The Dorkmobile Arriveth

Following up on the article from last November about my recumbent trike, I did get the Velokit installed in the hopes I could keep riding in the winter. But I made two mistakes.

First, I was too optimistic about the cold weather advantages of having a full fairing.  Keeping the wind off is nice, but I didn't think of the problem of the inside windshield frosting over.  When the trike is moving this isn't a problem, since there's enough air movement inside to keep the window clean.  When stopped, however, my heavy breathing causes instant fog, and if it's much below freezing the fog freezes almost as fast.  Once frozen, it won't easily come off, making for a hazardous situation.

Second, we had some early snowstorms this winter followed by an extended period of very cold weather.  This coated the side streets around my home with a very persistent layer of ice and made it impossible to get up the hills on the trike.  Had I planned ahead I would have gotten studded tires, but I didn't think of that in time.

So I pretty much stopped riding between Thanksgiving and mid-February.  Now that we're getting towards spring, we've had a higher sun and enough days of above freezing weather to clean the ice off the roads, and I've completed one and a half round trips to the office on my trike this year--a total of 25 miles so far in 2009.

I've set my goal for this year at 2,000 miles.  I think that's do-able, if I'm diligent about riding to work whenever possible and get in a few extended trips on the side.