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.