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It takes real courage, bravado and lots of practice to ride a trike really well. The vast majority of cyclists, of all calibers, cannot manage just a few yards without hitting the pavement. At 73 I can still drift all three wheels around sharp corners and mini roundabouts and do it faster than any normal car.
I always wanted to ride 100 miles in a day but managed only the mid 80s a few times. Always with a shopping stop on the way home. I have regularly sat down on the bike rack outside local supermarkets. With 80 miles in my legs. Just to eat the sandwich I should have eaten hours earlier. Well, there was no suitable place to pause and to eat out on the road!
Learning to ride a trike can seem like an insurmountable hurdle at first. But! It will repay practice with compound interest. Nobody stops to talk to a cyclist outside a shop. They are simply far too commonplace. A trike rider always gets noticed. Often getting far more notice than the poshest, sports car. You learn to live with it. As heads constantly turn in the high street. People begin to think they know you. Because they see and notice you so often. Usually as you pedalled furiously along an empty lane so very far from home.
My memory is stuffed full of such moments on the trike. Countless tens of thousands of miles in all terrains and all weather conditions. Every yard achieved entirely by my own efforts. I would often seek out the steepest hills, in the middle of nowhere, just to overcome them.
I can measure my total, tricycling distance by the very large box full of punctured inner tubes. I would often puncture before being advised to try Schwalbe Durano and Plus tyres. The next best thing is having enough air in the tyres thanks to a track pump. Before that I would often get pinch flats. From riding on too little pressure with too much shopping aboard! You'd have to be very unlucky to puncture often on the Durano Plus. It's quite heavy but has a nice bouncy, free rolling feel to it.
The Mk1 thumb is a very poor tyre pressure gauge. It makes you vulnerable to a simple piece of loose gravel on the road. The tyre with the built in, absolute guarantee of punctures is the folding Continental 4000S. I once punctured all three, brand new tyres on one ride. It is also one of the most uncomfortable tyres to have on a trike, at any pressure. Never again!
A ride with a puncture is a waste of time and effort. When you could be covering more miles. If your delusions suggest that lighter tyre will help your distance then be prepared to waste your days on the side of the road. Instead of riding along it.
As a cyclist you are usually dressed lightly for hard physical exercise. You are ill equipped for standing around in the snow and the rain. Snow? I have ridden countless miles on snow and ice covered roads. By having Trykit 2 wheel drive I could overcome most hills, on snow, while riding 23mmx700C slicks.
Single wheel drive just means wheel spin. Even on smooth, dry roads. I invested in Trykit 2WD to be able to ride on the wrong side of the road with a UK, left wheel drive trike. Over here on the Continent, the British OWD will be driving you constantly down the camber instead of up it. 2WD is neutral and doesn't care which side of the road you have to ride on. OWD tries to crab sideways on every steep climb! 2WD means you can ride uphill on grass and sprint, flat out, even on on loose gravel.
Low gears are essential on a trike however fit you are. They protect your high mileage knees by allowing you to spin the pedals at high revs [cadence] regardless of the incline. On really steep hills your revs are bound to drop. If you cadence drops too far your knees caps will ache. I had that and nearly had to give up riding altogether! So I bought a Spar Cycles short crank, triple chainset with small chainwheels. Knee problem solved! Later I went back to normal cranks and a small double chainset. So much easier to change effortlessly than triple chain rings.
A bicyclist can only manage a certain steepness before their forward speed is so low they can't stay upright. They can always bail and turn back downhill. A trike stays completely stable as you use your "crawler gears" against gravity. You have no real choice!
If you run out of puff on a really steep climb then you can't easily turn around and descend. You would instantly tip right over and fall the "long way" downhill on your hands. With the trike landing right on top of you. If your trike is heavily laden you can't just lift it off the ground to rotate it around your feet. They will try to slide back downhill on your slippery shoe plates! For the same reason you can't just get off and walk uphill. The braked, front wheel will just slide backwards downhill. You don't have the traction and the back wheels always get in the way when you walk a trike. So you must gear for every eventuality.
A trick I learned early, when descending fast, was to lift my bum off the saddle. On a steep and rough lane the trike will buck left and right. It finds every bump and hollow and change in camber. At the same time it is rocking wildly back and forth. Trying to remain seated will put you in grave danger of losing control and crashing. Lift yourself well off the saddle with bent knees. Let the trike do its own thing. Completely independently of your usual dead weight on the saddle. This has often saved me from disaster and was often, white-knuckled fun. Fairground rides are tame compared with tricycling. That's why we do it!
Trike Mileage from 2010 to 2015
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