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?

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.

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.

Unpacking, or repacking, a Crateworks box

So you’ve arrived somewhere, and you’ve unpacked your bicycle(s) from the Crateworks box(es), and now you want to send the boxes to your destination? Sounds great. But what if you’ve forgotten how they fold up?

It seems straightforward enough. A Crateworks box only has four plastic pieces and three cardboard pieces – the tandem box slightly more – plus some straps and padding. But if you’re paranoid about fitting things together the “intended” way for shipping (as I am), some photo documentation is helpful.

This is what it looks like to unpack a shipped Crateworks box. To re-pack one, just follow the photos in reverse.

It arrives like this, in a cardboard box 54 x 32 x 6 inches. Interestingly, the box for the tandem/recumbent version is exactly the same size as the single version.

And here’s what it looks like to unpack:

And, just to round things out, here’s what a bunch of Crateworks boxes look like on an airport terminal scale:

And here’s what those same three boxes look like, folded up for shipping and taped thoroughly shut:

Bike shipping boxes all wrapped up for sending to New Plymouth. We left them in the hotel lobby and the shipping company picked them up for us the next day. Very handy!

It’s possible to ship the Crateworks boxes without using an enclosing box, if you use enough tape – (we did this very thing in New Zealand) – but the above photos show a serious problem with this. The top and bottom ends of the compressed box are open. Unless you cover them thoroughly, with tape or some other material, all the panels inside will slide easily out.

I really think Crateworks should include an extra rectangle of foldable plastic on the long sides of the bottom piece, so we could fold it to cover the ends of the compressed version, holding all the other parts inside. Then we wouldn’t need to go through an entire roll of packing tape just to seal the ends.