Short Ride from the camp.

We’re camping at the Prairie Flower campground at Saylorville Lake while in the Polk City area. There is a trail heading both north and south from the campground. Going south the trail eventually ends up in Des Moines and north to Big Creek State Park. We decide to ride south to the flood control dam this morning before family events kicked off. The ride south was completely different from the rail-trail. It was also very smooth but that’s the end of the similarity. This trail has rolling hills and blind turns. The hill required the granny gear and the down hill sharp turns required leaning into them to keep the inside wheel from lifting.  A Great Ride! Rail-Trails can get boring like an interstate highway, but this trail is like that special back country road were you take you sports car to on a Sunday morning before the rest of civil society wakes up. There are other users on this trail even mid-week and with the blind turns it imperative to maintain the right side of the trail. We were blasting down one right hander keeping tight to the inside when a pace line of three bikes came up the hill in the left at an impressive speed. Had either of us not been where we should have been the results would have been ugly. Frankly I think the trikes would have had a better change of evasive maneuver but even a slight clip of the bikes…

This trail was especially enjoyable for what is wasn’t anymore. We had ridden this trail back, I think, in 2007 and it was awful. The pavement had frost heaves and root cracks everywhere. We had rode our hy-bird bike about 3 miles and gave up that time. This time we were wishing we had more time to go all the way to Des Moines and north to Big Creek Lake.

Trike Specific Section:

Brake Steer: As I understand it that term means when a single front brake is used it’s the tendency of the trike to turn into the braking side. From Trike advertisers it seems “neutral”  or no tendency to turn is the most desirable. I’ve only ridden about a half dozen trikes and everyone of them brake steer and every manufacturer says they have neutral steer. So either I’m hyper critical or they all lie. Then I’m not sure that some brake steer is necessarily a bad thing. After all if I have to brake hard I’m always using both brakes. Next when slamming down these tight hill corners I many times use one brake to control speed and help turn in while just covering the outside brake. And with our Catrike and Trident the Trident brake steers a little harder, but then again I’m not sure this is a bad thing. The brake steer difference wouldn’t be in my book a reason to select one over the other in the end.

Baldwin/Jax trail with fresh eyes!

Yesterdays ride was great. It was an overcast and relatively cool morning. After riding the Nature Coast Trail I see the Jax trail as a much nicer ride. First the practical, there are four rest stops. Next, no roads closely parallel the trial. It’s a great resource for Jacksonville. It would be wonderful if they ever extend this trail. At about 29 miles it’s a little short for us now that we ride trikes.
There are some rough spots that need fixing, these are marked with red paint and cones but for a high speed rider it might be best to reconnoiter the route before doing speed runs. It looks like Jax is committed to this trail also. A new road is being built that will cross the trail and instead of just putting in another at grade crossing with stop signs they built an overpass.  Sweet no need to slow, my one fiscal question would be why not make the trail go over the road instead? I'm sure building a bridge to withstand the weight of HPVs would be much cheaper than building a bridge to carry even a small pickup truck. An added bonus would be a little hill to climb.

Four days and no response from Catrike so I emailed Mt Airy Bikes this morning and had a reply today.

Trail Head at Jacksonville end.

New overpass for new road.

Some areas need work.

Baldwin trail head

Wrong part on Catrike.

I have some time to kill today so a 2nd post, this is another Catrike issue. The assembly of the right, as seated, spindle headset at the top. The right dust cover, part number 7 page 10 of Catrike owners manual, is missing the rubber boot that performs the function of keeping dust out of the Teflon bearing PN 6 page 10. The left side has the rubber. My guess is the right one is from Gen 1 (Catrike issue they sent the wrong one) and the assembler didn't pay attention and missed it when doing the build(Mt Airy Issue). Both Catrike and Mt Airy were very responsive when made aware and received the proper part in the mail few days later. Before discovery we had already put some mile on the trike so the teflon bearing has gotten some grim in it. The top cap is torqued to 10 in-lbs so the top surface has a load. I cleaned the bearing off but it probably should have been replaced. With the low load I’d willing to let it go and see what happens over the long run but there is another issue with this top bearing.

This top bearing issues and that it has a loose fit to the shaft that the steering lever is attached to. The symptom is that when stopping at the very last moment there is a small thump felt as the braking fore is unloaded when the trike stops.  My guess is the long term result will be the bearing is pounded out of round and the movement will increase. I’ve sent an email to Catrike,  but this being Sunday and it’s a larger company I don’t expect a response until tomorrow.

Bottle Holders, TS2 Alignment, TS2 Autoshift

Catrike Trail Issue:
Water Bottles: I guess my post about the water bottle situation on the trikes might have been confusing. A poster (dzrtcat) on bike forums couldn’t understand the intent and then made personal attacks.  It is a truly sad by product of the internet age that the anonymous nature of the net has caused such a decrease in civility. I’m quite sure the poster would not speak like he/she did in person. And please ddzrtcat don’t take that as a challenge of you virility just an observation that in my nearly fifty years exchanging O2 for CO2 I can count on one hand when I’ve been talked to that way. As I said on bike forum I don’t know what ax you have to grind.

So to be perfectly clear the issue is not that Catrike didn’t come with a bottle holder, which it didn’t. The issue is that Catrike only has provisions to attach one bottle holder. The trident has three locations. Those are facts which are indisputable. Now my opinion and my wife’s is that the location of the bottle holders on the Trident are better accessed while riding than the Catrikes location. When seated and peddling the Trident bottles can be easily reached without breaking cadence. With the Catrike it’s also possible not to break cadence but you have to lean forward then pull forward to release the bottle, but in our opinion it’s not nearly as easy. And my wife prefers to stop to drink because of the positioning. It’s actually easier for me to hand her a bottle as we ride. I like us to be able to drink constantly while on the fly.  Again this is not subject to debate it is merely our opinion.

There are  couple options as to where to add a few bottle holders. One is on the rear tire down stays(?). I could do a few braze ons but then there would be painting to match or use a couple SS hose clamps. The possible issue is rear rack clearance so I think SS clamps will be the first approach.

Trident Issues:
My Trident is experiencing ‘Autoshifting’. I identified the problem on Sheldon Browns great bicycling web site and would recommend going there for a complete description. But a short description is that when in 8th gear in the rear cog and peddling hard the chain will slip then be in top gear, 9th. When looking at the deraileaur in each gear all looks well. I contacted Tom at Trident and the same day he replied to check cable tension in high gear. Sure enough the cable was lose. Snugged the cable and no more autoshifting.

Next Trident Issue:
My trike has started to pull left on level ground. I check for brake drag, toe-in, axel clamping tightness, rear tire seated in drop outs, and tire/wheel issues by swapping sides. Tom again in great response time suggested “If swapping the wheels doesn’t work, then it has to be a wheel alignment issue. Toe in the left wheel a little, toe out the right wheel a little.”
I tried what Tom suggested but still have the problem so I sent another email Sunday. And a few hours later he responded that If I can come by the shop, which I can, they will make it right!