Sprained Ankle

I ended up going to the Doctor and after a few xrays he determined that my ankle was not broken but sprained. I used an ankle brace and a cane for a few days and while it still feels a little tight I am feeling ready to get back on the mountain. That's about all I have been thinking of for the last two weeks.

Fat Guy Mountain Biking

Now seems to be as good of a time as any to resume my Fat Guy blog. I remember when I started this blog that I had hoped to loose weight and the title would eventually become ironic. Well, that hasn't happened as I continue to be just as fat as ever. I do consider myself fairly healthy though and am constantly out doing physical activities. While my main everyday riding is on my trike I took up Mountain biking a few weeks ago and just love it.

I am very lucky to be very close to Payson Canyon which is intertwined with many trails. Mountain biking was never on my radar before as I had always been more of a road rider. Getting bake on a bike has been great. I finally found a bike that fits me well and that has made all the difference. All the guys at the shop use KHS bikes, and it was suggested I look at their 29ers. I ended up choosing the Prescott model which has full suspension and makes for a nice smooth ride. The XL frame gives me the perfect sized cockpit and overall the bike has needed very little tweaking.

Riding around in the parking lot and on the road is fun, but for any distance riding I would definitely choose the trike. With the guys always talking about the trails I decided that I had to try it. Having no experience in this at all I was unsure of what to expect. Let me walk you through what I remember from my first ride:

The guys like to ride Bennie Creek as it is one of the closer trails. They bill it as an exciting ride that is not too difficult. So, we drive up the Canyon about 15 minutes and I see the sign that says Bennie Creek. That's where we will come out. We continue driving up about 10 more minutes to the Mt. Loafer Trailhead. That's where the fun starts.

As we get out of the truck and the guys start putting their gear on I am noticing the body armor suits and full face helmets. Hmmm... I'm not the only guy with just a basic helmet and gloves though, so I don't think too much of it.

The guys take off down the trail and are soon out of site. I'm OK with riding in the rear as I certainly dont want to get in anyone's way. So I head down and am immediately presented with a wooden plank bridge of about 8 inches wide crossing the river. I assume the other guys just rode over it, but I choose to walk it carrying the bike. What have I gotten into?

I get back on the bike and proceed to roll quickly on the foot wide 'singletrack' trail carving its way through the trees. This is kind of fun. I reach a small clearing and the guys are there waiting for me. There is a fork in the trail and I am told the fastertrail is to the left but is much more 'technical' (mountain bike speak for more obstacles) and I should take the right trail, that while requiring significantly more climbing will ultimately be an easier beginner route. OK, and I start riding up the hill. Fat guys don't climb hills too well. It is a lot of work and even with low mountain biking gears the spinning starts to get to you. My heart is racing and I am breathing hard but I am determined. After all climbing up a hill means you get to roll down, and I would rather start with the climb than end with it.

As I round the first few bends the terrain changes a few times. Big rocks jut out of the trail with tire tracks as evidence of others crossing them. I navigate through them OK on the flats but when I encounter more of the 'rock gardens' on the uphills I decide to walk the bike up the rest of the way. There are a lot of footprints next to the tire marks so I assume I am not the only one that has made this decision.

Getting to the top feels great. I am still breathing hard and am sweating pretty good. I drink a bit from my water bottle. After catching my breath it is time to go down. I mount the bike and away I go. The same rock formations are everywhere and I do my best to navigate through them.I constantly hit the rocks with my feet and pedals. There is definitely some technique to this I need to learn.

In addition to the rocks there are roots growing across the trails making bumps and even steps going down the trail. I am not very comfortable jumping yet so I choose to walk down the bigger drops. As the trail goes down steep inclines I ride my brakes where I'm sure the other guys would just fly down.

I finally meet up with the other guys waiting for me where the lower and upper trails join back together. They take off again and I follow far behind. I go through a meadow, more rocks, and some more climbing. I am mostly thinking that I am thirsty and I lost my water bottle. That's right it came right out of my cage at some point. There is a reason why all the guys have hydration packs with 2L water bladders. I am usually pretty good at feeling when I am starting to dehydrate and should have stopped to rest. Instead I kept going and ultimately paid the price.

It happened after I had just traversed some rocks and was a little wobbly coming out of a corner. I saw the root coming out of the trail running parrallel to it for about two feet. Not sure how I was going to negotiate it I was already there. My wheel hit the side of it and my foot hit the other side. As often happens at these time everything started to move in slow motion. Unlike the Matrix where they can use this to their advantage my view was more that of an observer. As I was thrown off the bike I never let go of the handlebars. My left foot hit the ground on the outside of my shoe and I watch my foot buckle inwards at a right angle as my weight and the force of the impact came down upon it. Then, twisting my head to the side I saw the bike in the air still being held by me and then crashing down on my side. This was not good.

I lay there on my back and then stand up with my bike. As soon as I put weight on my foot I went down. As I lay on my back for a minute I think about how mad my wife is going to be. The realization hits that I have to get out of there and I am going to have to ride. Assuming the guys eventually come looking, I am too big for them to carry out anyway. So, I try to stand up again and this time everything goes black as slowly lay back on the ground. In a second my body resets itself and now, full of adrenaline, I get back up decide my foot doesnt hurt as bad as I thought and get back on the trail.

Shortly I find the guys waiting for me and relate my experience. We are only halfway down so I better just suck it up. Next up was the 'switchbacks' one of which has a 5 foot dropoff which was jumped by one of the guys. I decided to take the more cautious route and eventually made it through.

Coming out of the Bennie Creek trailhead felt good. We coasted down the road through the canyon and back into Payson. Once I sat down I remembered my ankle as it swoll up and screamed in pain.

Riding again!

Well, the weather finally got nice enough to ride again a couple of weeks ago. It's been really nice getting on the Trike again, although I am very out of shape. On saturday I hooked a trailer to the back of the trike and towed Hannah around the mountain. It was a killer. 35 miles in three hours. Some of those up hill climbs I was at the lowest gear and barely climbing faster than I could have walked. I'm sure the extra 100lbs behind me helped to burned some extra calories though.

To get the family into riding with me I finally had to buy two more trikes. I got another Cruiser for Sonia and a KMX SL for Harold. That way if I put trailers behind both trikes the whole family can go out. It's awesome. I can tell right off though that some enhancements will need to be made. I think we'll start of with some clipless pedals.

Back Again

Yeah, that was pretty lame of me to say that I was back and then not really come back. My exercise and diet has moved down the priority scale as I have had to concentrate more on business. Plus, it's been cold out anyway.

The last three months have kept me extremely busy as I have completely renovated the Guy Graphics websites. I had this idea in August that we should add more products to our online catalog and we increased the number of products from just under 10,000 to well over 30,000. While, at first this seemed like a good thing, it proved to be disasterous initially. With that many products on our site it became very difficult to find any specific product and our website lost its focus of being a source for audio and video production equipment.

My answer to this was to filter the products by brand and type into different sub-sites. I figured that creating specific sites that focused on just one brand would make it easier to market. So I started by creating about twenty sites with the "buy" prefix, like buyAvid.com and buyCanopus.com. This worked out well, but the server load became huge and brought our the system down on two occassions.

My next step was to completely redesign our sites and use a common template for each of them. This has worked very well, as it allows me to make updates in one place and all sites are affected. I also created six main sites in addition to the brand-specific sites, with no one site having much more than 10,000 products on it. This has helped us to organize our products, which makes it easier for customers to find products and easier for us to market effectively.

So, that's what I've been working on while I haven't been writing here.

I'm Back

July has been a crazy month and I've let my blogging lapse. At the beginning of the month we went to California for the July 4th weekend. After returning to Utah, we decided that we needed to work on our back yard and plant more trees at our place. Instead of riding the trike every morning I started working on the yard. So, my routine started to change because of the yardwork and I grew lax on my diet too.
The good news is that I've maintained my weight and have not gone up at all. Actually I've lost about 5 lbs since we got back from CA.

We are almost done with the back yard so I should be able to get back to my weight loss routine again.

My Morning Diet Coke on the Trike

Video from this weekend!

Here is my first attempt at posting video on my Blog. This is a one minute downhill run on the Provo River Parkway. It was recorded using the AV500 and uses the DivX codec, so you'll need that installed on your system to play it.

Final Camera Mount

Here is a picture of the latest and best-so-far camera mounting arrangement for the front of the trike. You can see the camera is mounted in a rubber microphone clip (MY100) which is attached to the support shaft. I also tightened up the accessory bar which is connected to the blue frame (derailer post) and that made a lot of difference. I run the camera's cable down the front of the frame and along the bottom and then connect it to the AV500 in front of the seat. The little length of cable between the camera and the coils seems to be enough to let the camera twist freely without getting tangled.

On this closeup picture you can see the bolt assembly better. The lock nuts work much better than the wingnuts did and the neoprene washers do a good job at keeping the whole assembly tight while still allowing it to twist. The basic mic clip seems to provide just the right amount of dampening without letting the camera bounce around too much.

My Trike Videos

Recording video while riding a trike and have it turn out ok depends a lot on the camera placement. The camera position determines the area that is recorded and the action's point of view. The other important aspect of recording is what is actually being recorded.

For my first test videos, I had the camera placed on the right side of my helmet with some velcro. I had the recording device (Archos AV500) in my saddlebag. This immediately presented a couple drawbacks. First, my head was now tethered to the trike, which means I have to take the helmet off before I get off the vehicle. Not doing this hurts. Second, because of the cable length from the camera to the recorder the AV500 has to get put in the bags in back. This means that once I'm rolling I can't see what's being recorded or if the unit is even still on. Despite these limitations I did make some recordings and the video did turn out. My head acts like a big shock absorber for the camera making the image pretty steady. The bad news is that, apparently, I move my head side to side quite often. Good for seeing the sights, but quite dizzying on video. This was combined with a constant view of the side of my helmet on the left of the screen. This could probably be resolved by moving the camera to the top of the helmet.

The main thing I learned from the helmet-mounted-camera test is that unless I'm riding among other riders, the video looks boring. Mounting the camera to the front would be an ideal position because then I could rotate the camera to point in different direction including at myself to break up the monotony. So, with a handlebar mount from a walmart bike headlight and some hardware from home depot I came up with the contraption to the left. The Viosport cameras have threads on them, so I screwed a bolt right into it and used a wingnut to lock against it. Having the camera placed in the front of the trike also meant I needed the AV500 in the front. I liked this idea because I could mount the unit so I could see the video live from the camera. So, I built a cradle for the AV500 out of some Aluminum and a bike bottle holder. This allowed me to mount it to the stock accessory holder. It was time for more testing.

The position of the camera in the front is much better. I can turn the camera while rolling and aim it at whatever I want. I quickly disvovered that my mount needed some work. Everytime I would rotate the camera one of the wingnuts would loosen. That meant I was constantly adjusting and then tightening. The next thing I discovered was that the vibrations of the road were too much for the AV500's hard drive. I was able to fix this by covering the bottom of my aluminum cradle with Velcro and about 25% of that amount of Velcro on the AV500's battery. The unit is now held secure but has enough dampening from the Velcro to prevent damaged video files. With that taken care of I got some good video, but the vibration made it almost unwatchable. Running the video through SteadyHand gets rid of most the vibration. SteadyHand is a software image stabilization program.

Even with SteadyHand, I thought I could get some better video if I minimized some of the vibration. My brother thought that an audio microphone shock mount might do the trick, so I remade the mount to include the AT897 shock mount and reworked my bolt arrangement to eliminate the loosening wingnuts. To lock the bolt on and still allow me to rotate the camera without loosening, I used nylon locknuts instead of the wingnuts. To keep tension on the handlebar mount I used two fender washers and two neoprene washers. With the whole assembly bolted up I put the camera camera in the shock mount. The results -- smoother but more shaking due to the camera being suspended in the mount.

My next step was to replace the AT897 mount with a basic mic clip. So far I think that's the best setup.

Next time I'll talk about the actual video and post some samples.

My First Organized Trike Ride

Russ Card from Recumbent Cycles of Utah, organizes summer events called the Bent Bike Boogie. On Saturday I got to ride with the other participants along the Provo River Parkway from the Orem parking lot to Vivian Park and back. The event is open to all the local recumbent riders, bikes and trikes alike. The only ones that showed up this time were trikers. I connected our Walmart-special bike trailer to the back and towed Hannah behind me.

It was an absolute blast. It's fun to ride the trike the trike alone, but with a group of others it's even more fun. And, out of pure coincidence, all of except for one guy were wearing red t-shirts, so it felt like we were part of a club.

The ride to Vivian Park is slightly uphill, but with towing the trailer it was enough to make it hard to keep up with the leader at times. Coming back on the downhill run was a different story. The extra weight of the trailer added some momentum and made it easy to cruise up front.

It's a great group and we already set up a date for our next ride. I told them about our ride around West Mountain, but they said they weren't quite ready for that yet.

I did get the ride on video, but I'll post details about that a little later.

Back to the video stuff!

Now that I've got all my drivetrain tweaks made I can get back to the video stuff. I hadn't touched the VioSport Camera or the Archos AV500 in a couple weeks. On our weekend ride around the mountain I attached the camera to my helmet and put the AV500 in my saddlebag. It recorded well, although it gets kind of boring just seeing straight ahead all the time. With the camera attached to my helmet there are not a lot adjustments that can be made.

I decided that I needed to mount the camera to the front of the trike with a pivot so I could point it in any direction. I also decided that I needed to mount the AV500 on the front so I could see it while seated, thus allowing me to adjust the camera angle and such.

Mounting the AV500

I decided that a good position for the AV500 would be the stock accessory mount at the base of the seat. That mount is no good for a drink holder anyway because it is horizontal and too close to the bend in the tubing to allow for good drink retrieval. I decided to start with a Bell drink holder that I found at walmart for $4. It has a nice aluminum mounting setup with some bars that could be bent. I started by taking off the plastic strap and bracket that holds the drink in place. Once I had done this I realized that this unit itself was not going to be enough to safely hold the AV500.



I dug through some old boxes of junk in the garage and fount a piece of 1/8" aluminum sheet that I had been saving for about 15 years. At one point in time I thought I could use it to make a cool RC car chasis out of it. I cut it with a wet diamond-dust tile saw, drilled some holes in it, cut it some more with the jig saw, beat the heck out of it with two hamers a vice and an anvil, smoothed it all out with the belt sander and ended up with a perfect receptacle for the AV500.



With my carrier plate made, I drilled some holes in it and attached it to the Bell drink holder. I then bent the tubing on the bottom around so it would wrap in front of the AV500. I tried doing something with the top tubing, but in the end I decided to just cut it off and grind it down. I must say that I am very happy with the way the unit ended up. To secure the AV500 in the carrier I attached a small piece of velcro to the top. With the unit bolted to the frame I tested it out and found it to be a very good position, just as I hoped.

Mounting the Camera

I found some good ideas about mounting cameras to handlebars on the web, and they pretty much went along with my original ideas, so it went along very easily. I started by using a handlebar mount from a cheap headlight kit I found at walmart. I punched out the threaded screw and cut off the bottom to get me a flat surface for my new screw. For the shaft I used a 3" Stainless Steel 1/4"x20 bolt with a wingnut on it and inserted it up from the bottom of the mount. I then put two neoprene washers, a flat washer, and another wingnut on the bolt. These two wingnut would allow me to tighten the mount to my bar. For the base of the camera I used another upside-down wingnut, a flat washer and two more neoprene washers. Those would be used to tighten the camera on the shaft. Of course, all of this is possible because the Viosport camera has threaded camera mount holes built into it.



With the camera threaded on the shaft I mounted the assembly to my accessory mount and everything seemed good to go. I had to wrap the camera wire around the post over to the AV500. My trike's sleak appearance is starting to look a little junky with all the wires building up. Connecting the camera to the AV500 is not a problem, but connecting the camera's battery pack does present some problems because the cable is fairly short. I strapped the battery with some velcro in the meantime. With some duct tape I'm sure I could make my trike look really junky.

Now it's time to get some sleep. I'm looking forward to trying it out tomorrow.

Fathers Day

For Fathers Day we went to the Provo River Parkway Trail and I rod the trike with Henry on the saddle bags and everyone else walked. So, the pace was about 2.5 mph. It was the first time we had beeen to the trail and I must say that I really like it. It is tree lined, and follows the river. We walked from the Mt. Timpanogas Park to Bridal Veil Falls which is about 3 miles. Once we got there I headed back to pick up the car. The ride back was a gradual downhill slope and I pretty much coasted at 20-25 mph. The trail is quite populated with people walking and rollerblading, so I was constantly ringing my bell.

I let three people try the trike out today. The trike definitely draws the crowd. The main questions are always: Is it comfortable? Where do you get one? And of course, How much does it cost? I really need to get some business cards made with some info.

Around the Mountain

I invited my brother and his wife to join me for a ride around West Mountain this morning. I didn't now how long the trip would be but I estimated about 25 miles. When all was said and done it ended up being a 32 mile round trip. Not too bad, except my brother got sick about 10 miles into it and we had to make some frequent stops to let his stomach settle. I'm impressed he made it the whole way under those conditions. I'll definitely want to try the loop again in a couple weeks.

While keeping pace with the group meant I couldn't race along, the trip was a good test for the new tires. The one time that I actually got out of the trike I saw two large thorns stuck into the front right tire. I just pulled them out. My stock tires would have been flat at that point. I also decided that since we were moving slower I would work on my cadence and stay in the low gears, so I never got past 3rd and spent most of my time in first. I found that at 150 rpm I can go 18.5 mph in first. I can't maintain it for too long though because there just isn't enough resistance on the pedals. I think for next weeks commute I'll stick to the low gears and keep working on the high rpms.

New Tires

I have not been very happy with the stock tires on the trike. They do give me a cushy ride with a max of 40psi, but I have already had 4 flats total and the rear one already looks worn down after only a couple hundred miles. So, last week I started looking for a replacement tire that would be more flat resistant and go faster. I found some tires mentioned on a few forums, the Schwalbe Marathon Plus. They have a thick rubber layer for the best puncture prevention and have a much lower rolling resistance than my stock tires. I'm sure they roll easier because of the better rubber compound and the higher air pressure they can hold (45-70psi). Well I got them today at the office and quickly swapped them over. They feel much slicker with a harder material. The tread/tire thickness is much thicker than my stock tires so they should be better with the flats. I inflated the fron tires to the max of 70psi and the rear to a cushier 60psi. I am thinking that might give me better pedaling traction. At 70psi the front tires feel like rocks. I am anticipating a faster ride home with a bumpier ride.

Riding with the Nexus

My last two days riding with the Nexus hub and my new 17t sprocket have been great. Just as planned, I spend most of my time in 5th gear. Shifting is super smooth and almost imperceptable except for 5th gear where I can feel the click of the gears locking to give me the 1:1 ratio. I am very happy I made the switch to the internal hub.

The gear ratios I get are perfect for my current riding level, so I don't think I'll need to tweak the gear ratios any time soon. To test it out good I rode 17 miles on the way to work yesterday and 12 miles home. Today I rode 27 miles to work (by way of going around the mountain). I had lots of good uphills and downhills to test on.

In 5th gear (using the Schlumpf overdrive in front) I comfortable ride between 16-21 mph with a usual speed of about 18-19mph at a 70rpm cadence. On flat terrain this is my usual cruising speed. On today's mountain climb I found that as I steadily downshifted I was in first gear (still with overdrive on) fairly quickly. I just barely got the nerve to take this trike up hills, so it should get better as I condition myself more. In first gear I was still doing 10mph, but it was still to hard to maintain a good cadence, so I had to shift out of overdrive. My next gear ratio down without the overdrive is actually about 5th gear in the rear, so very quickly I clicked the Schlumpf shift button and twisted the grip to 5. Perfect dual shifting action. The hill climbing went on for a while, but I was able to maintain a speed of above 5mph for the duration. Yea!

By the time I got up the top of the mountain I saw the big road heading east towards the freeway and knew I was going to have to book it if I was to make it to work on time. So, after I drank a whole 20oz bottle of Gatorade I set downhill. I love going fast downhill. I wanted to go as fast as I could so I kept pedaling and upshifting. When I got to 8th gear I was going 38mph (my new speed record) and decided that was enough pedaling. I coasted for about 5 minutes above 30mph and started pedaling in 7th gear. One thing I really like about this hub is that I can shift while I am coasting. I was able to stay above 25mph until I hit the next hill in Payson. This time going up the hill was not as smooth. When I was in first and went to downshift the Schlumpf and upshift the hub, my left foot unclicked from the pedal and I had to stop to click back in and shift out of overdrive. Bummer.

Overall, I am very pleased with the combination of the Schlumpf High-Speed Drive and the Nexus 8 Hub in the back. According to Sheldon Brown's calculator I have a combination of about 15-120 gear inches with only one overlapping gear ratio giving me 15 usable gear combinations. This should be enough to climb about any hill and go as fast as I want to.

Shimano Nexus Hub

Over the weekend I made a major modification to the trike. I exchanged the rear derailer and cassette gears with a new wheel with an integrated transmission. the main advantage of an internal hub transmission is super smooth shipping and the ability to shift when stopped. I chose the "red-band" Shimano Nexus 8-speed hub and had Harris Cycles build me a wheel around this hub. I chose this particular hub for it's gear range and high efficiency.


Instead of multiple sprockets and external shifter, the internal hub has just one sprocket and an internal shifter that locks various internal planetary gears. The gear range is determined by the number of teeth on the sprocket and the size of the wheel. I decided to choose my rear sprocket size based on the gear that I normally spend my time in, instead of trying to match my old gear ratios. The reason I did this is because the hub transmission is most efficient in 5th gear with a 1:1 ratio where the hub gets locked to the sprocket. According to my tests on the stock 11-34-tooth cassette I spent most of my time on the 20 and 17-tooth sprockets. For my initial setup I installed the 20-tooth sprocket. It was good enough to test the whole setup, but it was immediately obvious that this gear was too low. With the new wheel I had them send me a 20, 19, and 17-tooth sprocket. The 19 would be too close to 20 so I tried on the 17. I soon noticed that the 17t sprocked was too thick for my chain. I went to the local bike shop and he traded me my 20t for an 18t off a kids bike. He didn't have any 17t sprockets. I gave it a shot for about 50 miles and was happy, but it wasn't quite there yet.


After talking with Harris Cycles I found that they don't make sprockets with less than 18-tooth for 3/32" chains and they are all for 1/8" chains. I guess people would normally use the hub with a larger wheel than 20", so the bigger sprockets would be ok. Since I can't put a bigger wheel on the trike I decided to make the thicker 1/8" sprocket work with my 3/32" chain. So I used the table belt sander and milled 1/32" off the back side. After I tested it for fitting the chain I attached it to the hub. The size of the 17t sprocket is enough smaller than the 20t that I needed to pull off another link of chain. I don't need a chain tensioner, but I may have to play around with the rear idlers some. I haven't ridden with this new setup yet, so tomorrow is the day.

Flat Tires

So, what's the deal with all the flat tires? I mean, I've been driving a car for years and I've only had maybe 2-3 flats, and only one while actually driving. I had three flats on the trike just this weekend. I know that were dealing with thinner rubber, but this is ridiculous. I am getting very fast at changing tubes in the tires though. I haven't patched any of the tubes yet because I can't find my patch kit. I've used all my spares so far though, so I'll either have to buy a patch kit or more tubes.

Chances of Rain ...

The thing I like best about riding my trike everyday is that it helps me feel at one with nature. Yeah, I'm riding around on paved roads for the most part, but it still feels good to be surrounded by fields of alphalfa and cows. When it rains I feel even more at one with nature.

It rained all night and when I woke up at 6 it was still raining. I answered a few emails and started to get ready slowly. I was trying to decide if I was going to ride or not. Actually, I knew I was going to ride. I feel compelled to ride. I must get my pedaling fix. And, most importantly, I must earn some calories so I can eat and still stay on my diet. As I was picking out clothes in my closet I saw a T-shirt I had given my wife from a convention I went to in Washington. It's a reddish T-shirt with the Space Needle on it and it says "Seattle" really big on the front of it. I had never worn the shirt before. When I had bought the shirt it never would have fit me. But now it fits me kind of big -- good for riding.

I ate a bowl of cereal and then mounted my trike. It was sprinkling outside. As soon as I got over the hump of my driveway and on to the road I felt the back wheel squishing around and I knew immediately that I had gotten my first flat tire on the trike. I turned around and rolled back into the garage. I really didn't want to fix a flat tire, but I didn't want to drive either. I haven't driven to work in over 4 weeks and I didn't want to ruin the flow. Besides, I already had my bike shoes on and I would have to go back in the house and change them. So, I decided to just pump the tire up and see what happened. It pumped up very easily and was holding pressure just fine. I couldn't hear any air leaking out, so I stuck my ear on the tire and listened for hissing. After a few seconds I decided it was good. I checked the front two tires while I had the pump out and they were both low, so I topped them off.

By the time I got out of the garage again the rain had stopped. Riding on the wet roads is kind of fun. It seems like the trike just glides over them. The roads are cleaner and not dusty. I do have to watch out for the puddles though. My trike does not have fenders so I have to keep my elbows tucked in when I go through any water. The tires spray a mist of water anyway, but I can avoid most of it. I made sure to stop at all the stop signs, instead of coasting through them, so I could check the back tire's air. It didn't seem to lose any.

Instead of my normal meandering route to work, I decided it would be best to head straight there via the shortest route possible. I had already had the delay of the tire, and I really do prefer to not get rained on. So I headed through the back roads dodging pot holes filled with water. I've decided that if I could only have one gear in the back it would be the third one. I actually spend most of my time in 4th gear, but third is the best compromise. I can easily cruise at 16-17mph in third and can even get up to about 22mph when I need to outrun dogs. Plus, If I need a lower gear I can always kick the 1:1 ratio on the Schlumpf drive to climb any hill. Well, as I was thinking about all this, I rounded a corner and very quickly had to swerve to miss a piece of shiny metal in the road. Normally I don't stop to look at road debris, but for some reason I decided I wanted to take a closer look. As I started to turn around I remembered that one thing I don't like about this trike is that I can't easily turn around on a two lane road. Because my feet are clipped in I have to do a three point turn using my hand (wheelchair style) to roll back in reverse. There has to be something I can do about that. Anyway, so I go back to the siny piece of metal and I find a perfectly good bucknife with the shiny blade exposed just waiting to slice someone's tire. Luckily, it wasn't my tire that got slashed and I am now the proud new owner of this bucknife.

The rest of my ride was uneventful. There are supposed to be rain showers today. I'm hoping that there will be a window of open sky when it's time to ride home.

New Record Speed

On the way home from work on Tuesday a started to get pelted with raindrops, so instead of keeping my "looking at the scenery" pace I decided to speed it up. I was pedaling like crazy and noticed that my cadence was at about 100 rpms. I was really surprised when my speedometer read 29.2mph though. I was so close to 30mph that I had to go for it. I kept spinning and spinning hovering around 29.8mph and then finally 30! As soon as I reached 30mph I coasted down to 20mph just to catch my breath. I must have been faster than the clouds though, because I didn't see any rain the rest of the ride home.

Riding In The Rain

Yesterday, I was not quite so lucky. The weather here this past week has been strange. In the morning the sky is relatively clear and by quitting time it's overcast with rain clouds. Well, yesterday about 4 o'clock the clouds unleashed their fury and it started raining pretty hard. After about 15 minutes the rain had stopped and the sun was peeking through the clouds. By the time I left work, it seemed that the weather would stay nice. I only got about two miles a way and boom -- The water came down and I was drenched. It actually wasn't too bad. The air was warm and the water refreshing. What I didn't like was the wind that accompanied the rain carrying it sideways into my face. It was nice to know that my travel bag on the back is waterproof and nothing got wet.

Exploring Benjamin

I've been leaving about a half hour earlier in the mornings which lets me go another 5-7 miles, so I've started exploring all the back roads in the country. I started out by going down all the roads in Benjamin and then Lake Shore. Today I rode through Palmyra, which is a really small community between Spanish Fork and Lake Shore. It's cool to see all the old barns and tractors.

Dogs

One thing that I noticed when I started commuting on my bike is that all the dogs in the various neighborhoods bark at me. If they are lucky, they'll even come around and chase me. Well, since I've been riding the trike I am a lot lower to the ground. Now when the dogs come out they look a lot bigger and are right at my hieght. They'll start chasing me and I'm afraid that they'll bite my arm. So, far I've found that the best way to deal with the dogs is to pedal faster. When they do come close to me I'll actually steer towards them like I'm going to run them over. They'll usually back off at that point.

Commuting on the trike

This last week has been great. Mostly because there were only four work days, but also because I got to commute with my trike. Riding on the trike is much better than riding the bike. It is so comfortable and makes going to work a totally different experience. My wrists and hands don't hurt anymore an d I'm having a lot of fun.

The first day of riding in the streets with cars it became very evident how much lower I am in the trike. Instead of being able to see over small cars I am now at the height of their doors. I also can't ride all the way in the shoulder anymore due to the width of the trike, which means I have to depend on the mirror a lot to see if there is anyone behind me. The mirror that came with my trike is nice, but it doesn't stick out far enough. I get a good view of my bicep, but can't see behind me very well. So, my first modification was to extend my mirror out an extra inch. It took me about 1/2 hour at Home Depot to find the right parts, but I was able to tweak it for less than $3. I got a 2" machine screw to replace the 1" default screw and then I was able to find some 1/2" spacers that had the same outside diameter as the mirror rod. The inside diameter was two big to allow the assembly to be screwed together straightly, so I found two smaller spacers that fit inside the larger spacers. The whole thing screwed together nicely. The spacers were white though, so I used a black Sharpie pen and colored them in to make them match. The whole project worked out very well and made a huge difference. I now have a much better view of cars coming up behind me and I feel much safer now.

Besides the mirror, my only irritation with the trike has been the loud rumbling from the rear idler. Everytime I pedal I can hear the chain bumping over the plastic wheels. I really wanted to get a better idler like the one in the front of my trike from Terracycle. According to their website, they only had a front unit available for sale. I decided to email them and see if they had something that would work. I heard back from Robert at Terracycle, and he told me that they actually did have one, but they weren't shipping it quite yet. If I was interested in one they could send me one. I told him to ship it to me and I got it today.

The new unit mounts in the same place as the stock idler but is considerably longer. On the drive side it has a sprocket and on the return side it has a strong super-slick plastic ring. The unit has two Abec-7 bearings and a modified shaft that allows the whole idler unit to slide to the left or right allowing it to line up with the chain best. The whole unit installed in about 5 minutes. When I got on the trike to test it out I was immediately impressed. There is no more noise from the idlers. The only noise I hear now is the chain rolling over the front sprocket and rear derailer. It is a stealth trike now. Riding home with the new idlers was great. It feels very smooth now instead of the previous bumpy feeling. I recommend the Terracycle idlers to any recumbent rider.

I've noticed that when I encounter people while riding the trike their reactions tend to be different than when I'm riding a bicycle. With the trike they tend to give me more room on the road. They wave a give me the thumbs up. I constantly hear comments like "I want one of those!"

My New Trike

My Trike finally arrived on Friday. After my initial ride around the block I adjusted the seat forward a little and removed 4 links of chain. It took a little tweaking to get it to fit on my rook racks but I did get it securely situated and was on my way home. You can see it here decked out with flags for Memorial Day. Also, you'll notice the reflective strips on the tires glowing from the camera's flash. I guess that what it looks like to cars when I ride at night.

My First Ride

When I got home the family insisted on going out to dinner, so I didn't get a chance to ride it immediately, but once the kids were asleep I strapped on the light and went for a ride. I ended up riding from about 11pm to midnight. It was smooth and responsive. Although the weather was quite windy I didn't really feel it because of the trikes low position. Because of my headlight's relatively low range and the generally poor condition of the Benjamin country roads, I didn't ride it real hard. I did manage to take it up to about 24mph, but I averaged about 10mph for the duration. The trike is very comfortable. I seriously feel like I could ride all day without hurting. The steering felt very sensitive, and the faster I rode the more the back end would shake during pedaling. Also, I noticed a consistent rumbling sound from the rear idler whenever I pedaled, but coasting on the machine was silent. About midnight Sonia called me and wondered where I was. When I told here I was out riding she told me to get home, so I did.

Bad Weather

Saturday and Sunday were not good days for having a brand new Trike. A storm came in and it was cold, windy and rained most of the weekend. Since I couldn't go out and ride I stayed in and started some tweaking.

Here you can see the front of the trike. I got it with a Schlumpf High Speed drive instead of the standard 3-sprocket derailer. With the stock rear cassette it gives me a gear-inch range of 15-116". In addition to the nice range, it eliminates the front derailer and shifter, frees up the front post, and that small sprocket just looks dang cool. The Schlumpf drive has a button in the center poking through the cranks on each side. You push the right side with your heal to engage overdrive and push the left side to engage the 1:1 sprocket. The overdrive is a 2.5:1 ratio, so with the 27-tooth sprocket, overdive gives the equivilent of a 68-tooth sprocket. You can also see in this picture the front idlers, which I had replaced at the factory with the upgraded Terracycle idlers. These idlers are smooth and produce no noise during riding.


In this picture you can see the front end well, with my "empty" derailer post. I had my dealer mount the extra accessory mount on the top to give me some more room for mounting gadgets. On the vertical shaft of the accessory mount I put the Garmin Edge 305 GPS computer. On the horizontal shaft I mounted the DualCross headlight. The empty derailer post is the perfect place to mount the light's battery pack with enough room for a front reflector. You'll notice on the left side I mounted the Edge 305's cadence sensor. Normally the sensor mounts on the back of an upright bike's frame by the rear wheel, since this isn't possible with a recumbent's bottom bracket placement I had to turn the sensor sideways. I used an 1/8" piece of rubber between the sensor and the tubing to get the sensor close enough to the crank to read the magnet. It works very good. I also got the Shimano 520 clipless pedals to go with my new shoes. I'm new to clipless pedals, but I gotta say that I absolutely love them!

Here's another picture of the front end. If your wondering why I got the Cruiser instead of the more expensive Tour, I'll tell you. After doing my research I found that the main cost difference between the two models is that the Cruiser frame is welded overseas (but otherwise identical) and the Tour has better drivetrain components. Since I knew I was going to immediately replace the Cruiser's front derailer with the Schlumpf drive and will be eventually replacing the rear derailer and cassette with an internal gear drive hub, I would be paying extra for components that I wouldn't be using anyway. Besides, I really like the blue color.

Speaking of the trikes rear components, here's a picture of the rear derailer and sprocket assembly and also the rear idler. The rear idler is the one part of the trike that I do not like. It is the only part of the trike that makes noise. I emailed WizWheelz about it and the tech suggested that I look at the chain guards and adjust them if necessary to make sure that they aren't rubbing against the chain. I did check them and they are not rubbing. I think that the noise I am hearing is normal and I'm probably just being too picky. If Terracycle had a rear idler option I would buy it immediately. The Terracycle idler, seen on the front, is slightly larger and has a sprocket gear on the drive side. This means that the chain isn't just bumping along on the plastic groove like with the stock idlers. The return idler uses a slicker harder material on the return side to eliminate more friction than the stock idler. Eventually when I replace the back gear assembly with an internal gear hub, I am hoping to eliminate the need for the rear idler altogether.

One reason that I really wanted the trike is that it gets hard to carry a lot of stuff on a bike. So, I got the trike with the Aluminum Rack, Seat Bag, and the Trunk Bag. When I picked up the trike, they had mounted the Seat Bag and the Trunk Bag, and while they looked very sharp, it was obvious that neither bag would be big enough for my laptop that I commute with everyday to work. A bag made by Ortlieb from Germany is the size of a small briefcase and has a plate on one side that locks onto another plate mounted on the rack. It looked perfect to me. It took me a little work to notch out the brackets with a jigsaw to get the mounting plate to bolt on to the Aluminum Rack, but it was worth it. This bag is the perfect size, and being so easily removable will make it perfect for the trips to the supermarket, in addition to meeting my commuting needs.

My First Real Ride

When I woke up on Monday morning the weather was beautiful, so I decided to go for a ride to really test it out. My goal was 20 miles. I went around on some of the back roads and then followed the edge of the mountain. I road past a lot of farms, the local dairy, and then ended by the local park which is just a mile from the house. By the time I had gotten home I had gone about 17 miles. My average speed was 13.5mph according to the GPS, which is about 2mph slower than my typical upright speed. My top speed on flat ground was about 22mph. I probably could have gone faster but I need to learn to control the trike better. The faster you go the more sensitive the steering becomes. The harder you pedal, the more the tendency to sway back and forth with each power stroke. With concentration, I was able to pedal hard and stay straight, so I'm sure that it is just a matter of technique that I will pick up with experience. The one thing that I noticed overall is that for the most part I don't have to concentrate on riding the vehicle. There is no upper-body pain to focus on and it is, for the most part, like driving a car. I just let my legs pedal and in the meantime I can look around and view the surroundings. The ride is very comfortable and smooth. Bumps in the road feel much smoother than my upright bike.

Overall, I am very happy with my new trike. I plan on doing some more tweaking on the rear drivetrain components in the near future, but other than that I like it the way it is. I'll be commuting to work with the trike starting tomorrow, so I'll really be able to compare it with my other bike.