When the lights go down in the city

So you want to ride your bike at night?  You better have a crap ton of lights to see where your going and more important be seen. I'm still planning to get more for my bike.  But for now I have the Planet Bike Blaze 2Watt LED Headlight lights I mentioned in a previous post for the front they are really bright, but my biggest worry has been not being seen when approached from behind.  So I got a Portland Design Works Radbot 1000 1W LED Tail Light it has a reflector and a hellishly bright red light that can be set steady, flash slow or epilepsy inducing flash.  I also hung a pair of Serfas Guppy Combo Bicycle Light Kit on my highly reflective PurpleSky flag on the back.  They also have flashing and steady modes.  They are easy to hang anywhere and if placed against something, (backpack, seat back, etc.) they will light up a good sized area to add to overall visibility.  I still want to get a second rear light the Planet Bike Blinky Super Flash 1/2-Watt Blaze LED Plus 2 eXtreme LED Rear Bicycle Light probably, its really popular too and should make for an impossible to ignore combo with the Radbot.  I attached the rear light with zip ties on the rear rack using the mounting bracket that comes with the Radbot, the are well attached and don't move.  I still plan on more reflectors and maybe some down-lights under the seat or frame.  I may be paranoid, but I will be noticed.



In the summer in Texas the best time to ride is early in the morning or late at night.  And going without lights at night well, you won't be doing that too long.  Do yourself a favor and get as many lights as you can stand.


Click on one of the links to check out more reviews and get the best safety equipment you can find, even a minor car/bike accident is bad for the cyclist.

New trike work stand

PVC is my friend.  I took the plans from Utah Trikes website.  Trikes and PVC Article I bought all the parts for about $33.  Then in the morning, I chopped up the pipe with my saw.  It all fit together just fine.  So I started taking it apart and gluing it back together.  That could have gone better; I glued a part wrong and had to hammer on the thing to get it to go together. The crossbeam in the front is missing some pieces.  I actually broke my rubber mallet hammering it together.  But it’s assembled its sturdy strong and lightweight.  It makes tuning the tike up a lot easier.  I can’t imagine a cheaper way to get a decent safe stand for a trike. 

Anybody have a different stand or way to work on a trike without knelling on the floor?

George Bush park trail

I've been testing out various tracking programs for my phone.  Google's My Tracks works really well with lots of different data,  The one I think I like the most though is Endomondo.  Its pretty user friendly and the web tools allow you to find and plan routes.  The phone will give you updates every mile of how long that last mile took and the expected total time of the route based on what you've done up to that point.  It butts in to my podcasts, but it does help me keep the speed up when I notice the total expected time starts going up.  No I just have to figure out how to embed it here properly...

Endomondo Cycling Workout: "was out cycling 17.73 miles in 2h:49m:50s using Endomondo."

Pave paradise and put up a parking lot.

I have been traveling around town looking for the best places to ride my trike. I have not explored even a third of them yet. There are many nicely paved trails in Houston as well as wide dirt trails that work well for a trike. That said the hard part is not finding a trail, its finding parking for your car! Oh, I've found a few places close to a number of trails, but not many look like my car would be safe even for an hour unattended, especially if the "locals" watched me cycling away. Not to mention parking tickets and getting towed.

Why not just ride out of your garage and go wherever you want? Well I could cross the highway I suppose. I might live. And I could ride on the shoulder of a few of the roads with 50mph traffic and hope all the cars stay in their lanes. Then there are the roads with no shoulders and no sidewalks at all. I can get about 3 miles of safe low traffic roads near my home, but even repeating that a second time doesn't really last long enough, and going in circles bores the hell out of me. So I have to drive to some place to ride most of the time.

Putting my trike in my CRV isn’t too hard, the back seat folds down and I roll it in easily. The back wheel of my Cruiser comes just barely between the front seats. It’s actually better than using a bumper rack I think. When I carry my wife’s and mine I put mine on the roof and tie it on with rope and put hers in the back. Hers is much heavier and would be harder to do the overhead press necessary.

So for the time being I have found five different places that have over 10 miles of trail with a good parking spot close to the trails I like. I have three more to try and I will keep searching the others for good parking.

Anybody in the Houston area have suggestions for locations?

Visible changes

You might have noticed I now sport a noticeable flag on the back of my trike.  I bought it from Purple Sky Flags. It is, as you can see a very bright yellow and has a neon green streamer.  The silver circles you see are very reflective material. In the second picture you can see the amount of reflectiveness, that was a picture in the shade at about 8:30am and the flash illuminated it nicely.  They have many colors, three sizes, and circles or stripes that you can customize with. I chose yellow and green to make me as obvious as possible. 

I now feel like I might be a little safer venturing on to streets when I need to.  With this and lights that I have added, even poorly lit streets are going to get used on summer nights when the daytime heat makes riding impossible.  The construction of the flags is the highest quality, I can't say enough good things about that.  Its fabric, not plastic and doesn't make much noise at my below 15 mph speeds that I have noticed.  There are a couple of other flag choices out there, but this one looked like the best to me.   I intend to have the most obnoxiously lit trike I can have for night riding, I'm still working on that and will let you know more soon.  I'm still testing the rear light and some others that I will be mentioning as soon as I can. Teracycle still hasn’t' shipped the mount I ordered for the headlights.  I want to have decent pictures to go along with all the things I mention I've tried out to give as clear an explanation as possible.  In the meantime here is the video from Purple Sky's site:

  

Sinking in the sand

I had a mostly free day to ride all I wanted. I decided to map out both of the trails near home. One its about two miles and the other about three.  They both connect, although they do so at a street with a standard curb.  Kinda hard to get down and back up on a trike without dismounting and dragging the trike over them...annoying.  

Going to the end and backtracking it just about eleven miles. Not too bad, about half

is wooded with good shade, the rest is very sunny. I found a few dirt trails that were wide and flat, I would love to find more like this.  So I decided to try out the track I noticed on the other side of the 

gully on the way out.

Other riders and joggers confirmed it went the right way.  Halfway though I found out why some off road tires like Schwalbe Big Apple HS 338 Fatty Bicycle Tire

 (20x2.0, Allround Wire Beaded, Reflex) or Fat Alberts would have been nice to have bought with the trike. My road tires have fairly smooth tread and they are not so good for traction once you sink into sand. I was literally spinning my wheels.  Sigh, another dismount and drag the trike.  I should have tried the left turn I passed.  I got back to paved trail pretty quick and decided no more off road till I switch tires.  Too bad, this type of trail is fun

 
View Cypress Creek/Louetta Trails in a larger map  <----Click this to see it in a readable view.

Working on my Trike

Since I don't have a proper rack yet I have been improvising to get my trike off the ground to work on it.  A cooler in the wagon seems to be the most stable so far.  I really need to get around to building a PVC stand.

Why do I need to work on my almost new bike? Since I have an Internal Gear Hub (Nuvinchi 360 which I love, more later)  I have a chain tensioner to keep the chain tight if I shift the front triple crank set.  Unfortunately now that I regularly ride in my highest gear a lot I've found that when I down shift the spring on the tensioner  sometimes pops off.

I've never been able to force it all the way back on, even when I loosen the chain.  I have thought the chain was too short and was hyper extending the whole gizmo.  But even with the chain off I can't get it to work.  Maybe the spring is permanently damaged?  Its make is Origin8 Pro Pulsion UL Chain Guide its about $29 and it came with the bike.  Until it came loose I would have recommended it, but how I'm thinking of tossing it out if bigger tools wont force the spring back in place.  The difference in my front rings might be more than this tensioner can handle.  I'm also considering a different one like the one below because it can take up more slack that this one I have supposedly.  It might make the chain quieter too if it weren't so tight all the time.