Al's Blog-o-Sphere

Not by bike. But just to try it out and to see it work, I’ll be running the Greenalp tracker on my phone. You can see where I am on my trip to Washington DC at this page.

I’m driving down for my Uncle Paul’s funeral for a couple of days. My son Frank is going to be with me. It’s been many years since I’ve been to DC and this is the first time I’ve ever driven myself. I’m looking forward to it. Wish I could make a longer trip out of it, but finances just don’t permit.

Anyway, laptop and camera are going with. If anything interesting happens, I’ll be sure to write about it here!

I’ll be deciding on the fate of the bike trip after I am back. I’m also thinking about a group ride on the GAP trail in October. It’s a three-day trip leaving from Maryland and going into Pennsylvania on the GAP trail. Just to get a taste of the GAP trail.

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I’ve been working on a new solar panel for the bike. The one I have now is long and narrow. It puts out 15 watts and hangs off the back of the trailer.

My goal is to replace it with one that fits it in the recess in the top of the plastic bin on my trailer so it doesn’t hang off at all. With more efficient cells it should be about 20 watts despite the smaller size.

Continue Reading…

I was just about to post that I was going to resume my trip tomorrow when my phone rang.

Due to a death in the family, I will be holding off on resuming my bike trip for an undetermined time.

For those of you following this, keep checking back, I’ll let you know when it’s on again.

I was really excited to resume my trip. I was literally packed to go. I did lot of work on the bike and trailer and bike the past three days and was looking forward to it. I may, instead do a local ride for exercise tomorrow.

The seat is fixed!

My friend Ken Handley took the seat frame and had it welded for me. He put a reinforcement inside the tubing and added gussets below the point where the tubing meets the bracket. I’m confident in saying it’s much stronger now than it ever was.

He even had a nice flat black coat of paint put on it, saving me from having to do that.

I have the seat all back together and on the trike. I’m hoping to do a short test ride tonight to make sure it’s all fine. I did some work on the rear derailleur and may need to do some tweaking with that.

Update: April 2013. I just was working on the trike and had the mesh seat cover off again to clean it. The frame with the weld job looks great, except that some of the paint had worn off where the mesh seat rubs it. I painted it again, just a small area in the middle. I think the original paint was a powder coat that probably adhered much better.

Actually, I’m thinking of covering the whole cross bar of the frame with some foam pipe insulation. It’s kind of a hard spot that I almost sit on, so some padding there might help.