Unstoppable

Once I put my mind to something, obsession often takes over, and there is no point in even debating with myself because I already know what the outcome is going to be. And so it was, once I discovered fat trikes!

With a long history of bikepacking, and being an early adopter of using fat bikes to get into the back country, it was only a matter of time before I decided that fat trikes would be my post surgery way back into riding off road. I did all the online research and had decided the ICE Full Fat would be my trike of choice. Several people are already using these trikes to get into the back country, most notably the "Trike Hobo" Steve Green. His website Trike Asylum is packed full of information on any trike you could imagine, and he has documented several adventures on his ICE Full Fat. I was lucky enough (very lucky it turns out!) to find one of the ICE Full Fats at my local recumbent shop, Angle Lake Cyclery, and I rushed down there to do a test ride at the first opportunity. And yes, I just have to post another picture of the store...

Standing in the entry of Angle Lake Cycle is an experience you won't soon forget! Back behind those boxes on the left is an ICE Full Fat Trike!

As I said in my last post, Dale is an amazingly nice guy, and despite his store's appearance he has some great products and he isn't bothered by needing to un-bury something to make it available. I asked for a test ride of the Full Fat, and he was more than happy to bring it out. With great excitement I rolled away on the beast, but...

I hated it...I HATED it! 

There was terrible overlap from the front tires and the handlebar/grip area. Every time I turned the wheels the tires raked over my knuckles, and there was no position I could place the bars in where there wasn't either overlap, or severely limited turning radius. This was a full suspension trike and it's handling was muddy, sloppy, and just dumpy feeling. Once I got off the trike to examine it I found slop in the rear suspension pivots allowing the rear wheel to flop back and forth. It felt like ICE just threw some fat bike wheels on one of their other trikes and called it good, like the frame was not actually designed to be a fat trike. It was awful to ride, and there was no way I was going to spend that kind of money on what I felt was such a poor design. I left dejected and crestfallen.

But, as I said, I am nothing if not determined and I knew there had to be a fat trike out there that was better designed for my intended use. Several other brands fell into the cheap, knocked together, Chinese built category, no thanks. Then a video came up on my YouTube feed showing a guy traveling long distance across a (partially) frozen lake on a fat trike, and the trike looked amazing! Here is that video of Jan Zdansky attempting to cross Lake Baikal-

The trike looked to be exactly what I was looking for. Fully rigid, meaning no sloppy pivots or added weight and complication, no hand/tire overlap, the seat was tucked over the rear wheel to increase traction, full fat 26" rims with 5" tire compatibility, a non folding option, standard Tubus rack compatibility, and they were willing to sell me just the frameset so I could build it up myself. It looked to be perfect, so I contacted AZUB and set into motion ordering a frameset all the way from the Czech Republic. After a couple of false starts and stops with bank transfer problems, the money finally went through and the frame was on the way! 

I had built up a custom Carver O'Beast ti fat bike last year shortly before my shoulder fell apart, so I already had almost all the components I needed to build up the trike once it arrived. 

At the annual Winthrop Fat Bike Meetup

Snoqualmie Pass

I will use the XTR shifter and derailleur from the fat bike, the Race Face Next SL cranks, XT cassette, Avid BB7 brakes and levers, the rear wheel, and tires. Then all I need to do is build up the front wheels and start hooking everything up. 

XT cassette, XTR derailleur, and BB7 brake with a Hope Fatsno rear hub, laced to a Sun/Ringle' Mulfut rim, and a Schwalbe Jumbo Jim tire, set up tubeless

Race Face Next SL crank and pedals

Avid levers and XTR shifter

The day finally arrived, and a large box was waiting for me at work. I took it home and unboxed it immediately! AZUB does a fantastic job of prepping the trike to be shipped, and everything arrived safe and sound. 

The shipping box was well packed, double thickness, and arrived undamaged

The saddle has many rows of straps to fine tune the comfort and fit

Micro adjusters and 12 positions allow for an infinite amount of saddle angle adjustment

Red anodized quick release for the seat mount

The boom has a beautiful cable guide

Massive dropouts make for a stiff rear end, despite not having a thru axle

Kingpins are ready for disc brakes

135mm Fat Trike specific quick release front hubs with red accents

AZUB's exclusive sliding seat mount

Massive separable plates with replaceable alignment pins for breaking the frame down for travel

A side pod mount will allow me to use my Ortlieb handlebar bag to keep necessities close at hand

Here is a short video of the trike unboxing

I'm really excited to get this monster built up! Evaluating it after the unboxing shows nice welds, carefully thought out design, and a gorgeous gloss paint job. I am so impressed with the way this trike was engineered, nothing was missed in the well thought out and executed design. From the massive separable frame plates with replaceable alignment inserts, to the internal cable routing through the handlebars, to the 135mm fat specific QR front hubs, to the AZUB exclusive sliding seat mount. This trike is going to be an amazing back country exploration machine! 

Continued Evolution

When last we checked in I was "embracing the new normal", and enjoying my new (to me) recumbent bike. Well, as was mentioned then, shoulder problems had sent me down the recumbent path, and my shoulder problems worsened to the point where surgery became inevitable. In February I finally had my right shoulder repaired, and with that came the obvious conclusion that falling off the recumbent after surgery was a really bad idea. And since I was very prone to doing so, I knew in my heart that two wheels was simply too risky for the foreseeable future, or at least until a full and complete recovery had been made. And, seeing as how I was going to have a second surgery on the left shoulder a year later, the chances of riding on two wheels became a fantasy for the future and not part of my current reality. Having gotten through one surgery and the resulting long and painful recovery, there was only one option if I wanted to keep riding. There was gonna be a huge change, the biggest transition for me in cycling yet...it was time for a recumbent trike! 

NOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Up to this point, like so many others I thought of trikes as something old people resorted to. But after doing some research I found a vibrant, thriving community of high-performance trike riders, and these trikes are not your grampa's grocery-getter. Some of these trikes cost more than a new car, and they are highly refined and beautifully engineered little speed machines. Test riding several showed me that they are fast, comfortable, but above all, super fun! There is just nothing like the feeling of carving corners on these things while being inches off the ground. It's exhilarating!

Out of the three most popular and extremely high-quality trike manufacturers, I kept coming back to a company called HP Velotechnik as the one most long distance riders toured on. And, as a German company, I had every confidence that their reputation was well deserved. A bit of Craigslist searching found someone local with one of their basic models called a Gekko, and after a test ride and a reasonable (for a trike, they are incredibly expensive compared to bikes!) offer, the nearly new trike was mine! 

Happy, comfortable new triker

Woodland Park

Ready for exploring

Ravenna Park

I'm just realizing that every pic shown here is on dirt!

The Gekko, or "Three Toed Sloth", is a lightweight, folding, fully rigid trike. It is quick, nimble, with a tight turning radius, and a stiff frame. I loved it for all these qualities, but after a couple of months riding it I began to be frustrated by these same qualities. The things that made it perform so well on flat pavement were what made it really beat me up when the road surface became even a little bit rough. No suspension on a recumbent means every imperfection in the pavement gets transmitted straight into your body, and although I tried several small tweaks to improve the comfort, it just wasn't right. Plus, I wanted a trike I could take off-road, and the Gekko was just not going to work for that. I sold the Gekko to a co-worker who was in the market for a trike to commute to work on and started looking for my next trike that would be better suited to a more varied terrain. People like Matt Galat from the JaYoe World Tour, and the guys from Hello Bike World chose Hp Velotechnik to supply them with Scorpion FS20 trikes to take them on their incredible adventures, and they are not the only ones. That was the trike I would look for.

Some phone research led me back to Angle Lake Cyclery, a bike/trike store which has to be seen to be believed! 

The view, standing inside the front door at Angle Lake Cyclery. Yes, it looks like this every day!

The owner Dale Clark is an angel of a man, generous to a fault, and while not exactly a meticulous shop owner, had in stock the exact trike I had my eye on to replace the Gekko, the Scorpion FS20. A deal was made, and I brought home my dream machine. The Scorpion, now known as "Klause", is full suspension, with a high tech MacPherson Strut up front. I don't know how it all works, but I do know the trike is a comfortable, plush, smooth ride, and most bumps in the road are now barely felt. There is a significant weight penalty for all this comfort and technology though, and the Scorpion weighs in at 5 pounds heavier than the comparable svelte (for a trike) Gekko, over 40 lbs with accessories! I say the extra weight is worth it though. The Scorpion is a true Cadilac among trikes. And if Matt Galat and the Hello Bike World guys are riding them, then I know it can handle anything I'm likely to throw at it!

An overnighter on San Juan Island

On the Iron Horse Trail...

...also known as the John Wayne Pioneer Trail

Out for a city ramble

I have been thoroughly enjoying the Scorpion, but I do really miss the true off-road adventures and bike-packing that my fat bike carried me on. And you know what that means...

There's gonna be a new addition to my trike stable soon! 😃

Building a Skerry

What I did on my summer vacation

• Day: Who knows, I lost count
• Total Build Time: Don't know, don't care. See above

One of the things that has stalled any interest in moving ahead with this boat build is...you guessed it, sanding. You hate, I hate it, we ALL hate it. Using a palm sander to fair the hull was proving to be an exercise in futility, and I knew I needed a random orbital sander to do the job. A good friend offered a loan on a well used Porter Cable unit, and I jumped at the opportunity to save a bunch of money not buying a new sander (although the Festool Rotex is a REALLY nice sander!) I plugged it in, started sanding, and in less than thirty seconds pieces of the sander were flying in every direction! The sanding pad was dry rotted and was disintegrating, throwing pieces of itself everywhere in it's final death throes. Well, now I had a problem. How to sand all that hull without taking forever? Fortunately, I'm a smart guy and knew what the ONLY possible solution was...go out immediately and buy that brand new Festool Rotex!!! What an amazing sander, and it should be for the price! But I'm a firm believer in buying the best and buying once, and Festool is by far the best. It took relatively no time at all to sand the entire hull smooth in preparation for the finish coats of epoxy, which I have yet to apply. 

As a result of continued shoulder issues, the one month sabbatical that I had planned to take in September to do a bike trip had to be postponed until next year, so I decided to take two weeks off anyway and see if the shoulder would recover after being away from work. While slowly getting better it was still not healed, so I decided to just make the best of it. 

September is always my favorite month of the year because of the annual Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival, which I never miss. This year was particularly beneficial for me because Chesapeake Light Craft had brought their demo Skerry (the same one that inspired me to build mine), and that afforded me the opportunity to have a closer look at it to compare and contrast with my build. Not only was it educational, it also gave me great perspective because they obviously didn't sweat the details anymore than anyone else, and that helped me accept the flaws and problems with mine. No boat is perfect, and as the following pictures show, every build is a balance of good, and "good enough."

The stern fillets on the CLC demo Skerry. Gaps, glops, and god-awful epoxy mess.

Same with the bow. Yeesh.

I'm clearly spending way too much time on trying to make my boat look pretty!

I wanted to have a close look at their bow and stern profiles since this was what I had to do next. Even their bow is a bit asymmetrical. The varnish looks nice though!

Same with their stern. These both show something important that will come up later.

Now, back to MY boat build!  

I had to do some cleanup on my rails in preparation for rounding them over. I found that my Lie Nielsen large rabbit plane fit the rails PERFECTLY. This made short work of cleaning up the undersides of the rails, and keeping them square.

Once I had the rails cleaned up I started to work on roughing out the radius for the bow...

...and stern.

This brought out a big challenge. CLC tells you to round over the bow and stern of the upper panels...BEFORE putting on the rails. WTF? Why would you do that? Now you have a round profile that you have to bring two square rails in to meet! Grrrr. As you can see if you look closely, the rails have a gap at the rounded part of the bow and stern. And, looking back at their finished boat you can see that they just continued sanding back until the rails met the panels. If the panels were left sharp until this point you would have a finer entry and exit point at the rails. Dammit! Well, get out the block plane, surefire rasp, and sanding block and get to work!

Stern roughed out...

...and the bow.

The next step was to round over the rails. I wouldn't know what the final bow and stern profile was going to be until I figured out the rounded over shape, so I grabbed my router and a 3/8" roundover bit and...the bit didn't fit through the router base plate. Crap. I was going to have to free-hand the round-overs with the router, top and bottom! Yikes! 

It made sense to be concerned about this step because I screwed up, BIG TIME. The rails taper at each end and this made the router dig in really bad on the bottom of the rail. So bad in fact that I thought I was going to have to cut a bunch of material away and put in a patch. Funny enough though, as I started to remove material to taper and hand round-over the rails...I ended up having to take so much off to bring the rails back past the gaps that I had enough rail to work with when all was said and done! HUGE sigh of relief!!!

Beginning the shaping after the round-over disaster. Yep, I sanded through the veneer of the breast hook. It looks way worse here than in real life, and I really don't give a damn at this point! 

Less of an issue in the stern, this looks really nice

Beautiful round-over with a nice scarf!

 I also needed to put a fillet along the skeg. This was one of the only things I have done on this boat that went smoothly!

I put the boat on my little ultralight Yakima trailer to move it around for sanding, epoxy, etc.

The final pic for this post. After sanding the exterior it's truly looking at its ugliest! Pretty soon it will start to look much nicer as the epoxy, paint, and varnish go on. At least I hope it does.

I was also very excited that during the final "sail-by" at the Wooden Boat Festival one of the guys from CLC had their Skerry out on the water and I was able to see first hand how it sails. I have to say, I was very impressed! The boat was really stiff and heeled very little. It's also fast! I watched it run away from CLC's PocketShip, a much bigger boat that carried a lot more sail area. The Skerry is also a very pretty boat under sail, which is important! Seeing it helped get me inspired again to get back to work on mine, and seeing the quality of their build helped me get mine back in perspective. Below you will see a quick video of the CLC boat coming into the beach at the end of the sail-by. Until next time, enjoy!

Embracing the "New Normal"

Pain can be transformative. And transformation can be a good thing. So therefore, pain is a good thing...right? RIGHT?!?!?!

At the end of April I had a re-occurance of a rotator cuff issue that has plagued both shoulders over the years. Usually it hurts for a week or two, and then gradually gets better, sometimes requiring some physical therapy to help it along. This time was much worse though, and even with PT it was healing so gradually that I had become really frustrated and impatient, and was very worried that I might finally need surgery. Riding a bike became excruciating, and was obviously agravating my shoulder and only making it worse, so I stopped riding to give it a rest. The timing couldn't have been worse because I had just built a brand new, totally custom, titanium fatbike and now I could barely test ride it, let alone get out for an adventure on it. I was sinking into a deeper and deeper depression, gaining back the weight I had worked hard to lose, losing the fitness I  had worked hard to gain, and becoming even harder to be around! Something had to change.

Then I had an idea. I simply needed to rethink my approach to cycling. Biking was foundational to my lifestyle and fitness routine, I just had to find another way to keep riding while my shoulder was healing. And what kind of bike would allow me to ride, but keep any weight off of my shoulder? What would be my "new normal?"

 Wait for it... 

A recumbent would be my only option if I wanted to keep riding! 

 I started doing endless research online trying to find what I thought would be the best bike for my needs. I wanted something comfortable, efficient, fast, manueverable, with resale value so I could recoup my investment once I was healed up, if I decided to sell it. I had narrowed my choices down to a few well known brands and models, but there were very few recumbent dealers around. I knew that I absolutely had to test ride before buying, it was just too strange of a beast to buy without riding it first. I finally found Rose City Recumbents down in Portland, and after numerous emails with the endlessly patient Jonathan, I arranged for a day to come down and do some test rides. I am so glad I did, because there were several models that I thought would be great options, and after riding them for only a block or two I immediately knew that they were not at all what I was looking for. 

At the top of my list was the Lightning P-38, a short wheelbase speed machine that had set many records over the years, but also had a reputation for being the best all around recumbent on the market. It was a major stroke of luck that Jonathan had a used P-38 in stock, in my size, and in my color...BLACK! Several test rides later and the choice was clear, the P-38 was by far the most comfortable and easy to ride bike out of the several bikes I rode. And being lightly used, the price was quite reasonable for a niche bike. So, I added a new horse to the stable! 

I brought it home and almost immediately took it out for a ride. I ended up riding almost twenty five miles which was pretty good for the first time on a new bike in a new riding position, and after being off of any bike for a month and a half. My legs were tired, and my knees were a little sore from the boom being set too close, but most importantly my shoulder didn't hurt at all! 

It's going to take some time to get used to this new beast and getting the fit dialed in, but I am looking forward to rediscovering cycling in a new way, and getting some exercise and fitness back into my life again. A long term review will be forthcoming, so stay tuned!