ANOTHER sunny say dawned, and this time I didn't have a hangover, so all in all a great improvement. First things first, I had to get the trike out of the apartment. This involved wheeling it across the living room from the balcony, bumping it slowly down a dozen stairs, turning it on the tiny landing then down the next stairs to our front door.
I grabbed my camera, a hat and some emergency tools and then found the first problem. The trike is slightly too wide to fit through the door, so I had to put it on end and drag it sideways; all in all a very tight fit. Thankfully this isn't a particularly big issue as I intend to store it on the car park level two floors down, but it convinced me I won't be bringing it upstairs for maintenance very often.
THE rest of the journey to the outside world went without hitch as I took the lift down the two floors to the car park, then over to another lift to take me down three floors to the wharf. The trike fitted in the lift easily if I folded up the front boom; this folding action was one of the reasons I picked a Sidewinder trike in the first place so it was nice to see it coming in handy so soon.
ONCE outside I climbed aboard and tentatively set off. My first impression was how amazingly different this was from my first ride on the two wheeled recumbent a few years ago, which felt like learning to ride a bike all over again. The trike is immediately fun! The position is very low and feels quite like a go-cart; this also gives the impression of speed as you can see the ground travelling past very close to you.
THE rear wheel steering at first seems a little odd as you can feel the tail move from side to side at low speeds, but very quickly the advantage over two wheel recumbents and front wheel steer tadpoles becomes clear; the Sidewinder is incredibly manoeuvrable. It's amazingly entertaining just to slalom between poles or pull very tight turns. I kept expecting it to lose traction and drift, but the huge fat tires seem to grip the road wonderfully and you just zip tightly round the corners.
I headed off the wharf and through the Viaduct Harbour area attracting lots of odd looks; recumbents are incredibly rare in NZ and trikes obviously even more so. At one point I was hailed by an older chap who was heading the same way on his upright town bike. "How are you finding the recumbent?", he asked. We had a short chat about the advantages and disadvantages which ended with the familiar one about visibility and the likelihood of being squashed by a truck that never even notices you. I explained my theory, gleaned from the internet I admit, that tadpole trikes are so odd drivers couldn't help but notice them.
I carried on to do a circuit of the old tank farm which is now being redeveloped as 'next big thing'; seafood restaurants, tree lines boulevards and the like. I noticed two things as soon as I was on the roads; drivers were extremely polite, hanging back rather than overtaking, and I seemed to be suffering from a distinct lack of gears. For the first point, I decided the drivers thought I was either A: Cool, or B: Disabled; in the absence of any other evidence I went with option A. For the second issue, I guessed that I had messed up the mounting of the dérailleur, it was working but only in a short range which implied there wasn't enough tension on the return spring..
OH yeah, and a third thing. According to the Cateye speedometer I seemed to be travelling amazingly fast - I had a strong suspicion that I needed to adjust the setting for the wheel size.
ON the return trip I stopped the trike briefly to snap a picture in front of one of Auckland's most recognisable landmarks, the Sky Tower. This showed up one other little thing I would have to remember; the trike doesn't have a locking brake so you have to be careful when you stop even on a slight slope that it doesn't wander off by itself.
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| Even on this unnoticeable slope the trike had to be placed on a drain cover to stop it charging off |
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