60th ride of 2016 - Monday, 4/25/2016

In total, today ended up being a much more adventurous day than I either expected or sensed was happening at any individual point along the way.

It started off with a trip to Jack's Bicycle in Dearborn this morning, to address the problem with the center pin, which I was unable to move yesterday. Richard, the man there with whom I have interacted regularly for over a year now, took a look at it, and was surprised by my description of the problem, as he had worked extensively on it a week ago today, and had it moving freely, as he

showed me. After a few minutes of working with it, though, he came and got me to show me that it was now working well. He said it was misaligned slightly, and he had removed it, fixed the problem, and reinserted it. When he described the problem, I asked, "WHY?" and he shrugged and turned his palms up, adding, "TerraTrike needs to redesign it." I said, "You need to tell them that." Richard smiled and added, "I have."

When I got home it was still early enough that I was hopeful of having time to do a long ride—perhaps three round trips to Marsh Park. However, as I began to assemble the trike, although the pin was now moving just fine, when I removed the seat from the trunk so that I could reattach it, I noticed that some of the hardware (which I had stupidly left loose in the trunk) was missing. I underwent the challenge of opening the well where the spare tire is kept, and found down there the most critical component of missing hardware—the large bolt for the seat clamp. But I ended up having to make a trip to Lowe's to pick up a missing nut for one of the seat braces.

When I got home, after having lunch, I was able to get the trike mostly assembled. However, I now found additional missing hardware—a bolt and nut used to fasten of the braces between the seat and rear rack. I was able to cobble it together well enough from some spare hardware I had, though, to permit me to do a short ride, so I settled for a single round trip to Marsh Park, completing the 10 miles in 65 minutes. Before the ride, though, two other minor adventures occurred: (1) I knocked my ratchet wrench off the wall of the garage, and it fell deep into an upended cement block, from which I could not retrieve it. This did not make assembly impossible, but with a crescent wrench it was significantly more challenging. (2) While assembling the trike, I broke a pin on the band of my watch, so I stuffed it into my pocket for the ride.

During the ride, one notable occurrence was my sighting of a gentleman I have seen before. This is an older (I'd say eightyish), patrician-looking (he reminds me of an authoritarian-looking sea captain) tall fellow with gray hair and a mustache, and today, like when I've seen him in the past, he was roller blading smoothly and blithely down the trail. I thought, "Better you than me, man!"

After the ride I went first to Sears to get my watch repaired, and then to Lowe's to pick up the correct hardware that I needed. So, in sum, I'm glad to have the trike back in good condition again, and look forward—I hope—to a longer ride tomorrow. (At least two round trips, and I hope three.)