Packing up.

It is time to start figuring out how to get our two trikes loaded along with all the stuff for our new Malteses puppy, Tiki, and our living stuff for our 4 or so month trip to sunnier points south. This is the one huge disadvantage of Trikes, they take up a lot of stinking room! Then add in the higher weight and traveling with them in a loaded camper it's the easiest thing in the world.

But I found that the trikes load/store much easier if the wheels are off. Next it became obvious that the front fenders should come off and since their only held on with a few allen screws that was easy enough.

Once my Trident fenders came off it was equally obvious that the Kenda Kwest 100psi tires were pretty much toast. Interestingly the front tires are each more worn than the rear. I guess I'd been thinking that the higher load on the single rear would trump the steering force on the fronts, but not so:)

I suppose I could get a few hundred more miles but since my next big ride includes some long gravel sections I'd like some softer riding tires anyway. I had know I'd need new tires at some point during the spring ride so I have some Schwalbe Marathon Racer tires in house.

Next learning point was that the Trident fender mounting does more than just mount the fenders! I had pulled the fenders off a few days ago and continued to ride on the trainer, very glad I hadn't decided to hit the road:) The bearings are much dirtier than I had expected but I'll wait until Annapolis to clean and repack them. I had thought they would be sealed, another lesson.

Early end of TrikeTrek2012

Sadly I’m back home, not that I don’t love my home but I was hoping to be cycling through Ontario Province today instead. My trike adventure is over for now. Now the recuperation period. My plan is to take a week off the trike, then short, low intensity rides on the trainer for a week or two, if there is no pain. Then some easy road and hill rides to get back. 

As my man Eastwood once said “A man’s got to know his limitations”. Well how do you know your limits it you don’t push to extend them? As of today mine are 627miles, +52,062ft elevation gain over 15days(Trip Total was 802miles and +60795ft gain). I’m actually very happy with these numbers, I’m a numbers kinda guy:) Gee I wonder how many spins of the crank, approximately of course, I did on this trip?

First a review of the Trident Stowaway 2 trike: So how did it work in the various weather and road conditions? Well in a word “Fantastic”!! I’m absolutely positive I could not have traveled on the rainy cold days I did ride in. Also I believe I was safer on the road than ever on a two wheel bike. And the +40mph blasts down mountains were awesome. 

I really had no problems. The grip tape on the right side is starting to unravel a bit. But other than adjusting the brakes and rear derailer no work was needed. Tires are getting a bit square but then that’s just a normal wear and tear item. No bent wheels is especially amazing since I did hit a few big pot holes. I think the 20” wheel is stronger than larger wheels is what accounts for this. 

Riding the trike there were a couple common questions I was asked several times regarding safety. So here they are…and my answers.

Q: Is the low seat and hence eye level a problem? Simple answer, No. Extended Answer: The recumbent position meant that my head is always up right and level. Next the stability of the trike means the I can constantly scan by moving my head side to side and to move to get better view of the mirror without disturbing the path of the trike. So I think my situational awareness was an order of magnitude better than on my hybrid bike. Also the complete lack of pain from riding position meant focus could say on the road and not my back, shoulders, wrists, butt, etc. Naturally later knees negated this advantage:)

Q. Isn’t the width of the trike a problem? In the first case they were asking about car/trike interaction since I was riding many roads with narrow or no shoulder. 

Simple Answer: No. 

Extended Answer: I had vastly fewer cars passing close, even in larger car concentration areas. This seems counter intuitive. I think a few things were going on but I suspect the main issue was a trike was unfamiliar to drivers and appears very wide, even though it’s only a few inches wider than a mountain bike. Since it appeared SO wide drivers realize there is not enough room to pass in lane with me. So only a handful were at 3ft, most were greater and many completely in the other lane! Of course a nod goes to ACA for good route selection!

Q. Isn’t the width of the trike a problem? In this case they, mostly bicyclist, meant three wheel tracks vs one wheel track of a bicycle. 

Simple Answer: Here they have something. 

Extended Answer: There is no doubt that finding a clear piece of asphalt is much harder on three wheels. This does mean I’m hitting rougher asphalt more often and there were times I wished for suspension. It was also true that many roads are so bad that there is no clean line. In this case the stability of the trike was great. So no ride is perfect, but I think it’s a small price for the benefits. 

Now a safety question that wasn’t asked concerning low seat height. The low seat hight made me much more wary of dogs. They seemed to react badly to this low ride. Why? I don’t know but horses and cows also seemed upset. Maybe down low I looked like a predator. I only had one instance were I was approached close enough, 2 to 3 ft, by an aggressive dog that I had to use the pepper spray. I’ll always carry pepper spray now and I never did on my bike. 

The next non-safety question was why recumbents and trikes by extension don’t climb as fast a bikes. I’m not convinced this isn’t just selection bias, i.e. young men buy race replica bikes to fit in to the peer group and mimic the racers. And race bikes are two wheel diamond frames since the major racing series have banned recumbents for a hundred years. For myself I looked at the technology and wasn’t swayed by the races for the same reason I drive a Toyota Matrix and not an F1 car on public roads. So until I see the elite cyclists train then race recumbents against diamond frames I’m not convinced recumbents are slower. I’ll admit I’m slow up hill and my reason is simple, I can’t fall down there is no worry or drama stopping mid 12% grade to take a picture, eat a snack, smell the roses or just REST. So my answer to why trikes may go up hill slower is “Because they can!!!”. 

Best part of the ride:

This has to be meeting the people of rural America and Canada. I have to admit that I was getting pretty cynical about people in general. I attribute that to my job. I’m constantly researching the economy, corporations and investments. I mean honestly, who can watch what the Federal Reserve, Wall Street and our politicians have been doing and not get cynical. But during this short ride I meet so many truly good people and I was so looking forward to meeting many, many more. People were helpful, considerate, encouraging and sympathetic.  I Love rural North America!

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.

Trident Front End Alignment Part 2. I goofed in part 1:)

After Tom’s (of Trident) generous offer to make it right on my TS2 pulling left I decided I needed to be damn sure of myself before wasting his time. So I needed to have a halfway accurate way to measure the toe-in. Toe was supposed to be set at the bike dealer. I checked it myself at the dealer with the tech. So what went wrong?
Today I cleaned out the back of the garage where there is a regularly spaced white tiles on the floor. Then I put the TS2 on the tile, lined up the right tire and rolled forward while keeping a straight line. Next I look and can tell at first glance the front wheels are toed out not in! So here is what I think happened, we had not made a rigorous check that the trike was actually tracking straight when we checked toe. This trike is supposed to have Ackerman steering, i.e. the wheel on the inside of a turn, turns sharper than the outside one. This keeps the tires from scrubbing in the turn. Now with the trike tracking straight I set the toe in to 1/8”  and took it out. Still a very very slight left pull, but this could be completely  due to cable routing. Both brake cables loop 180 degs and the rear gear cable comes from the right and does a 90 deg turn. Net there is slight cable push to the left.  So I think all is well and I wrote back to Tom, no worries and thanks!

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!

Minor but annoying TS2 issue

It's raining today so no ride. I save riding in the rain for tours if at all possible:) So instead here is an issues Trident needs to address. It's minor, but small issues leave a less than satisfied feeling about quality.

I found these little broken O-rings on the porch and sidewalk in front of the house. At first I thought the cable guy who was here a few days ago must have dropped them.

Broken O-rings used on TS2

Then yesterday it hit me, these are the O-rings Trident uses to secure the brake cables to the tie rods. The pictured O-ring is ready to break, it has many small cracks like dry rot.  I would not be surprised if it breaks by morning, or more likely the next ride where it gets stretched when turning.

O-ring brake cable support TS2

I remember thinking about this before I bought the trike. This is an improper use of O-rings, they are supposed to be supported and compressed to seal a joint to keep, typically, fluids from leaking, so naturally these break after only a few miles.

I'll just use a few zip ties to keep the cables from hanging low and possibly snagging on things. I do a little off road and run over small branches and twigs. I don't want to have to worry about the brake cables,  I already need to keep the rear derailleur in mind since in low gear is hangs only about 1 inch off the ground. The zip ties will degrade and break also do to UV but it should take years not days.

Anarchist Thought:
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men." Charles De Gaulle.

Possible long term issue with TS2

After going over the trike one more time I did find this possible issue. The front derailleur cable comes out of it's stop/holder at an steep angle in all three chainring positions. It appears to be rubbing on the brazed-on holder. The holder will wear and the cable will eventually break. The question is how long will it take? I have noticed that I use the front derailleur more often on the trike since it's right in my line of sight and very easy to switch chainrings and make quiet.

Front derailleur cable holder, Trident Stowaway 2

I could use the dremel tool and open up the holder slot, but the cable will still be rubbing on the cable housing. At this point Ill keep an eye on it, it I see a broken cable strand it's time to modify the holder arrangement.
Hoping to get a longer ride in today if the weather warms up a little:)