Due to health reasons, I no longer maintain this site. I’m sure by this time that some of the links are dead. But, if you benefit from the site, you are more welcome to use it.
I hope your rides are long and speedy.
George
Due to health reasons, I no longer maintain this site. I’m sure by this time that some of the links are dead. But, if you benefit from the site, you are more welcome to use it.
I hope your rides are long and speedy.
George
This is my first post in a couple of years. I sold my place in the country and rented a Tiny Texas House just a few hundred yards from where I was living. In the interim, I sold and/or gave away all my bikes, trikes and building supplies. Just a phase of my life completed and I’m moving on to other things.
I don’t want to get back into bike building nor do I have the space for that now. I have missed riding and from time to time I have been checking Craigslist for a trike that might be in my price range. Last week there was a listing for a 2012 TerraTrike Tour that I thought might fill that void. The Tour is a relatively lightweight trike with good handling and a sporty feel. After a couple of email exchanges, the Tour was mine.
After picking it up I offered my grandsons a ride in a nearby parking lot. They confirmed it was fast and handled well and they would visit often for a ride.
At 72, like Toby Kieth song says, I’m not as “Good as I once was“. . . you know the rest. I knew I needed a little help and after doing some research, UPS delivered a Bafang 750 watt mid drive and 52 v 14 ah battery. I’ll get the mid drive installed today and my son is coming tomorrow to help tweak it out and get all the bits and pieces mounted and working.
Test ride report coming soon. YaHoooooooooooooooo.
Dave Langkamp left a comment on my DIY Velomobile page about his Radius T-T Velomobile being complete. Dave has graciously shared his 600 hours of build log on his The Tinkers Workshop blog. Grab a cup of coffee and spend some time on one of the most interesting blogs I have ever visited. Congratulations Dave on a job well done and thanks for sharing.
When I retired a couple of years ago I downsized some of the luxury items in my life. One was my F250 diesel four wheel drive off road mega nice pickup. I still needed a pickup, so I bought a low mileage 2001 Dodge 1500 with the customary Chrysler product sun cracked dash and peeling clear coat. When I bought the truck I though I could always get a new paint job, pop in a new dash and replace the bench seat with some junk yard upper end bucket seats. In my mind a new paint job would be the most noticeable upgrade. I was soon to find out that some paint jobs cost as much as I paid for the truck to start with. But mid-range paint jobs were to cost between $900 and $1200 dollars. Still not where I wanted to be.
A couple of years ago while tooling around on You Tube I remembered seeing a video of someone painting their car with a paint roller. Well of course that’s absurd. But I though I would research some alternatives. Turns out there are a lot of people whom have painted their car with a paint roller. The Mopart forum, has the longest thread on the subject I have seen. In fact, has the longest thread on any subject I have seen. It spans several years with thousands of post. The admin broke this thread into three threads, this link is the last thread. You can read back as far as you like for information.
Many have claimed to paint their car for $50, and there are many pictures in the mopart thread showing fine results. Being retired now, I have more time than money so I decided to try this on my truck. I’ve little to loose. I though I would allow myself $100 to paint my truck.
The short version of this process is to prep you vehicle for painting, roll on a diluted mixture of mineral spirits and Rustoleum oil based paint. Well, you can follow my adventure on the following page. . .
It’s been sometime since I’ve made a post to my blog. Other interest (learning to play the guitar) has taken over some of my hobby time. Yesterday I went to Dallas to visit my son. He has a CNC machine and I inquired about the possibility of cutting a lap steel guitar for me. Our conversation eventually turned to recumbents. He asked if I had seen the CNC cut velomobile kit that Rick OBrien had put on the market. I had followed the thread on BROL but had not known that the kit was now available for sale.
I read a recent thread on BROL where he stated he has suspended sales of the kit while he investigates the possibility of redesigning to fit different models of trikes. Until then, the site is down.
SpearHead Velomobile now offers an all-weather, aerodynamic, CNC cut coroplast velomobile body kit for your ICE Sprint RS and FS. It may fit other models of trikes with, similar wheel base. The kit comes complete with proprietary hot glue sticks, fasteners and assembly manual. According to his site, there are no cable ties and no taped joints waiting to fail from sunlight and weather.
The kit has an introductory price offering of $499 and a mounting kit is available for $249 plus shipping. You’ll find contact information on his website.
This turns you trike into a really nice looking, aerodynamic shaped velomobile. Best of luck with your new venture.
A lot of web sites that I read start out with the author announcing that he/she has been riding recumbent bikes/trike for 10 years or 15 or 20 or even 30 years. Well, I’ve not. I didn’t have my first recumbent until well into my 60’s. 2010 if I remember right. I’m to be 70 next month and I’ve enjoyed every minute that I’ve been on a bent. But I’ve missed the history of the recumbent world. I’ve since owned some of that history but that’s not the same as living it.
This morning I followed a link that was posted on an Atomic Zombie thread. It’s not that I hadn’t been on this site before but I guess my appreciation for bent history has grown and is still growing. Joel Dickman’s web site Lightning Riders entertained me for a couple of hours as I ate breakfast and enticed me to linger on for a second Diet Coke.. If your a newbie like me, you may enjoy seeing a pictorial history of the Lightning with pictures of the famous P38, the 18 lb R84 or the F90. If you enjoy this site, you will also enjoy a visit to the Lightning site.
Count your blessings if you are lucky enough to own a Lightning recumbent.
There is a thread on BROL that I have been watching for awhile. Rick O’Brien has designed a Coroplast velomobile using a CAD program and having it output to a CNC machine to cut the body parts. If I were to put together a list of my favorite threads on BROL this one would be in my first two or three threads. I love Rick’s detailed approach. As other post in the thread have indicated, I wish I had acquired the CAD skills to do this. I work more out of my head and seldom make even a sketch. I did try Sketchup for awhile but gave that up the same as I did my course in Python programing.
Rick built another velo body last year taking a modular approach. I was quite impressed with last years model. Rick made a list of improvements he would like to achieve and it looks like he is well on his way to making a lighter, faster and roomier velomobile body than before. From the pictures of the new build, Rick’s attention to detail while building are equal to his abilities to design on the computer. The fit on the new velomobile body looks right on.
Like others have posted in the BROL thread, I hope Rick makes the velomobile parts available in kit form or at least sell the files for output. Thanks for sharing the build on BROL, Rick.
I’ve been aware of RAAM for years. That’s what a bunch of supreme athletics did back when I first started riding. A couple of times I saw something in the magazines I subscribed to in the 80’s. Just like the riders in the Tour de France, they were out of my league. I did enjoy reading of the events and even seeing the Tour de France, in part, on TV. Do you remember Wide World of Sports. You know, The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.
But year before last the internet brought a new way for me to track RAAM as people would post progress of the race during the day. This prompted me to look up the participants on the RAAM site. Some of the names I knew from discussions on the forums that I monitor. BUT look at this. Forever Young Pac Masters in the 75+ age group were older than I. As I reported in an old post, “I looked them up and saw that 2 of them were 80 and 2 of them 78 years old. On my last check they are averaging a little over 13 mph after doing some heavy duty climbing in CO.” And these guys, “United 4 Health is a team in the 70 to 74 age group. They had a later start time but are averaging 20+ mph.” I followed them all and eagerly checked progress reports at various spots on the internet. These guys were older than me, I could relate. I could almost place myself on one of the teams. Well, kind of, in my own mind.
And what about last year dot race with Maria Parker on a Cruzbike Vendetta. I would get up early each day to check Maria’s progress on the Tractalis site. I would leave my work around the farm undone to check her progress several times during the day. For me, tracking the dots on my computer screen was exciting. Maybe in years to come CAMS may be set up to view parts of the race. I do hope the Tractalis site is active again for this years RAAM. BTW, you can still donate to Maria’s brain cancer research fund.
Well, my excitement has started early this year as I add another 2014 RAAM participant to my list of people for me to cheer on. Today Bryan Ball of BROL posted a link to the RAAM Facebook announcing that Dennis Johnson hopes to be the first person over 60 to finish the event on a recumbent. Hey, I’m in that age group.
Good luck, Dennis.
In the beginning there were diamond frame bikes and my son and I enjoyed a few seasons of riding together. These years formed some of the best memories of my past. After a time we drifted away from biking until a few years ago when I picked up an interest in recumbent bikes. My son had a welding machine and I coerced him into building a recumbent for me from plans I had purchased from Atomic Zombie. As our interest in recumbent bikes grew I needed a place for us to communicate and store information. So I started this blog as an easy way for us to document our builds and store information for future ideas and/or buiilds.
This blog as grown to more than I ever intended. In fact, it has grown to several hundred views per day. There is an average of 3.5 views per visitor. I have made so many entries that I am now having problems maintaining dead links. I need your help. If you follow a link from my site that no longer works or is dead, please leave a note in the comment section of this site to let me know. I will correct or remove the dead link.
Thanks in advance for your help.
See you on the forums.
I’ve been doing my blog long enough now that I have forgotten many of the entries from the past. It has nothing to do with being 69 years old. Honest. While reviewing my stats page I found where someone had followed this link from an older post on my site. Someone put a lot of effort into compiling this information about lights. I felt it worthy of posting again. I don’t know how long it has been since it was updated, but there is a lot of DIY information available. Lights.
No, I’m not going to build a bamboo recumbent but I find them very interesting. I’m not sure what started this interest. Probably my morning routine. I normally start each day reading a couple of the forums I frequent, then a few other blogs that I like and then a couple of news sites. From one of these I probably followed a link to a bamboo bike and then a search for bamboo bikes. I’m sure you know the routine. You follow a link of interest that leads to another link of interest and so on.
I did a post some months ago about Dug Shelby and his ride across the US on a bamboo bike built by Klaus Volkmann, a musician from Brazil. That tour should prove the worthiness of a bamboo bike.
This week I noticed this beautiful bamboo trike built by a fellow Atomic Zombie builder, Here is a thread on Atomic Zombie and here is a build post on Instructables. It’s just loaded with useful information. This is one of most beautiful, useful pieces of transportation I’ve seen.
I’ve noticed quite a few new bamboo bikes and trikes being built. I’ve now started myself a page to track them. I’ll be posting new information and builds as I find them.
The Plymobile built by Titus van den Brink of the Netherlands is a unique, beautiful velomobile. Titus shared his building information on his blog. Rather than bog you down with detail, Titus has included many pictures of his build so you can see the detail.
Included also are some of his experiences with his velomobile in parades and events.
This morning I needed to do repairs to my trike before the weather changed. I had heard on the news that it was going to get colder for a few days. I guess I wasn’t paying attention. I checked the Weather Channel website and got the big picture. It’s going to get down to 14 degrees in East Texas. Who approved that?
The average temperatures in Dallas for the month of December is daytime high 58 degrees and night time low of 39 degrees. As you can see, 14 degrees is somewhat of an oddity for the North Texas climate.
Coldest temperature recorded for Dallas was 1 degree back in 1989.
I’m a warm weather person. I can ride my bike when it’s 100+ without a problem. But when temperatures drop below 40 my riding times are nil and I watch for warm days to ride. I guess tomorrow might be my last day to ride for the next week or so.
I know, I know. (Said with a whinny voice) You live north of the Red River and it gets much colder where your live. That’s the main reason I don’t live north of the Red River.
Oh yeah, this was my weather report last January. https://texasrecumbents.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/winter-in-texas/
If your new to recumbent riding or just seeking information about the feasibility of you riding a recumbent, Recumbent TV might be your best source. Travis Prebble has gathered an assortment of videos from manufacturers and recumbent riders from around the world. If you have plenty of bandwidth you can spend hours researching what might be right for you or if you just want to spend a short time enjoying others experiences on recumbents then Recumbent TV has made it just a mouse click away. Recumbent TV.
The Blue Sky Speeder is a nice looking velomobile shell that will add aerodynamics to your trike and get you out of the cold rain. The Speeder is priced at just $850 plus $200 shipping and I assume that is to the lower 48.
The Blue Sky site states “These are generic parts and can be adapted or modified to fit a wide variety of HP vehicles; however we cannot guarantee they will fit or be suitable for all applications. The instructions should be used as guidelines in adapting these parts to your particular machine. We have used a Terra Trike as a sample application. If your HPV is similar dimensionally, it should fit with little difficulty.”
If your a DIY trike builder type, I can see this happening. Team up the Atomic Zombie Warrior trike plans and an Aero Bullet Velomobile Body Kit and you could have an aerodynamic velomobile of your own for $1500 or so. This could happen if Silver Bullet Bodyworks brings their velomobile kit to market in 2014 for the target price of $1,000. Brad, owner of AtomicZombie, has stated he has never spent over $250 on an AZ build. This could be the perfect match up.
As quoted from the Aero Bullet web page, “The Aero Bullet prototype is mounted on a Catrike Trail model but is designed to fit most recumbent trikes currently on the market. The body fastens to an undertray rigidly hung from the chassis with ride height adjustment.” Their website further states “Prototype testing shows a speed increase of over 30% with the same effort. Wind tunnel testing is scheduled for late 2013 and kits are projected to be available in early 2014.” They also state “Production bodywork will be Kevlar with fiberglass edges. Total body weight is expected to be 12 to 13 lbs” In other places I have read that the side walls of the Aero Bullet are vertical allowing you to trim the bottom to adjust the velo body height to fit your trike. Well 2014 is almost here dangit, bring it on. I’m excited.
I’ve been a frequent visitor of the Atomic Zombie forum and I have seen many nice builds of the AZ StreetFox and AZ Warrior trikes that may be a perfect match with the Aero Bullet kit. Canadian builder Spinner has built a beautiful AZ Warrior if you would like to read through his build thread.
I see no exact measurements on this kit so I guess we’ll have to wait and see if mods will need to be made to what we are presently riding.
I can see this as being a viable option for us having a truly aerodynamic velomobile at an affordable price. I wish them well. If you have a real interest in this product you could send a note showing your support. Info is on their contact page.
I think I’ll paint mine RED.
On occasion I run into a reference to Kent’s Bike Blog. I’ve written of him several times in my blog. I’m never disappointed when I follow that reference to a post that is either entertaining, informative or humorous. Kent writes well and I envy that. I don’t envy some of his misguided beliefs that some people are comfortable on “horsey bikes” and that you can make soap from WD40.
Today I was doing some research on DIY velomobiles and Google threw a completely unrelated link at me, or so I thought. I noticed that the link was to Kent’s Bike Blog and I could not resist clicking on it to read of Kent’s view on DIY velomobiles. I’ve yet to understand why Google would reference this article but I’m glad it did. I guess the Google gods knew that I had just finished reading a lively discussion on BROL about the virtues of riding a bent vs an upright and Google thought I needed propaganda from the other side of the fence. Could Google be that misguided also? You do know that Google follows what you do and say on your computer, don’t you?
Well, in the interest of being fare and fare minded and armed with a mind full of arguments on the side of recumbents I refer you to Kent’s Bike Blog and Why doesn’t everyone ride a recumbent? If your not well founded in your recumbentcy maybe you should just move on and not expose yourself to such hypocrisy. I know that my spell checker does not think that recumbentcy is a word but I know it is or I would not know how to spell it.
EDIT: Just for the record I rode upright bikes during the 80’s and did very well with them. For the last few years I’ve been riding an assortment of recumbent bikes and trikes and I get along very well with them. Ride what makes you happy.
I’m a basic 2 forum person. I started my recumbent interest at Atomic Zombie. AZ is a builders site that sells recumbent plans and has a support forum to help builders with any build problem wither AZ plans or self planned builds. Over time I migrated to Bent Rider Online Forum (BROL). BROL is a very active forum with many sub-forums dealing with bikes, trikes, velomobiles, health, homebuilding, Power Assist and many more. I often follow a link from one forum to another forum that I don’t frequent and later I can’t find my way back to that forum. Sooooooooooooo, I though I would make myself a list of related forums. Send me an e-mail if you have a forum to add to my list, I’ll consider it if it is recumbent or velomobile related. texastuffATliveDOTcom
I can see that this list is going to get quite long so decided to give it a life of its own and created a page for recumbent and velomobile links. And it is located here. https://texasrecumbents.wordpress.com/links/ I’ll add to it as time permits.
Atomic Zombie | www.atomiczombie.com |
Bent Rider Online | www.bentrideronline.com |
Recumbents.com | www.recumbents.com/home/ |
Bike Forums | www.bikeforums.net/forumdisplay.php/37-Recumbent |
Recumbent Riders The Bent Forum | www.recumbentriders.org/forums/ |
Recumbent Trike Rider | www.thertr.com/ |
Two Spoke | www.twospoke.com/forum/ |
IHPVA | www.ihpva.org/forums/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=3 |
Velomobile.org Russian | http://velomobile.org/index.php |
BHPC Forum British Human Power Cl | http://forum.bhpc.org.uk/forums.html |
British Human Power | www.british-human-power.com/forum/default.asp |
Cruzbike Forum – I want one | http://cruzbike.com/forum |
I had chocolate cake for breakfast today. So, there you have it. It’s done and can’t be undone. So what? If you want to chastise me, have at it.
I’m not the first to have chocolate cake for breakfast. From eons ago I remember that Bill Cosby fed his kids chocolate cake for breakfast. Mr. Cosby rightly points out that chocolate cake has milk, eggs and wheat. No one can deny that these are healthy ingredients. So it’s good for you. I had chocolate cake for breakfast today.
A couple of weeks ago I went to the cardiologist and told him that I might be having chest pains again when I ride my bike. So he scheduled a chemical stress test. They give you a chemical stress when they think you can’t walk on a treadmill for a long enough period of time. They inject a Dr. Frankenstein developed chemical into your body and for a few minutes you are sure that you are going to die and then you become fearful that you won’t die. A couple of days later I got a call from a young lady telling me that I didn’t do well with the stress test and she had scheduled me for a heart cath on the 15th. I told her that I was busy on that day and I wanted to ride my bike in the warm days of spring, but she insisted that I come to Mother Frances Hospital at 6:00 am. I told her that I’ll still be sleeping at 6:00 am, but again, she insisted.
So yesterday I got up at 4:00 am and begin the preparation for a heart cath. Its an hour drive from my house to the hospital and I arrived at the hospital before valet parking and had to park myself. I walked some distance to admissions and then I’m put into a wheel chair big enough to hold three of me. I felt like Lily Tomlin in her big rocking chair. I’m wheeled out from admissions and told by this very chatty lady that I’m being taken to pre-op.
I’m in pre-op at 6:20 where they strip me naked, shave me in places not meant to be shaven, punctured my body in various places extracting blood and injecting other chemicals to make me relax or so she said. I ask her if it was the same herb as we used to put in brownies; she giggled and with a knowing smile on her face explained it worked in much the same way. I told her to just give me one of those warm blankets and I’ll relax. Man they keep that place cold.
I was then laid on my back and didn’t move for the next 10 hours. They wheeled this bed to the most frigid side of the North Pole, took away my warm blanket and slid me over on a stainless steel table with icicles hanging from it. I’m telling this guy as he swabs a gallon of alcohol between my legs that I’m not relaxed anymore. I told the nurse that he looked like he was enjoying it. He smiled and replied that he gave up holiday pay to do this job everyday. A lady walked up behind me, stuck a rubber hose up my nose, bent over and in a satanic tone whispered in my ear that she needed me to breathe deeply for awhile. The rest of it went somewhat better as I breathed deeply and watched the doctor yank and pull and push this long wire from my groan, through my body and into my heart. I watched the overhead monitor as the dye was pumped from my heart and talked with the doctor as he pointed out the cause of my most recent chest pains. There was some brief chest pain as he expanded a stent in the area of concern and he told me I would feel better and ride faster now. I’m looking forward to that.
After surgery, I was placed in a recovery room and told not to move my legs under any circumstances. Really now, would’en you at least check to make sure they still worked. At first I just wiggled my toes on the left foot. That’s the side they didn’t go through my groan. Then I wiggled my left foot. All working. Then bounce my left knee up and down. Yep, OK. Then I wiggle my toes on my right foot and Sargent Rude Nurse yells out the order again not to move my legs.
I’ve been on my back now for an hour and a half and Sargent Rude Nurse walks around to the operating side of my bed and asked if I would like to have my tube removed now. NO! I don’t want my tube removed. She then pushed back the covers, placed her hand on my groan and pulled this tube from my groan. I had to look twice to make sure I was still there. She then covered my groan with a big wad of gauze and launched her entire 260 pounds onto this one small spot on my groan and held it there for a full 5 minutes. This is one of the same spots that the judo guys use to make you scream for help from Heaven. She finally released her grip and I ask in a weak voice if it was about time for me to go home. She said sure, just another 6 hours on your back and DON’T move your leg.
After seven and a half torturous hours of laying on my back in the recovery room I was released from the hospital. On my release I was given several instructions, one of which was not to lift anything over 3 pounds for the next 3 days. A gallon of milk weights 7 plus pounds. If I make oatmeal I use milk, likewise in cereal. I can’t pick up the milk because it is too heavy. That’s when I spot the chocolate cake on the cake pedestal under the glass cover.
I had chocolate cake for breakfast today.
This was a recent post on BROL. You can add your own punch lines in the comments.
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