12.03.2020 Jinping Disease. First Jinping Pandemic Darwin Award: Sly "Nero" Jinping.

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Thursday 12th 42F, overcast, storm force gales with occasional rain. Stormy gusts!

Today's Pandemic Darwin Award must go to Sly "Nero" Jinping himself. Lifetime, genocidal, evil dictator and author of the global, Covid-19, virus pandemic. While he was arresting worried doctors and citizen journalists this evil thug and Communist Mafia Boss played all his usual fiddles. 

After being in denial for so long Denmark's politicians are finally closing all the schools and similar places for at least the next fortnight. There are a number of other restrictions. Internal transport is affected because of the need to separate travelers. Official government offices and the libraries are all closing. 

The Danish DR Nyheder [news] website is overloaded with stupid questions by people asking if they can go on holiday and where! There are no clear headlines on the new restrictions! Tom Hanks is sick so that's top of the headlines too. What an utter farce!

Food shops are staying open and claim they have plenty of stock. That didn't stop an evening rush to hoard after the PM made her speech. The people noticed: She is a politician and her mouth was open. So she must have been lying. She was lying through her teeth when she asked to be elected to save the world's climate. Months have passed and nothing is being done. Which automatically triggered a panic response in the streets. Queues fifty meters long in Nettos! 20 times more than normal sold in Rema1000 supermarket yesterday evening. Arrests over shoppers refusing to leave when the shop closed for the night! Throwing items around!

I need to buy essential foods but risk contagion if I mix with other people. How do I know I don't already have the virus and spreading it myself? The latest advice is that any cold or flu symptoms could be the virus. Both of us have had odd flu or cold-like symptoms for over a week now. So it's home quarantine for a fortnight. The news is that the online shopping websites can't cope and have half hour queues to get onto the website. Another farce!
 
I risked a run to the shops in the hope that the virus hasn't spread this early. I wore fresh disposable gloves for each shop and discarded them immediately afterwards.

The village idiots were their usual, pig-ignorant, backward, peasant selves. Pressing together in ther queues and coughing loudly, wide open mouthed, all over the displays and the endless queues at the checkouts. Just like they always do.

Several, regular items were out of stock. I asked the staff but no, they hadn't any sliced, wholemeal sandwich bread, tinned tomatoes nor raisins. No shortage of toilet rolls or cigarettes though. Yes, there were people queuing just to buy a single packet of cigarettes! Along with the company of all their school friends!

The tills were not accepting contact-less cards, completely at random, as usual. So you have to press the filthy keys to input your pin code and press enter. I was wearing my disposable gloves but nobody else was. I didn't see any face masks.

I did see lots of brain dead, teenagers though. Who were hanging about in the shops, peering down at their mobile phones. While accompanying their friends. Who were only buying a small packet of sweets or cigarettes at the checkouts. Paying with their "mobile pay" phones. Which never, ever, seem to work properly either. So there were far longer queues and far more drooling morons in the shops than I normally see. Just when I didn't want to see anybody at all! Nor they, me idf they new the rules!

Three of the supermarkets had specially bussed in semi-comatose sloths to man the few, open tills. I had never seen them before. Nor ever want to see them again. One must assume the supermarkets are hoping to maximize profits from sles to the clinically obese at the sweets and crisps displays. Which are always placed right beside the checkouts. And yes, there were people leisurely picking over the sweets and crisps during this pandemic.

There were calls over the Tannoy to open more tills. So, of course, lots of people moved over in anticipation. Only to be told, when the staff bothered to turn up, that there was no money in those tills. So it was back to the other, endless queues, but now having lost three places! More exposure to open mouthed, coughing peasants and certified, fully qualified, fully paid up, village idiots buying single packets of cigareettes.

At least we have enough wood, fuel bricks for the stove to last a couple of weeks. We must hope that the potential safety of our rural isolation is not broken by deliveries. The drivers are still insisting on signatures on their contagion machines! So then it's back indoors for another good scrub of the hands. Most wouldn't even think about it this contact. Let alone be bothered to maintain good hand hygiene afterwards. I suppose our next trick is to practice "speed disposable glove fitting" for the next Olympics. If they are ever held again.

As we go to bed on Thursday night the 12th of March 2020 it all seems horribly surreal. Or just plain unreal. We are in the age group for pneumonia regardless of our fitness levels. Tomorrow is Friday the 13th. Oh joy! Perhaps we should call it Sly "Nero" Jinping Day? 🙄

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11.3.2020 The joys and pitfalls of tricycle riding Pt.3.

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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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11.3.2020 The joys and downsides of tricycling. Pt.2.

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My desire to share the fun of tricycling with a wider audience had been accomplished to my own, limited satisfaction. By blogging and by my gentle tricycle forum leadership. The forum was thriving and didn't need me any more. Nor did the Tricycle Association. It had little to offer the distant member despite the paltry, annual sub of £10. Many tricyclists are elderly. So I hope they aren't seriously thinned out by the pandemic.

If I die from the 2020 coronavirus pandemic few will remember me. All the things I hid from my online audience will die with me. Cycling and tricycling, in particular, is great fun. Hanging off the side on corners is a very inefficient and a very silly way to get about. But the compensations are utterly worth it. Tricycling offers huge enjoyment despite the extra weight and parking problems.

The tricyclist is always acutely aware of the undulating road beneath the spinning wheels. Every change in camber is a challenge to be overcome. The tricycle has a very limited range of lateral stability. Though it didn't stop me riding along insanely poor, unmade forest tracks and paths where few would dare to walk. The limit was usually when the deliberately low, pedal circle struck the ground. Vehicle wheel ruts will do that to a trike.

You simply would not believe the places I tried to tricycle. Even when loaded down with shopping. If I saw a new turning I would often take it to add it to my range of knowledge. It sometimes got me into serious trouble where I lost my sense of direction under an overcast sky. I have dragged the tricycle by the scruff of its neck through waterlogged bogs and steep forest fire breaks. Where no vehicle has passed in years. 

You can carry loads on the rear rack of a trike which would make most cyclists swoon with disbelief. I still think nothing of carrying 6 liters of milk. Now add everything else: The large bags of spuds, carrots and apples. The boxes of 10 eggs, the cartons of cream and several packs of butter. The tins of fruit, soup, beans and assorted bottles. The several liters of organic apple and orange juice. Washing ujp and laundry detergents in all sizes and containers. Different loafs of bread. Frozen fish and vegetables. Always organic produce, if it is available. It is a fine art to load a bag and return home without having anything crushed. I once lost a pack of butter in the bottom of the bag. We won't dwell on the stink after a warm weekend. Milk has similar properties if you puncture a carton.

It took me years to fully develop and finally reach the Overboard 40 liter duffel bag on the trike's rear rack. It isn't perfect but the 40 liter capacity makes a complete and utter mockery of the overpriced, traditional and puny, canvas saddle bags. Though they win on longevity when you fondly wish they'd just die so you can buy something else. For nearly a decade I shopped, for two, entirely on the trike at ranges up to 40 miles from home.Yes, I have bought real shopping at the mid-point of long rides.

The trike was our only means of shopping transport on every, single ride. I don't remember ever doing a ride which did not replenish the larder on the way home. Except for the largest and heaviest loads which always needed the car, or its large trailer. iIt can all be done with a trike.

Bikes are ill-equipped for shopping unless you have a specialized carrier bike. I have an old, original, LongJohn at the back of the shed but have only ridden it a couple of times. It is far too impractical despite regularly seeing even teenage girls riding them on the narrow, winding cycle paths in the city. Modern examples have prams for carrying the children and why not? If oil goes through the car roof the modern LongJohn already offers town delivery services and school child delivery and return.

Our aging car sat unused, taking up space, but was still vital for our rural situation. My CO2 conscience is clear as the Earth's ice caps melt at 6 times the rate they did in the very recent 1990s. Cycle if you must but tricycle by choice. Anybody can ride a bike. Even a robot!

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