Velomobiles Burlington VT October 4th

The Velomobiles are coming to Vermont!
This year the HPV Burlington Bikefest takes the place of the New England Human Powered and Ultra Efficient Vehicle rally held in Amherst, MA for the last several years.

Last weekend I tagged along with my wife to a conference she had in Burlington and met up with some of the folks organizing the event. Phil, Marc and Stu have some big plans. There will be camping in a nice municipal campground right on the the shoreline bike path. A ride out to a working farm and an expo at Oakledge Park where folks can checkout the velomobiles and other interesting vehicles.

Burlington is a great little city on the shores of Lake Champlain. I was impressed by how much was going on there. The lake front is gorgeous and certainly not hurt by a bike path that hugs the shore. There are great restaurants and lots of micro brewed beer. There's also a thriving arts scene and lots of little non profit organizations doing good things. One that I particularly enjoyed finding was Local Motion the bike advocacy group that has worked to extend the bike path north along the island line.

Early October in Burlington is peak foliage season, which will make the trip that much better. If you've been fantasizing about a velomobile, plan to come. It will be a great place to see (possibly even ride) a bunch of manufactured as well as homebuilt velomobiles.
The HPV Burlington Bikefest website will soon be getting updates and we hope an online registration feature, so check it out.

Bentrider Online announces 2008 Car Free Challenge

BentriderOnline.com has just announced their 2008 Car Free Challenge to run during the month of July. The Challenge is again being sponsored by TerraTrike and the prize will be a 2008 Cruiser trike. Unlike past years, this year the prize will be determined by the luck of the draw rather than through an essay contest. With gas prices over $4.00 Bryan at Bentrider figured last year's 200+ entries could easily become 400. So if you're thinking about going car free even for a month, check it out.

Plainville Earthstock

I took the velomobile out to the Plainville Earthstock festival in Plainville today. Pictures I was set up between my friends at from the Plainville Greenway Alliance and Mike Zych, proud owner of a new (for him) Catrike Road. He also had his VW deisel modified to run on french fry oil. Lots of people came over to check of the velomobile. Unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures. On a sad note, I heard today that Bantam Bakery closed today. Apparently fuel and flour price increases really squeezed them.

Over seat stearing conversion

I 've finally finished the coversion from underseat steering to the "Windcheetah" style overseat steering. The change was necesitated by my plan to put a floor and wheel wells into the fairing. The old handlebars would have hit the wheel wells every time I tried to turn. As you can see from the pictures I've bolted it all together just like the rest of the trike. I used 1.25" square tubing and a piece of tubing that's the same 7/8'' as handlebars.
The snow had melted off the road soI took it out for a test ride this afternoon. I didn't take it down a hill but I suspect I need to tighted the connection with the universal joint. There's some play in it. The other issue is that its prety hard to turn. The steering assembly is attached to the frame with a bolt that goes through a bushing on each side of the frame. Maybe some oil would help. The only other problem was that my rear derailer cable cought on the bit of bolt I didn't saw off fush with the nut.
The other advantage of this set up is that I had a chance to redo the steering linkage and hopefully improved the ackerman compensation. The old set up was off and an I went through tires about every 1000 miles. The turning radius dramticly improved. The old handle bars used to hit the seat limiting the turning circle to the width of my little street.

Laser front end alignment

I spent the long weekend switching over from underseat stearing to Windcheetah style club steering, which of course means I needed to do a front end alignment. My system is copied from Larry Varney's friend and mechanic Walt Smith. Walt graciously did an alignment for me at the 2005 Bentride.
The system uses two magnetic laser torpedo levels. Idealy its a two person job with the rider sitting on the trike (there's a little frame flex in all trikes). The other person lines up the targets first very close to the lasers and then again 20' to 30' away. I've found that an inch of toe in at 20-30 feet works pretty well.

Do It Yourself LED Headlamp

I stumbled upon this cool DIY LED headlight last night. Allen Chapman, the do it yourselfer who came up with it has done a really good job documenting how he built it and where he bought the parts. Light output wise it compares to the $400 to $500 high end lights. It looks like a fun winter project and I like the square tube look. It goes with the trike.

An Inconvenient Truth

I rode over to Bantam Bakery in Plainville this evening for a showing of Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth. The showing was organized by the Plainville Greenway Alliance and the Plainville Conservation Commission. They had a good crowd and you can't beat Bantam Bakery for snacks.

In order to do the ride I had to get the trike's lighting system set up. I'm running a 20w Halogen headlight off of a 12 motor cycle battery. Like the rest of the trike its a home built set up. The light is actually a car fog light with a white bulb rather than the yellow that it came with. For visibility I'm also using a planet bike strobe mounted mid way up my flag pole. A 5 LED red light on the back of the fairing and just for added 360 degree visibility a xenon strobe at the top of my flag pole. I runs off of a 9 volt transistor radio battery. Finally I've mounted a headlamp to the visor of my helmet which I usually run in the flashing mode. Over kill you say? I was glad to have some extras as I watched the front headlight dim to dull glow as the battery ran down. Maybe someone will get me that killer LED headlight I saw over at REI for Christmas (Hint, Hint).



So watching the Nobel Prize winner's movie it's really hard not to think about how much different this country maybe the world would be if the supreme court hadn't given W the presidency.

Calculate your carbon foot print with the handy online tool on the Inconvenient Truth web site.

Obviously the more you can leave the car a home and walk, ride or take the bus the smaller your footprint will be.