Valoria II: Building a new recumbent

This is Valoria:

My trusty steed, Valoria, crossing the valley!

I can’t remember how she got the name. Something to do with valkyries and heading off into wild territory, I bet. I purchased her almost on an impulse from a stranger at my workplace, just a few weeks before my first long-range bicycle tour. I am very glad I did. It was life-changing.

Valoria is an original Giro 20 recumbent – the first version that Bacchetta made. Her frame is steel. She’s got an Old Man Mountain rack on the back, in a shape that the company no longer makes: Old Man Mountain racks do not have handles any more. That sucks because the handle is a great way to move around a recumbent — like grabbing a kitten by the scruff of the neck.

Valoria’s seat has braze-on eyelets underneath it, for attaching a rack directly beneath the seat. Giro no longer includes those braze-ons, and no one makes the under-seat rack any more. If you want another one like it, tough luck. Also, all the Giro 20s nowadays have the headset and idler wheel in a different place, closer to the front. This affects the geometry of the steering. The handlebars are also several inches wider. If you want a set of handlebars like the original Giro 20, you either find an original Giro 20, or you give up.

She is truly a one-of-a-kind bike. So why am I even trying to replace her?

The short list:

  1. She does not have disc brakes, and there’s no way to retrofit them.
  2. Her shifters are very worn out.
  3. She’s got more steel in her than I need. She’s rated to carry 280 pounds, and I only tour with 250 at the very most.

That’s it. Not a long list. But it was item 1 that did the trick. On the trip from Colorado to Ohio, I hit the v-brakes at the same time I hit a pothole, and the pressure cracked my front rim, cutting my tour short. On the New Zealand tour, I did a number of descents through very long, windy mountain roads, with fast-moving traffic, and a full load of gear. I couldn’t actually slow down as much as I wanted because I didn’t have the hand strength to grip the v-brakes hard enough!

A few close calls in Oakland were enough to force the decision. I wanted disc brakes, period.

And so, I began a dialogue with Zach Kaplan, master recumbent builder, fleshing out the details.

First question: Did I want an entirely different brand of recumbent, or another Giro 20, in the modern style with disc brakes?

Me:
My current bike doesn’t have a suspension and isn’t very easy to disassemble. If I wanted to get these features, what other bikes should I consider?
Zach:
There are other touring oriented bikes, with full suspension and custom heavy duty racks and factory option generator lighting systems, such as those from HP Velotechnik and AZUB. They are heavier than the Giro 20 though and much more expensive. One of them, the HP Velotechnik Grasshopper fx, folds but the folding is designed for taking on trains. It doesn’t come anywhere close to to fitting into a case that wouldn’t incur an oversize charge on an airline, so in that respect it’s the same as the Giro.
Me:
Yes, assembling and disassembling the Giro 20 for plane flights is a hassle. What about the Lightning P-38? The P-38 comes apart and packs into a suitcase. Does that save a lot of time and labor?
Zach:
The P-38 Voyager with the S&S couplers that fits into a suitcase takes just about as much work and time to disassemble and pack up as a Bacchetta, just fits into a smaller airline legal case. The P-38 with case is very close to the airline maximum weight limit and I’ve known of people who have had to put the chain and pedals in another piece of baggage to keep the case under the weight limit.

Some further research confirmed this. I found a few videos of P-38 owners packing up their bikes for travel, and no one managed to get the task done in anything less than an hour, despite plenty of experience and practice.

Me:
Hmm. If it’s about the same amount of work, then the most the P-38 could offer me is space savings. For the Giro, taping the CrateWorks boxes closed and shipping them to our destination made their bulkiness irrelevant for the actual ride. We’d have to send the P-38 case ahead of us in the same way.
Zach:
That’s true.
Me:
Is the P-38 similar in comfort level to the Bacchetta?
Zach:
The P-38 seat is similar in comfort level to the Bacchetta Recurve seat. Other than the S&S coupler option, the main advantages of the P-38 are it is lighter weight and has a lower seat height which makes it easier for shorter riders to put their feet down.
Me:
How does it compare for loaded touring?
Zach:
For unloaded riding the P-38 is a bit higher performance due to being lighter weight. If you want to use it for loaded touring, the P-38 has some major downsides. It isn’t compatible with an under seat rack, and the frame – being made of of small diameter, thin walled tubes to save weight – is relatively flexy torsionally so not designed to carry heavy weight on the rear rack. As a result, it doesn’t handle that well when heavily loaded.

So, it looked like the P-38 was too light. At the other end of the spectrum, I knew the HP Velotechnik bikes were all quite heavy. I’d done test-rides with the Speed Machine, the Street Machine, and the Grasshopper. The suspension felt luxurious, but in my touring, I just never spend that much time on rough roads. Besides, the way HP Velotechnik prices their frames and parts, I would pay almost $2000 more for a bicycle whose only additional feature is a suspension. Not a clear winner over the Giro 20.

In fact, no matter how many other options I looked at, I kept coming back to the Giro 20. It seems I was not going to replace Valoria — I was going to reincarnate her!

The choice made, Zach and I began to hash out the details.

NZ Day 28: Taking off

We had a little time to kill, so Kerry and I walked downtown to a cafe and snacked while it rained outside. Eventually we moseyed back to the hotel, and the shuttle to the airport arrived. The driver knew the dimensions of the boxes ahead of time and the van was large enough, so that went smoothly.

The attendant at the airport was another matter. She argued with us for quite a while about whether we could get our boxes loaded on the plane and how much it would cost. She could not believe that the rules allowed it, and I had to patiently make my case over and over again until she kicked it up the food chain, and her boss waved us through.

The transition can be jarring sometimes. I work in an industry that is obsessed with optimization, in an area teeming with startups all wrestling to eat each others’ lunch and be “disruptive”. Meetings and deadlines and design specifications fly fast and furious and you can damage your reputation by being just a few minutes late, or not knowing your area of expertise down to the fine details when someone needs an answer. But I have to take that entire mode of thinking and shove it into a luggage compartment, and just go with the flow: If five people need me to explain the same thing five times, in a reasonable and patient voice, then that’s what I’ll do. If it takes all day, I’ll just get myself a sandwich and pace myself, and chop doggedly at the red tape until it stretches just enough. That’s just the way it has to go. No use getting imperious or upset.

The transfer to the international flight in Auckland was even more hurried than the first one. The design really was a bit ridiculous and I hope they improve it. The flight itself was just as cramped and uncomfortable as before; a kind of endurance test. Apparently I smelled so much from my earlier exertion with the bike boxes that the woman seated near me asked to transfer to another seat. Well, she didn’t tell me as much, but the way her face wrinkled up when I shifted around was all the signal I needed.

I know it’s a miracle that we can cross around to the other side of the Earth in less than a day, but even making the journey in first class is extremely uncomfortable, for the simple fact that you cannot lay down anywhere, for even a moment. Unfortunately, it’s not economical to build a plane that offers that kind of space. For every three stacked compartments where a person could lay flat, you can insert at least six seats. Airlines would have to double the ticket price at least, and no one would pay the difference. Plus they’d have to completely retool the interior of the plane to use it for shorter trips.

I can see the reasons it sucks. But yeah — it still sucks.

Anyway, we arrived in San Francisco without incident, unloaded our boxes in a haze, and called a shuttle. About an hour later we were standing in the driveway, and shortly after that we were attending to our respective cats, and starting to relax.

Time for a trip wrap-up!

What were the highlights of the trip?

Kerry and I both agree on the three highlights of this trip: Matapouri Bay, Hobbiton, and the Whanganui canoe trip. We could have spent an entire week just hanging around totally relaxed in Matapouri and another entire week on the Whanganui, canoeing and camping and hiking in those amazing woods. But the schedule didn’t allow it.

Below that top three I’ll add three more things: The Tongariro crossing, the Whangarei kayak trip through the mangrove forest, and the day we spent meandering around Waipu on our bikes, bothering the horses and sheep and picnicking and enjoying the unbelievably great weather.

Seriously, there are so many amazing natural activities all over New Zealand. We didn’t even go bird watching, or skydiving, or see the dolphins, or White Island, or go into any of the big caves, or go surfing, or walk through the Goblin Forest, or ride the old train tracks, or see ANY of the icy terrain of the South Island…

So how was it, cost-wise?

Kerry and I both had plenty of savings. What we were short on was time. This is probably typical for software developers wanting to travel. The upshot is, we paid for a wide variety of experiences, and crammed them all into one month. Snorkeling, boat rides, kayaking, canoeing … all things that required custom equipment and/or transport that we had to rent. If our bicycles hadn’t been highly customized we would have probably rented those too.

Camping in New Zealand is easier than in neighboring Australia, though it still varies by region. That was irrelevant though because Kerry and I didn’t even bring tents or sleeping bags. Our route lined up consistently with towns large enough to sport hotels, and since it was the tail end of the tourist season we booked almost every stay well in advance. Between food and lodging, and with the currency exchange, we averaged about 1.5 times the amount we’d pay back home. The quality of the rooms varied wildly, but the food was always good.

If we’d brought camping equipment and used it, New Zealand would have been less expensive than any European country — even the ones like Denmark and Sweden where camping is cheap, because of the reduced cost of food and other supplies. But without that camping element, New Zealand was pretty darned expensive.

Also, there was the paradoxical effect of the shuttle system. We had to pay oversize luggage fees to get our bikes into the country, and spend extra days at the beginning and end dealing with them. Between the fees and the hotel stays, and the extra food we surely ate because of pedaling around, it probably cost us more to travel through New Zealand by bike than it would have cost us just arriving on foot and taking the shuttle between attractions. The shuttle network in New Zealand really is quite marvelous, and if I’d known that in advance I would have taken the following advice:

Bring two folding bicycles to New Zealand. The kind that fit inside an ordinary suitcase. Plan on taking the shuttle between every town with every attraction you’re keen to see, and once you get into town, unfold the bikes and ride them around. Then fold them up again at the end of the day and proceed to the next town.

That way you get the mobility and range of the bikes, but you don’t have to deal with the endless hills between cities.

Would you go again if you had the chance?

You bet! If I was doing the North Island again, I’d bring folding bikes like I described in the answer above. If I was doing the South Island, it’d be a toss-up. The middle section of that island is flat enough to be pleasant biking, and there are a lot more places to camp so we could bring camping gear and enjoy it. But there is also a train that runs the length of that island, and we’d probably use shuttles to cross most of the mountains between the interior and the West coast, so bikes might not be the best call there either.

There is just so much variety in New Zealand that it’s silly to spend the majority of one’s time there bicycling. Yes, I would totally go back — but not primarily as a bicycle tourist.

Kerry agrees with this. She’s been to Europe and India, and was impressed at how different New Zealand was from those places, but aside from a few days that were truly enhanced by having bicycles, she could have enjoyed New Zealand just as much by renting an RV or taking the shuttles on foot.

NZ Day 27: Disassembly

Today was a day off, at least from traveling. We spent most of the daylight hours slowly disassembling our bikes and packing them into the Crateworks boxes, along with the rest of our gear.

For anyone curious to see how two tandem bicycles can fit into three Crateworks boxes – one long, two short – and still pass the airline weight requirements, this hyperspeed video shows exactly how we did it:

Packing Recumbents

In the afternoon we took a break to walk to a truly horrible French restaurant – our first seriously bad dining experience in New Zealand. Perhaps the country was throwing a tantrum because we were about to leave!

NZ Day 26: Moseying around town

A relaxing day, eating thai food and hanging out in the sun.

A final bus ride from Taumurunui to Te Kuiti to New Plymouth:

Groovy photos as the sun went down:

Last day on the road in New Zealand

NZ Day 25: A last day of riding

Fun fact: New Zealand has more cute roadside ponds per capita than any place else in the southern hemisphere.

New Zealand is awash in cute roadside ponds!

(Note: Today’s Fun Fact has not been peer-reviewed.)

We slept in late, and checked out of the Plateau Lodge even later. The 12-mile mountain hike we did yesterday was probably slowing us down. What a surprise!

Nevertheless, we were in good spirits. It was all downhill to Taurmaranui and the weather was fantastic. Plus I was all stocked up on dark chocolate:

Roadside chocolate break!

In the photo you can see the New Zealand flag attached to the bike. It was part of my fabulous plan to boost our visibility to drivers, but in retrospect it was mostly a nuisance. If it was smaller I could have attached it to a pole like recumbent riders usually do. Oh well… Wisdom for the next trip.

Knowing how much we obsessed about weight, it’s odd that I didn’t just discard the flag somewhere along the way. But on the other hand, when you’re visiting a country, you shouldn’t throw their flag in the trash – that’s just rude!

There's the mountain we hiked near two days ago - Mt Ngauruhoe - free of clouds for the first time in a week.

During the chocolate break I looked back to the east and saw Mt Ngauruhoe – free of clouds for the first time in a week. The weather wasn’t that clear yesterday when we hiked it. It’s true what the locals say: The mountain makes its own weather system, and it’s only sometimes related to what goes on around it.

Looking to the north I saw what looked like a smaller, flatter version of Ngauruhoe.

I believe that plateau is called Mt Komokoriri. (That's based on a guess from looking at www.topomap.co.nz .)

In the evening I got obsessed and spent an entire hour on the laptop, browsing around topograpic maps trying to identify the plateau. My best guess was that it’s Mt Komokoriri?

Since it was the last day we would be riding cross-country, I decided to do what I did for the first day, and record some video. This time I attached the camera to the front of the recumbent instead of my helmet. “Now it’ll be nice and steady!” I declared. Nope. Every single tiny ridge on the pavement made the camera jitter like crazy. It looked like I was riding a bicycle with square wheels.

Last_day_Ride-1b

About halfway through the ride we stopped to chat with some outdoorsmen walking along the road.

Friends we met while cycling down from National Park, including Mark the photographer.

The guy on the right is Mark Watson, a nature photographer and fellow cycling enthusiast. I barraged him with questions about photography equipment and techniques, which he answered gracefully.

Stopping for photos of a mountain and seeing smoke in the air

Second video:

Checking in: I’d grown quite a beard.

Resting up after an easy day's riding!

I spent a non-trivial amount of vacation time like this, futzing with photos. Fun!

Odd sockets and switches:

This is how you know the hotel was built a while ago!