Monday, November 3, 2008

First tryout of new trike


Took delivery of Trice QNT on Halloween, but the weather was rainy. On Sunday, Nov 2, it finally cleared enough to take out new trike; rode it over to see my trike dealer, Steve (thanks for the picture, Steve!) Baytrail Trikes in Albany to get the flag for it, and to tweak a few adjustments on it. Boy, riding 26 miles (round-trip) on my trike was practically falling-over easy, but my leg muscles started to give out near the end. Stopping for a few minutes let them return back to usability, enough to make it the rest of the way home. They're slightly different muscles that get used, to be sure, but with a little work, I'll get 'em up to speed within a week or two. After leaving Baytrail Trikes, I went up the hill into Kensington (altitude gain of approx 450') to show the new machine off to a friend. (I never used to like the taste of Gatorade, but it sure tasted fine when I got some at the small market up there - I think I'm going to have to make it a staple on my tour). Going uphill is definitely slower in a trike as opposed to a bike, but not so much that it made that big a difference. Coming back down, I was following a bicycle, and though she had a substantial lead, I caught her up easily, and had to coast a lot to keep from getting too close the rest of the way down; indicative that I had significantly less wind resistance; cool! Traffic on the main thoroughfares seemed fine; drivers would slow down behind me, sometimes, but it would usually be for just a few moments, until I could move out of the way, more, or they could pass on the left. Folks seemed to be quite patient and decent about it, but the SF Bay Area has *lots* of cyclists, so motorists are pretty used to us. Also, I'm very used to city riding, and being close to both moving and parked cars.

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