Mini Ride + BBQ

A little ride is coming up on 8/18. The trike's gears are still a bit messed up, so I gotta fix that smooth before the ride. Got two weeks left to prep. It should be no big deal.

18 Miler

I think I got about 18 miles in today. Speedometer might still be off but I rode for about 2 hours with some stops. Gears are skipping since I changed to the e-brake levers. Love the e-brakes by the way. I can brake one handed and it's much more integrated and OEM-looking than the rubberband brake it replaced. 

With a sloped garage and hills all over the City, the e-brake definitely comes in handy. The skipping gears though needs to be fixed ASAP. Annoying at best. I think this is the first time I rode the trike in about 2 months! Ugh. Felt good though.

Feel less guilty about not going to the gym to get my workouts. I definitely need to rebuild my endurance. Going up the hills today wasn't easy and the skipped gear didn't make it any better. Every time I take a break (took one in Golden Gate Park and succumbed to my guilty pleasure - root beer), I get reminded how good a 10 minute break feels. Getting on the trike after that feels better than when I first started. Good stuff.

E-brakes Installed!

I bought the Promax locking brake levers a few weeks ago but never looked into how to install it. The levers aren't a big deal. It's the bar end shifters I was unfamiliar with. Those had to be taken off before replacing the brake lever would be possible. 

One of the best parts about having e-brakes rigged up is so that I can use the trainer much more easily. I don't have to engage the brake everytime I want to pedal. What finally got me to buy these brake levers with the locking button was that my rubber "Brake Band" broke. Yup, it completely snapped. For the cost, I was hoping it'd last forever. Didn't quite work out that way, but I guess it's good that its breakage acted as an excuse for me to buy the new levers.

• It takes two squirts of WD-40 to remove the handlebar grips.
• I was having a hell of a time trying to get these off. One minute of research taught me to use that bottle of WD-40. It works like a charm.
• The brake cable does have to be removed from the caliper.
• This means the cable ends have to be removed b/c the cable has to slip through the housing. That's the only way the cable can be removed from the old brake lever.
• The shift cable does not have to be removed. 
• In order to be able to leave the shift cable alone, the whole handlebar assembly needs to be removed from the arm. It provides enough slack. 
• Removing the bar end shifters:
• That was a bit of a pain because if you're avoiding messing with the cable, there's not a whole lot of slack available to play around with. In hindsight, I should have shifted down to the lowest gear first to maximize the slack. A quick search on Youtube taught me how the assembly is put together. It was a lot easier to remove than I thought!
  
  When putting everything back together, I didn't quite do it correctly. The trike no longer shifts to the smallest chainring. Ugh! Gotta figure that out soon in time for my Sunday ride through Golden Gate Park. I haven't ridden a trike in almost forever! Forever = 1 month.

UPDATE: 7/5/12
The shifting didn't work in the front chainring after the installation. Turns out it was just a coincidence. It took me about 20 minutes to figure it out, but the problem wasn't due to the ebrakes at all! It wasn't working b/c the derailleur wasn't able to move down to the smaller chainring b/c my new camera mount was in the way!

I hadn't ridden to trike since installing the mount and hadn't realized it wasn't shifting down since. Ooops. I tweaked the cables and only made it worse. After messing with it for 30 minutes, it works, but doesn't shift as smoothly as it did before. I'll tune it sometime, but not tonight.

Pump It Up

This might be the most expensive thing I ever bought on Ebay - not really, but close enough. The usual prices of stuff I get there are about $2-8. This one was $16! Ouch! The photo on the listing showed this unit to be of pretty good quality and I was expecting the same when it arrived in the mail.

Can you guess what it is?

It's something I never thought I'd get b/c I don't really care too much for music. I don't follow the celebs and I don't really own much of it but hopefully that'll change. It'll be nice to get some music going on especially since I typically ride solo.

For $16 shipped, quite a bit of stuff came with it. Starting from the top left and making our way around clockwise are two straps, the rubber handlebar mounting bracket, the MP3 speaker player itself, the USB charger, white earphones, connection cable, carrying lanyard and bag!

Not that I'd be 'em separately, but the headphones are worth at least a couple bucks and the mounting bracket can be had for $3. So $10 for the speaker? Not bad at all! All the buttons are on one side for easy access. The charging port is on here too.

The speaker's on this side. I have yet to test it b/c according to what I got out of the Chinglish instructions, I'm supposed to charge it up fully before using it the first time. For stuff like this, it usually takes a few hours, so I won't be touching it until tonight.

Like I had mentioned earlier, the quality of this thing is good. It's superb actually and I'm talking now about the build quality. It's no wonder I see it for $25 on some sites and even up to $40 on others. It's nuts how different the prices can be on the same stuff. Looks like there's a pretty large markup on these MP3 players.

I'm thinking it's good quality b/c this thing's got some good weight to it! Feels nice in the hands, but I'm not so excited about the extra weigh I'd have to lug around on a HPV. Maybe I'll use this more on my electric rides than the recumbents.

Wow, I just tested it and this thing is amazing!!! OMG! The sound quality is so good. After turning the thing on, the sound quality so worth it. $16 is a steal! The thing accepts micro SD cards, so you can put music all on there and it slips right into the player. I used a 2gb card and it's excellent.

Navigating through Youtube trying to figure out the radio function on here. Once I get that going, you won't be able to snatch this away from me. I'm loving it.

Ebrake Me

The only thing other than not having rear brakes that bothers me on the Catrike Speed is not having emergency brakes. There's nothing keeping the trike from literally rolling away or worse, into one of my other rides in the garage. The last thing I want is a chainring jamming into some fender.

This may be one of the first times that I was glad that the package that came in the mail didn't look like the photo I saw online. The Amazon photos showed the handles to be chrome which I wasn't so fond of. There isn't much chrome on the trike and I like it looking as stock as possible.

I started a thread on BROL to get some feedback on who people think of the different brands of locking brakes. Promax won and it was cheaper than some of the others, so choosing it wasn't too difficult. $21.13 - not bad for a shipped price for the pair.

I'm still not sure how the shifters come off and I'll need to remove those before clamping these puppies on. I'll figure it out next weekend or so.

ALC 11!

ALC 11 was this morning! Yup, that means I got up at 5:15am to get ready to leave the house to get to the Cow Palace by 6am to see Paul off for the ride. I made it! One of my work colleagues is a volunteer there too and I met up with her to say hello. She does a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff.

I had asked someone how to get to her area where she was working. As the volunteer was telling me how to get there another guy next to him interrupted him and pointed me in the opposite direction. Figuring he knows what he's talking about, I talked off and didn't arrive to the "Upload" area where the support equipment gets put into vans until 10-12 minutes later. Meanwhile the Starting Ceremonies for the riders had already begun. Not wanting to miss too much of it, I rushed over to say hello.

When I walked back to the Starting Ceremonies area, I took a different route and that route was about a 4 minute walk! What the hell? What's up with that guy telling me to take the super long route? Ugh.

I probably should've taken more photos of the riders, but didn't really think much to do it at the time. I met up with Paul's mom and a friend of a friend of his to see off the riders. We had cow bells in hand and everything!

This is the caboose I luckily never saw last year on the ride. It follows the very last rider to make sure they know everyone is accounted for and receives the support they need on the ride. From what I hear, people hop out throughout the route and go into coffee shops to be sure they're indeed following the very last person. Must be a tough job trying figure out who's really the last rider.

A group of us had cheered on in support of whom we thought was the last rider. He turns his head towards us smiling and says, 

"I'm not part of them. I'm just riding to breakfast." 

Hahha. It wasn't until 10 minutes later that we probably saw the last rider. Not sure why so many people are lagging. These look like veterans though who've done this before so no need to feel sorry for them in struggling to catch up with the rest of the group. They'll meet them soon enough at the rest stop a few miles up.

Say Cheese!

Yup, it's the camera mount. I finally got it. 

During the ALC ride, I wanted to take some shots of me going down the Quadbuster hill. Moving the handlebars even a couple degrees in one direction or the other at high speeds would've landed me in a bad situation. Needless to say, I didn't get much good footage on that decent. Ever since then, I wanted to rig something up for the trike to hold the camera. The Shark adapter on the KMX boom that hold the front derailleur wasn't exactly the easiest thing to mount a camera to. 

The boom on the Catrike Speed is much more standard and easier to mount something to. So finally, logged onto ebay and ordered myself a handlebar mounting bracket. Of course I had to do a bit of research to find one that would secure well and fit the size of the reflector holder bar that sticks out of the front of the boom. 

15 minutes later, I had it in my Paypal basket. 

A few days later, it arrived in the mail and it looks like this! I had to move the light down in order for the new camera mount to clear the movement of the derailleur. I still haven't tested it out yet, but I'm crossing my fingers hoping it'll work out. Let's see how it looks. 

 

From the cockpit, we got this view. After I take my test drive, I'll know how much of my view it blocks out - hopefully not much.

If I didn't have the computer mounted here on this horizontal bar, I was thinking of mounting the camera bracket there. But after looking at it, i'm glad I didn't mount it so high b/c it would definitely block my view and probably look awkward being so high up.

It only just occurred to me as I'm writing this that the camera matches the color of the trike!

And the front side matches the color scheme of how I wanted my Catrike Speed. I actually posted this whole set of photos a few days ago, but didn't want to post it live until after I gave the second bracket to Paul for his ALC ride. Surprise!