance in Comfort

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contending with the Weather

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

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

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

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

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

Stability

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

...And then: pain.

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

Carrying that Load

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

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

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

Speed

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

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

The Other Stuff

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

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

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

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

Disadvantages

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

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

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

Summing Up

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

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

Ok - time to ride...

Practicality with a Side Order of Good Luck

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I set to strapping the tank on.

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

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

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

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

But I kept pedaling.

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

The price: $16.99

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

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

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

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

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

So: bonus luck!

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

Cat(trike) Fight - Expedition vs. Pocket

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

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

Size

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speed

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

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

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

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

So what is the deal with speed? Well:

Yeah - The Expedition is faster.

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

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

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

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

The outcome: The Expedition is faster.

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

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

So yeah - faster.

Shifters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mirror Mounts

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

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

Neck Rest

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

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

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

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

Clipless Pedals and Shoes

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

They are... ok.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok - off the soapbox...

To Sum Up

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

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

Time to ride...

Trailer Project Part 2 - Cutting to the Bone

Trailer Project Part 1

Trailer Project Part 3

Trailer Project Part 4

I had a little time last weekend to move forward on my cycling trailer project. My goal is to take a dilapidated 2000 Schwinn Joyrider bike trailer and repurpose it as a utility trailer.

This second phase of the project essentially involved getting the old, mouse-infested canvas shell off of the frame, and deciding which portion of that frame to keep.

As discussed in the first post on this project, this old trailer had been sitting in the rafters of the garage waiting for the past decade or so for me to get around to it. In that time our rodent friends had chosen to take up residence within the confines of its shell. Folded down as it was to get it to fit in upper portion of the garage I suspect it seemed a pretty nifty space for the mice, keeping them all comfy and cozy.

For the record, you do not want mice to feel either comfy _or_ cozy... they have not yet embraced plumbing or sewage systems, and it shows when dealing with their nesting areas.

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This meant that the old shell had to come off. Last Sunday presented with a nice opportunity for this. The day provided with a persistent wind that was strong enough to provide some olfactory relief during the task without being so vigorous that it discouraged outdoor activity. And believe me this: unlike assembling models with modeling glue as a kid, this was not a task to be undertaken in a poorly ventilated area.

I gathered up my tool box and took it out to the garage, and moved the trailer out into the breeze. When I’d first approached it I had thought about finding some way to neatly detach the canvas shell as one piece (I was one of those kids who also carefully removed wrapping paper from presents. ...okay, I’m still one of those kids...). There was no immediately obvious way to do this, however, and I quickly came around to the realization that I was just going to throw away the damn shell as soon as I took it off anyway. So the first tool I pulled out of the box was my utility knife.

This allowed me to take the bottom panel completely off. Honestly, it appears that, for the most part, either the shell is only partially completed and then sewn up around the frame, or perhaps the frame is inserted, partially assembled, into the shell.

There is one portion of the frame that attaches thru the shell, where the inner wheel mounts attach. I initially cut around those in order to get the bottom portion off and see what else needed to be accomplished.

I left the bits of fabric there at that moment in favor of working towards getting the bulk of the rest of the very stinky canvas material removed.

I later took them off by removing the wheel mount.

With the bottom off, mostly it looked as if the canvas shell would lift off of the frame. However, there were a couple of impediments to this. First is a lightweight aluminum 3/4 hoop that runs through the shell to provide some structure. That needed to be removed, and once the Velcro straps around it were opened up, it slid right out.

The second was a set of Phillips head bolts - one on each side - that attached the "seat" to the frame.

Both of these were rusted at the top - most likely due to mouse exposure, since they were on the inside of the shell (none of the other bolts were rusted). Once those were removed, the shell came off pretty quickly.

This left me with the frame:

The collapsible upper frame is there to provide structure to the canvas shell, and also offered a handle - this had been a convertible trailer that could also become a stroller of sorts. I also have in the garage the struts and front wheel that get attached for that purpose.

I looked at the trailer with this part of the frame attached from multiple angles. I could see benefit to considering keeping it on the bottom frame. The handle could come in to use both in terms of its original purpose (a handle), and potentially as a mounting point for other things. But what I think I’m mostly wanting here is a flatbed trailer to allow for versatility, which keeping the frame would make much more complicated.

That’s amplified by the fact that the folding upper frame is attached on the inside of the bottom portion.

This would mean that any flatbed added would have to have holes cut in it to accommodate the upper frame.

So I took the upper frame off.

However, I’ve mentally compromised a little bit by putting it aside in the garage in case I want to use it in future. To be honest, mostly what this probably means is that it will occupy space in the garage for the next several years, making me periodically wonder why I kept it, but for the moment I’m still hedging my bets.

I washed the frame to remove any remaining rodentius residue, as well as the general detritus of long-term storage. It’s clear the center section should provide a pretty decent support for a flatbed of some sort, and the existing bolt holes - perhaps with slightly longer bolts - would suffice to hold quite nicely.

So now the next step is to determine what I want to make the flatbed out of. The simplest choice might be 1/4" plywood, but I’d like to explore other options as well to address weight and similar concerns.

New Project - Trailer Part 1

Trailer Project Part 2

Trailer Project Part 3

Trailer Project Part 4

I’ve had this bike trailer for well over a decade. If memory serves, it was a garage sale find, and it served for several missions of child hauling during LB’s younger years. With sufficient preparation - books to look at and drinks and snacks and such - LB would remain content to allow for an hour or more of riding time, and it added a different dimension (mostly additional weight) to my regular riding routine.

I’d hoped that this experience would also spur in my child a love of cycling the way that riding with my father had in me. Unfortunately my parental failure is complete - my child prefers running to cycling. The horror!

When LB got too big for the trailer we continued to use it to carry things - a cooler for refreshments or a picnic during a break, groceries on the occasional trip to the store. But when we moved from the city out to our homestead it got stored in the rafters of the garage, with the intention of getting it back down to ply into service again as a cargo hauler. Someday.

That was nearly 10 years ago.

I’ve been thinking about it more regularly lately, tho, with the particular idea of using it with my Catrike Pocket when I am on functional rides - e.g. trips where I’m using the trike as transportation and not just recreation. But the decade in the garage rafters has not been kind to the trailer...

There’s the general dust and debris from sitting unattended in an outbuilding for an extended period of time. But I had a chance to look at it a while back when I was up on a ladder, and I knew there was going to be another, larger (or, if you like, smaller) issue - the mice had found it.

There’s a lot to like about living out in an intensely rural setting. The privacy, the open air, the prairie wildlife.

But not all the prairie wildlife is enjoyable. If you are someone who is now thinking "but mice are cute", I would submit that you are someone who has never actually lived with mice. When you live out in farm country you quickly realize that they are everywhere and that a field mouse, given the choice between living in the actual field for which it is named, and living in your home or another, similar structure, will opt for the latter every time. And it is surprising just how unpleasant and damaging such a tiny creature can be. They will get into cabinets, drawers, vehicles (that’s a fun surprise going down the road, let me tell you); they will urinate and defacate everywhere, and tear up whatever is around them for nesting material. I don’t love the mice.

But I digress. I’d noticed, back when I was up on the ladder last, that mice had nested in the trailer, and this meant that I was not going to have the option of just getting it down, hooking it up, and going. The body of the trailer is mostly canvas, and that material was going to have been soaked with rodent effluent. It was going to have to go. Which is part of why it’s taken me a while to get to this - it was going to be a project.

Using one of these old trailers as a base for a different design is not a new idea, not original to me, to be sure. I have a well documented dislike of Facebook, but the recumbent trike groups within Facebook are an exception to that rule, and lots of people more capable and creative than I have gone through and modified these items to good effect. In the hopes that folks will understand that mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery, I’m going to copy from some of what I’ve seen and see what I can put together with this.

One of the questions I had to begin with is how to hook it up to the trike. It’s meant to attach to the lower rear bar at the back of a diamond frame bike. That bar is bigger on the Pocket, and not easily accessible with the frame bags in the way (and I don’t intend to use the trailer all the time, so it won’t replace the bags - they are staying). For the moment, at least, I’m thinking that it can connect to the rear cargo rack:

I think that may work, though it does put the trailer at a bit of an angle. I’ll have to think it thru a bit.

Any project that I start competes somewhat with my actual riding time, so I don’t anticipate this will get done in a hurry. But I’ve gotten the thing down out of the rafters in part so that it’s in my way, and thus has to be contended with. That should help ensure that I deal with it sooner rather than later - you know, not another ten years...