18 Dec 2017

18th December 2017 DFW 2WD V Diff trikes:

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Monday 18th 35F, calm and rather cloudy. Walked the lanes and back again. An orange sun broke free from a bank of cloud for an while but it was short lived. I walked briskly on the frozen grass of the verge to avoid the traffic. Not much else to report for 40 minutes of moderate exercise. 

I spent some time yesterday wallowing in the nostalgia of former haunts and homes on Google Earth Street view. It was miserably cold in the shed and worse out of doors. It's odd how one's memory plays tricks when the only witnesses to past exploits were our own, more youthful eyes. Google Earth updates so rarely in some places that it is almost a local history lesson. So it was a shock to see demolition and renewal at the very place one once called "home."

Google is not the all-seeing, universal responder to all searches. Many requests go completely unanswered through lack of any useful context. Particularly Image Search which is all but useless in very many areas of [my own] interests.  Pinterest is an absolute pain in the arse. Because it never [ever] shows the image one clicked on and access is about as friendly as a North Korean border guard. The ignorance and arrogance of online monopolies is equally boundless.

YouTube has similar problems. Probably due to an over-emphasis on commercial exploitation. Rather than some philanthropic desire to house the visual detritus of a visually orientated species of extroverts and attention seekers. Myself included, of course. The number of viewers of specific content is apt to give one the willies where the human race is concerned. The tawdry and ill-defined ramblings of extroverts attract literally millions of viewers while the "better" stuff is all but ignored.

A late afternoon ride in wintry weather to the shops. It tried to snow but settled on fine rain for the return journey in the dark. God help any children trying to cross the road with all these raving psychopaths racing around! Only seven, damp miles. The GripGrab Nordic gloves and Aviator hat continue to give vital warmth and comfort.

The lack of thick padding on the Nordic gloves is wonderful! I haven't suffered any hand pain since I started wearing them. The thinner GripGrab gloves and mitts are horrendous for causing me sore hands even on the shortest ride! I kept adding gel padding and layers of tape on the 'bars but it didn't help. It was the glove/mitt gel padding which was doing all the damage.

One of my YouTube videos has generated an interesting discussion on turning with a double freewheel, two wheel drive. [DFW 2WD] The gear ratio of the driven inner wheel effectively approaches infinity with the front wheel at 90 degree to the line of travel. While at only slightly smaller steering angles, a low [climbing] gear will easily drive the trike through a tightly barred chicane.

Kynast mobility trike with adjustable wheelbase and hub gear with differential.

Such chicane bars are often a feature of Danish cycle paths to prevent scooters and motorcycles illegally entering the path system. The rear wheels are often the arbiter of how easily I can get through rather than the effective gear ratio. They barely scrape past the bars on each tight turn.

I have an old 'mobility' trike with an exposed differential which has never seen the road with myself aboard. So I have promised to drag the trike out and compare Trykit's DFW with a Diff. Reaching the [probably rather heavy] trike at the back of the shed is the main problem. I bought it for small change at a flea market in desperation when I had no trike at all. Soon afterwards my brother sent me a Longstaff axle conversion so I never needed to ride the Kynast.

These images are so old I had to save them as downloads from my own blog! The files had obviously been overwritten somehow over the years. It took me hours of searching through my vast collection of images to eventually find these on my blog. According to my latest Jpeg number I have 1.3 million images on three hard drives. Only the last two cameras are saved as Jpegs. It would take several lifetimes to sort them all into categories. So I still keep them in date order. Perhaps AI can help?

Click on any image for an enlargement. 
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