A great week end

Saturday I dropped my daughter off for her first day of her summer job as a life guard and went in to Hartford to hear Bill Moyers and Barak Obama at the 50th annual synod of the United Church of Christ. They were great. An intelligent, thought provoking, motivating speech from a presidential candidate. What a concept!

Having done my church thing on Saturday, Sunday was for cycling. Newington Bicycle held their 2nd annual recumbent trike rally. Mike Gallagher put together a nice ride and good food. There were 8 of us who rode including Mike and his wife on their Greenspeed tandem, Franny Yerkes on her ICE trike, Alex (my trike building apprentice from last summer) and a woman doing her first trike ride on a borrowed Greenspeed gt3s, John (I think) on a HP Scorpion trike and John Tetz and I in our home built velomibiles.

John has just fitted his zote foam velomobile with a 4 1/2 lb homebuilt electric assist system which he kept talking about as still being in the test phase. Well John, when a 75 year old guy passes me with ease going up a hill, I'd say the test is successful. John and I had lots of fun racing down the hills. The aerodynamics of velomobiles make it easy to leave everyone else in the dust. I set a new speed record for my velomobile at 47.4 miles per hour coming down the hill into Newington at the end of the ride. That front end alignment I did a little while ago made all the difference in the world. At 47+ mph the trike was rock steady.

After the ride I had arranged to meet up with my new friend Mike, one of the blog readers who had contacted me about building a trike/velomobile. We had planned out a rear suspension trike with 20" BMX wheels all around. Knowing that Mike has been spending a lot of time reading everything he could about trike construction on internet I knew he would be excited to see John's zote foam velomobile. Over lunch at the end of the ride I asked John if he wouldn't mind stopping by my house. Three homebuilders talking trikes, it was great fun. I know I eagerly awaiting John's write up of the power assist.

So what's next?

I think my middle aged knees will appriciate a couple of days off, but I'm looking forward to next Sunday's 2nd annual Newington recumbent trike rally. Over the next week, I'll be working on the story of my car free challenge experiance for BentriderOnline.

Without the pressure of needing the velomobile on a daily basis I will be able to start some redesigns which I'll continue to document on this blog. I've been operating under the principal of, "If it aint keeping you from riding don't start taking it apart. you're going to need to ride the thing tomorrow." Some of the issues I'll address are:

• The lid of the tailbox. I really like the look of the lid, but the thing was a pain in neck to line up to fit down tightly and frankly velco was not the best way to secure it. It blew off 3 times. Twice I had to backtrack to find it. I think bungee cords are probably the better solution.


• The steering of the trike. What I have now works fine, but the handlebars swing out in a wide arc that will interfer with wheel wells for the fairing. This has been the primary project I've put off because I knew I couldn't get it done in one evening so that I could ride the next day.


• The floor of the velomobile With warm summer weather around the corner, tightening up the velomobile with a floor hasn't been my top priority, but the real advantage of a velomobile is to extend the riding season later into the fall and winter.


• A rain/sun awning I was lucky during the challenge month that I only got caught in the rain 3 times all on the way home when it didn't really matter if I got wet. A coroplast roof extending a foot or so out in front of my head seams like it would do the trick.

Other projects on the horizon:

Helping a friend build a rear suspension trike similar to the one to the right that I built last year and turning it into a velomobile. He found this blog and realized we lived about 10 miles apart. After he looked me up we spent an afternoon talking trikes and are now developing the shopping list of parts.

Figuring out how to build a no weld trailer out of conduit. My experiance riding the velomobile with the tailbox filled to the gills with groceries made me think that a trailer would be a better solution. I'm sure I was very very close to the weight limit on the tail box and the trike handled like a battleship. I've seen write ups of how to build a trailer out of conduit, but they all involve welding nasty galvinized conduit. I don't have a welding set up and I'm not excited about exposing anyone to the zinc fumes that are released when welding anything galvanized. So hopefully I devise a workable alternative to share with the world.

Finally, I'll also be working on a blog with the Plainville Greenway Alliance, a volunteer group working to fill the hole in the Farmington Valley Greenway that eventually will run from New Haven,CT to to Northhampton MA and be part of the East Coast Greenway.

Last Day

Well its after 10pm on June 15th and I'm not planning on going anywhere tonight so I guess this is the end of the challenge. Over the past month I've ridden 306 miles in my velomobile through 10 towns in central CT. Thousands of people have seen me, hundreds have waved, given me a friendly toot of the horn or a thumbs up. A bright yellow velomobile with "Car free challenge" written across the back attracts attention. I'm happy to report that virtually all of it was positive.

Many of the women I know were concerned about my safety as I rode in traffic. The only near miss was when someone was so intent on looking at me as they passed me that they almost caused a head on collision.

Lots of people thought this had something to do with high gas prices. The fact that gasoline prices reached record highs during the challenge month was, however, purely coincidental. Back when I was driving I typically filled the tank once a week at about $35 right before the challenge started. So in the month I saved $140 on gas. To be honest that pales in comparison to the $303 car payment. Put another way, before the gas prices went up this spring it typically cost about $25 to fill the tank. That means the higher prices added $10 a week. Most Americans spend more than that a week on coffee they could make at home.

No this wasn't about gas prices this was about seeing if I could do it and getting into shape. I'm happy to report that riding everyday, I've lost about 5lbs and about an inch around the middle. My homebuilt velomobile held up pretty well and I have enjoyed showing it off.

This blog has been my first serious try at blogging. In the last two weeks since I figured out how to put a site meter on it there have been 540 visits. My blog has been featured in a local political blog and a blog by a recumbent bike rider somewhere where I think the speak Portuguese. I followed a link back to his site and it wasn't Spanish.

2nd to last day

Today I rode to two events. The first was a ground breaking for a renovation and expansion of New Britain's HRA Head Start program. This was a great milestone as we'll finally be able to offer high quality preschool to poor children in a nice facility rather than the 90 year old school and portable classrooms that we've been making due with for so long. There were lots of folks I know at the event and for some it was the first time they had seen the velomobile.
Eventually I checked my watch and had to make a rather hasty departure to allow my self enough time to stop at the office before heading to my next meeting at the State Department of Education in Middletown. As I rode through Berlin I stopped in front of the local hardware store to take of my jacket and stick it in the tailbox. As I was putting the lid back on a guy came over to check out the trike. Turns out he was at the hardware store to pick up some parts for his latest project putting an electrical assist on a bike. Apparently we live about a mile apart. I hope to connect with him in the future. The next stop on the way was at Berlin Bike shop for a planet bike high intensity LED flasher. Bruce, Mark and some of the other mechanics came out to admire the trike.
After cranking up a long hill in the granny gear there was the thrill of a long steep decent. I hit 38 miles per hour and the trike handled well. Last Saturday's front end alignment certainly helped. As I came into Cromwell I realized that my options of places to pick up something for lunch were rather limited so I ducked in for a salad at (forgive me) McDonald's. To my surprise, sitting a table was Bill Graustein. Bill was the first person I met in CT who regularly commutes to work on a recumbent bike. He's also the chair of the board of trustees of a foundation that funds much of the early childhood work going on in CT. After a little quick showing off of the velomobile it was on to my meeting.
On the way home I stopped in to say hello and show off the velomobile at Suburban Cycle in Berlin. As of the end of the day I was up to 295.4 miles for the month. Even if I have to invent a couple of errands, I get in at least another 5 miles tomorrow to break 300 miles during the challenge.

Ride to the Plainville Greenways Alliance Meeting

With only a 1/2 mile to and from work today it didn't really feel like I had been out for a ride today so I decided that I would finally go to a Plainville Greenway Alliance meeting. Plainville is the next town over from New Britain and is the one town along the Farmington Valley Greenway route where there hasn't been any construction. There is an East-West rail line that carries through traffic and a line that goes north and south to the town line. This North-South line in Plainville is the only strech of the rail line that used to run from New Haven up to North Hampton, MA that is still active. The small but dedicated Plainville group came together to try to save an old railway bridge that crosses Northwest drive near the Farmington town line that had been abandoned by the railroad. While the group was too late to save the bridge, they have continued to work to close the gap in the trail. At some point during the meeting I asked, "So do you guys have any kind of web presence?" Of course the answer I got was, "Well, no we've kind of been waiting for someone who has a clue how to do that sort of stuff to help us". So sometime in the next week I'll be setting up a blog for them.

Starting Week 4 with a ride to Hartford

I started the last week of the car free challenge with a ride to a meeting in Hartford for work. This is now the 3rd trip into the capitol city so I've perfected the route and shaved about 10 minutes off the trip. That's probably due mostly to having lost a couple pounds and gotten into better shape with daily riding. As of the end of the ride today my mileage for the challenge is 253 miles so far. Not much compared to the training regime of hard core racers but I'm just using it for daily transportation. There were several fairly level stretches were I found myself spinning out in the top gear doing 26 miles per hour. The fairing definitely has an impact when I start getting up over about 15 miles per hour.
I've just added a link to pictures I took of Ethan Davis's corplast fairing. Its in the Favorite Web Pages section to the right and down.

Red Bull anyone?

This afternoon I rode up to Walnut Hill Park to check out the New Britain Criterium race. Lots of spandex clad guys on expensive bikes. On the way home Amy and Kristen from the Red Bull marketing team chased me down to tell me about the Red Bull soap box derby Apparently they saw my velomobile and thought that it looked like like something that might get entered into the race. They gave me some free samples and were good sports about following me home so that I could get the camera