[python] Re: riding attempts
- From: Rhisiart Gwilym <Rhisiart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: python@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 10:04:15 +0000
Ok
You guys are scaring the crap out of me. I turn 62 in 5 days and I do not
want to spend my birthday in traction :.)
I plan to try to start riding mine next week end. Just a few minor
adjustments to make first.
Maybe I should start with the trike rear end first. LOL
Stephan, please keep us posted as to how you are progressing and good luck.
Jim Sparks
Siwmae pawb,
Solidarity Jim and Stephan! I'm a bit older, and about to undergo the
same baptism of tarmac. I really look forward to launching out on
Jurgen's mystical journey towards joining the elect. But I'm
wondering: since my plan, like Jim, is to have both single-wheel and
two-wheel trailers (back ends), interchangeable on the one front end,
and I'm building everything at once, should I start learning on the
trike rig rather than the bike? My instinct is to learn on the bike,
with a pair of thick-walled industrial gloves, and then switch to
triking now and then when I'm competent, and I need to haul a load.
Also, I have this intuition that part of the often-described mystical
epiphany of advanced python-masters comes from powering, steering AND
balancing the bike all by the same single harmonious learned action.
Sort of biker's tai chi. I guess you don't get quite that on a
trike.....?
What guidance from the trailblazers?
A further part of the plan is to have an alleweder fairing for my
python, in either configuration, made from the sort of
slightly-stiff, flexible closed-cell foam sheets that hikers use for
bivouac sleeping pads. Previous trail-blazers in Deutschland say that
works well. (Part of my dream of final, total independence from
car-ownership, and even from car use, except maybe the rare,
five-days-in-a-year hire for special occasions, like the Dansker guy
who pioneered the Leitra. I just recently gave away my Landrover to
my buddy Eric.)
And then another part of the plan is to have an add-on
fore-and-aft-swinging handle bar mounted on the front end, with
con-rod to a pedal; or maybe, if it proves essential, to both pedals,
with one of them turned around 180 degrees on the BB axle. That's to
allow me the alternative of riding the python as a rower rather than
a pedaller. (For the sake of the upper-body exercise which most of us
in the over-prosperous countries lack chronically. If I can bear to
let anyone photograph my ugly self, I'll do a before and after photo
record, a year or so apart. If I survive all this.)
But first, build and learn to ride the bare bike.
The coast path is in Parc Cenedlaethol Sir Benfro (Pembroke National
Park) in the south of Cymru. Our English neighbours think of it as a
British national park. We, of course, know better: it's a Cymreig
national park. My family is from Penybont-ar-Ogwr near there, but my
Cymreig place now is in the north, beside LLyn Padarn, one of the
long ice-gouged lakes there, where the blessed, beautiful mountains
just manage to scrape into the very smallest category of alpine
peaks. Much more of a challenge for bikers. No road stays flat for
more than half a kilometer. Most gradients have at least short
stretches of 25% or more. The narrow lane between LLanberis, where
the nearest shops and things are, and my buddy Eric Maddern's place
at Cae Mabon, where I live much of the time, (google up Cae Mabon and
eat your hearts out, guys!) is a kilometer of solid 30%-plus
hillside, followed by another kilometer of lakeside dead-flat
cycle-path, as compensation. Such terrain demands ultra-low winching
gears as a matter of course, especially for plodding old gits like
me. That's where the trike rig will be a real plus. And it pours down
rain about every third day, right through the year. You see why I
have to include an alleweder faring in my plan. Well, we'll see.......
Cofion gorau i bawb, Rhisiart G
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