Valoria II: Building a new recumbent

October 9, 2016 by Filed under Advice, Tech

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.

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NZ Day 28: Taking off

March 22, 2015 by Filed under Advice, Stress Tagged with

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.

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NZ Day 27: Disassembly

March 21, 2015 by Filed under Advice, Stress, Tech Tagged with

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!

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NZ Day 20: Canoe Believe How Awesome This Is?

March 14, 2015 by Filed under Advice, Amused, Happy Tagged with

We didn’t sleep well – perhaps we took too many naps the previous day – but we didn’t want to miss our adventure, so we dragged ourselves onto our bikes and rode to the Adrift Outdoors depot and transferred our gear to the dry barrels. The manager said we could park our bikes in her garage while we were on the river, and she led us around to her house which was a few blocks away.

With that taken care of, we climbed into the van and began a long bumpy ride down to the put-in point on a tributary of the Whanganui river. My stomach felt a bit floppy from the twists and turns, but that didn’t stop us from chatting along the way with our river guide, an even-tempered and experienced young man named Francis. We also got to know the people who would be piloting the other canoe in our group, a friendly young german couple named Sebastian and Katerina. Five travelers total, in three canoes.

Getting ready to launch!

Down at the river, we watched as the touring company ahead of us slowly unloaded their boats and launched them one at a time. Francis offered to assist but was turned down. One unlucky pair of men immediately capsized their canoe on a rock before they even made it around the corner. We all clapped and yelled “hooray!” at their misadventure, as they pushed their canoe upright and gathered their oars.

Francis wisely decided that we would put in our boats farther downstream from the evil-looking rock, and as soon as the other company cleared out we launched without incident.

Ready to launch!

Francis gave us a few quick lessons on steering and rowing as we drifted in the calm, wide area of the tributary. I was glad that he chose to do this, rather than lining us up along the shore and delivering a long, warning-heavy lecture, like the other company did. It was easier for us to learn in the water, with Francis giving us live feedback to adjust our grip and movements. In retrospect I think the other company didn’t do this because they were used to bringing over a dozen people along, all at once, and didn’t have the manpower to give them personal attention on the river – so they did a drill-sergeant routine beforehand. I’m grateful I chose a company with a more intimate attitude – though I did so by accident. I never saw anything online that reported the ratios between guides and clients, or even explained why it was important.

It only took a few minutes of floundering before we could steer and row in tandem, and then we pushed out into the main river.

The artist at work! What a dork!!

Holy cow. The terrain was amazing. Like nothing we’d ever seen in person. As soon as I had a break in my steering duties, I hauled the phone out of my dry sack.

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The river was wide and steady, giving us plenty of time and space to maneuver, which was important because we spent at least half our time staring in awe at the high canyon walls, which were thick with hanging vines, moss, ferns, protruding rocks dripping columns of water, and a maelstrom of branches and roots from uncountable trees fighting for access to the sun.

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I could not have imagined a place so verdant, with air smelling so fresh, and the sound of insects and birds so intense. Sometimes the chirping of insects seemed to drown out the river itself.

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It was not easy tearing our eyes away, but we did have to pay some attention to the river. Francis guided us around and through the rapids, giving directions and then leading with his canoe, which was loaded down with most of our food and equipment. Along the way he kept up a narrative, mixing local legends with facts and figures about the river and the plants and animals along it, drawing from biology and geology, a bit of geography, and recent conservation efforts.

Partway through the day we drifted ashore and took a lunch break. Francis unpacked one of the dry barrels and handed out fresh vegetables and cheese, suited for someone with a wheat intolerance like me, and made sandwiches. I nibbled some chocolate from my own stash and ran around snapping pictures – and cursed myself for not bringing along the Garmin Virb, which was back in the garage with my bike. The river ride would have made some excellent fast-motion videos.

“If I do this again,” I thought, “I’m bringing along a portable drone!”

Yeah I’m a bit of a gadget freak.

Francis is living the dream, and it shows. He's an enthusiastic, cheerful, knowledgeable, polite, and dedicated guide to the outdoors.

Here’s a shot of our intrepid guide, Francis. He is living the dream, and it shows. He’s an enthusiastic, cheerful, knowledgeable, polite, and dedicated guide to the outdoors.

Eventually we arrived at the first cabin stop, and pulled our canoes ashore. Here’s Katerina, stretching after being seated for three straight hours.

Here’s Sebastian, enthusiastically hauling one of our coolers up the long slope to the cabins. Just how long was that slope? Here’s a video!

A long trek, but worth it. Because we were big spenders, we all got our own benches inside the cabin. Most of the travelers had to bring their own gear and set it up in the camping area.

The cabin, or to be more accurate the John Coull Hut, was bustling with tour guides and helpful guests, unpacking and cooking food. Kerry and I rested and chatted for a while, then joined the crowd inside to help Francis get dinner ready.

This map was posted on the cabin wall. It explains the local efforts to reduce the number of possums, stoats, and rats in the preserve, all of which are unwelcome invasive species brought to New Zealand by man.

On a more practical note…

Heaps of them. Like, you don’t even know.

That’s why the cabin is surrounded by traps, like this one.

The camp water supply. Usually you can just drink this straight, but while we were there it required boiling.

The invasive mammals also smuggle diseases along. This season the camp water supply was determined to be “suspect”, so it needed boiling to be drinkable. In better years you can just drink it right out of the bucket.

Glow worms along the trail!

After dinner Kerry and I went exploring with our cameras, and we found some glow worms right alongside the footbridge to the cabin. Awesome! I didn’t have my focus-assist lamp, but Kerry’s camera had one built in. On the other hand, her image sensor didn’t seem to be as accurate. After a bunch of fiddling with manual controls and propping the camera on a stick, I got a pretty good photo.

The night sky on the river.

There were a zillion stars out too, of course. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been in a place with less light pollution than the middle of this preserve…

Kerry and I were completely exhausted from all the rowing, and the sights and sounds and the sleep deficit from the previous night, so we fell asleep quickly. Unfortunately the bunks in the cabin were rather stiff and cramped, and the air was stagnant, which made for a difficult night. Such is the price of adventure!

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NZ Day 1: Flying In

February 22, 2015 by Filed under Advice, Happy, Stress Tagged with

The theme for today was Oversize Baggage!

Look at the size of those containers. That’s two recumbent bicycles and all associated gear – a little over 200 pounds total. The airline hauled all that, plus the two of us with our backpacks, over 6500 miles across the Pacific Ocean in less than a day. The modern world is amazing.

Still, there were a few snags. The shuttle that arrived to take us to the airport could not fit the longest box, because a plastic divider was installed in the back, separating the seats from the luggage area. We’d called ahead multiple times and given the dispatcher the exact measurements, but the dispatcher apparently ignored all that and sent the standard van anyway. There wasn’t enough time to call another van, so I ran inside my house and fetched an electric screwdriver, and removed the plastic divider myself, handing the loose parts to the driver as I went. The driver didn’t mind; he was just happy that we had a solution to the problem. Extra points to him! Zero points to the dispatcher. Boo! Hiss!

Once we actually got the boxes to the Air New Zealand check-in counter, the attendants there could not believe we were allowed to bring such huge items as luggage. It wasn’t that they had any specific policy in mind that disallowed it, it’s just that the sight of those boxes made them want to say no. In fact, they assumed it was against the rules, until I called up NZ Air’s own baggage policy website on my phone and showed it to them, and read the relevant parts out loud.

The policy is this: A recumbent bike is an oversize sporting item. If it’s disassembled and packed into a container within 1.8 meters on the longest side and under 70 pounds, it is permissible. A bike divided into multiple boxes to fit within the per-container size and weight restrictions is still counted as a single item of luggage.

So, according to their rules, this is two items of luggage, each one oversize and overweight. We had no other checked items, so all we needed to pay was the oversize and overweight fee for each bicycle.

If you’re patient enough and make your case with confidence, and don’t mind waiting around for the inevitable discussion with the managers, and perhaps the managers’ managers, you’ll make it through at that price. If you’re paranoid, you can do what I did, and overpay the luggage fees in advance, but be warned: Even though the website says the ‘oversize’ and ‘overweight’ fees are interchangeable with the ‘extra bag’ fee, the person at the counter might claim otherwise, and ask you to pay them all over again, minutes before your flight, without letting you apply the extra value of one to the other. Then, your flight will leave too soon for you to get a refund for the ‘extra bag’ units you purchased, screwing you out of many hundreds of dollars.

I say, if it looks like that’s about to happen, pitch a genuine fit. That’s just plain wrong!!

Anyhoo, we got our gear checked, and spent the next 15 hours in a series of highly uncomfortable chairs, barely getting any sleep. You know the drill. Long-haul international flights!

Here’s the view passing over Auckland. Pretend the window glare is a hallucination due to lack of sleep!

This is us in SFO, then us in Auckland a zillion hours later. As uncouth Americans, we made sure that our first meal in New Zealand was a terrible one. We’re both utter zombies at this point. I’m running on about half an hour of sleep.

To catch our connecting flight we had to walk about half a mile outdoors between terminals. Not a fun thing to do while hugely sleep-deprived. I was muttering the whole time: “Honestly, New Zealand, what brought about this failure of urban planning? Is this some sort of hazing ritual for foreigners? HUrrrr. BRAAAAAAIIIIIINS.”

Anyway, we caught our connection – a charming little prop plane that flew nice and low, giving us an enticing view of the terrain we would soon explore – and then we had one more oversize luggage wrestling match, this time with the shuttle from the airport to our hotel. The only strategy that worked was to commandeer an empty shuttle and stuff the box down the passenger aisle, blocking the whole thing, then shove the smaller boxes into the luggage area, filling it up.

Luckily it was a slow day, and we only had two other people riding the shuttle. They were very gallant about the situation – even hopping out help us unload! We left a nice tip.

We checked in and I pulled the ripcord on my luggage. KABOOM! The view out the windows was lush and inviting. It rained three separate times while we cleaned up and organized ourselves; a warm tropical rain with sunbeams visible on the bay.

We napped for about half an hour, then spent almost all of the rest of the day doing this, in a sleepy haze. The time-lapse video stops after the first 75 minutes or so because the phone battery died, but we kept going for another five hours.

We made it! ADVENTURE TIME.

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