To the left here is the usually proud and stately Eagle in upside down mode. I repaired the tire that  shortened my ride yesterday (and today). The big job that it was became   even bigger when I discovered it had been mounted wrong. Instead  of 10 extra inches of rubber, there was barely one extra inch. Ugh......

This would have been no problem had it been the 7/8" diameter that Jim Spillane says he built it with as I could have spliced in the extra from some of the stock I have laying around here, Unfortunately,  however, it was one inch diameter stuff . So I worked with that knowing it will not hold up for my cross x ride and that I will soon have to change it. When I change it again. I will  back to 7/8" so I will have less rolling resistance.

I hope Ed Lee back in Maryland is reading this. He offered to sponsor my ride with the rubber I will need. So Ed, some time in April, I'm gonna need  to take you up on your generous offer....

I spent a couple of hours today getting the rubber snug and then its inner wire silver soldered on  to the rim. And I am now back  in business. With so many many things that can go wrong, I made sure Gods was there working with me today. I mean the only thing between me and the asphalt is a tiny 3/8 section of melted silver holding two steel wires together.......

The meditation I did yesterday was for a good outcome. Today it was one of thanks. Whereupon I proceeded to take care of some business with the Ines Brunn trick bike show we are doing. We moved the venue from the Unitarian church a block away to the beautiful Mitchell Park Community Center.  It became available for the April 4 date so we jumped on it!! 

After Mitchell Park I went the long way to Los Altos and Whole Foods where I had dinner. I came home by making use of an unlit bike path that I was able to enjoy because I mounted the Light In Motion unit  that Kelvin Clark had outfitted my regular HiWheel with. An awesome light, it sure felt  good to be able to ride at night again. And with confidence!!

I am also getting a lot more confident coming off the back of the bike. I can't wait to get that in a picture so I can share it with all of you.

THX for sharing this journey with me - THX 4 all of U!!  

Tire Death Kabashes Ride to Loomis Presentation

HiWheel bikes don't get flat tires, the wire holding the rubber on to the rim just fails and it walks off the rim like what you see here. Lucky for me, I decided to write the newsletter you saw in here earlier today instead of riding wet roads and moody skies to Apple Computer to see  the slide show  Don Loomis's did of his 2004 Mayors' Ride run. Something was telling me not to risk it.......

Don, a software engineer rode a recumbent, towed a trailer and took copious notes and lots  of photos as well as video. Great stuff!! HERE is the blog he set up to document that ride as well as other journeys of his.

To the right just below is Don on the bike he rode. 

As for my wheel, I came home after about five miles of which the last two I had to be very careful not to let the tire fall off the rim which would have meant walking. I called Jim Spillane to see if there was anything I had to be mindful of when I put in new wire and silver soldered it all back together. He suggested I file away any burs that might exist on the two set screws on my Wiedeman Tool. And guess what? They did need to be smoothed out so they wouldn't gouge the wire causing  it to break, a problem he knew I had been having.

Getting inside the tire was next. As soon as I cut the wire at the gap, one side instantly receded back into the rubber. I managed to get vice grips on the other side and got it extricated.  To get the rest of the wire, I had to cut the tire.  And as a result, when I rebuild it tomorrow, I will have a two piece tire (and yet there again, I've run as many as 4 pieces for a tire).

I did not expect an inner wire with two welded joints, though. That's right, one of the welds failed, while another stayed intact (I took the picture you see to the left to prove it)*. And yet there again, both of the welds (really silver solder connections) were beautiful but at an inch and 1/4 apiece, they were both too long. Or as Jim Spillane says you don't want more than 3/8 of an inch for this because it places the wire under a bigger area of impact. Which is why the wire broke right where the weld ended as you can see to the right here.

All of which means, I won't be riding early tomorrow...

          THX 4 all of U!!  

* I talked to Jimmy Jr on Friday AM (the next day) and he sez that while the practice of splicing  two wires together is borderline acceptable, the 1-1/4 welds were definitely not his. The whole inner wire assembly was  so old it was almost frozen solid, so hmmm .......

The 2009 Mayors' Ride/Busycle Author Tour Firestorm

In 65 days time, I leave for my third bike ride across America. If you want to help send me off on May 3 with a casual ride from Palo Alto City Hall to San Francisco City Hall, sign up HERE. There is a ton of excitement at hand. Here is an overview:

A) My Book is Done
B) "New" bike - Eagle Training BLOG
C) First documented coast to coast ride on Eagle HiWheel
D) 2009 Mayors' Ride on Facebook
E) 2009 Ride Schedule
F) Ines Brunn in Palo Alto, CA 4/4

a) Five years in the making, I finished the last rewrite of “How America can Bike and Grow Rich, The National Bicycle Greenway Manifesto” on Feb 9. During the month of March it will be in edit mode before we then run it out as a PDF that will be password protected and sold for a nominal price to build fire for the vision it contains

B) Upon completion of the above book that I will be touring with this summer, I have been away from it for a few weeks now with the next major hurdle over which I have to jump - the Eagle HiWheel bicycle that you see pictured below.

While mine is an almost exact reproduction made in 1991 of the bike (while mine is an Eagle, the photo is of a Star) you see being ridden down the steps of the US Capitol here in 1891, it is still tricky to ride. The benefits as you will see in this blog that I am running for this ride, however, are many, such as the ability to climb hills instead of walking them. As well, it is an amazing machine built like a Swiss watch by the father and son team of Jim and Jim St Spillane. Note: If you go to the first entry in this blog, you can see a video of me learning how to mount this amazing bike!

C) The coast to coast crossing I will be doing on it will be the first documented ride for a bike like this across the United States. While there may have been someone who rode a reverse HiWheel from the East Coast to the West back in the late 1800s, no one seems to know who it was or have any details. While there is no argument about the fact that it has never been done from West Coast to East....

D) I also got on Facebook a few weeks ago. And a lot of the build up I have been doing for this ride is documented there. And indeed it is a worthy place for such activity since a lot of the bike people and their activism shows up there. I had wondered where a lot of the names I had grown accustomed to seeing on web based bicycle forums had disappeared to. They're all on Facebook. Become one of my friends. Go to Facebook, search for me by my email address: hiwheeler@gmail.com

E) The 2009 Mayors' Ride schedule that I will be riding is at http://www.bikeroute.com/NationalMayorsRide2009

F) And last and yet probably one of the most important parts of this post is Ines Brunn's appearance here in America in Palo Alto on April 4 as per this page. I am posting this last because you will be seeing a lot about her upcoming show in the month ahead. And I am excited!! This woman can do magic on a bike beyond anything you can imagine. Until she comes to help me make the Summer of 2009 real, spend spend some time at her WEB!

THX 4 all of U!!

Head for the Hills!!

What I am trying to communicate with this photo is what the Palo Alto hills look like at 6:45 AM. To the left you can see the sunrise as it breaks through the trees while straight ahead is the coast range upon which a bank of fog rests. This picture is notable for another important reason. To the right and just behind all this is the XEROX  PARC* facility where a lot of the computer miracles we take for granted today were born. It was here that the mouse was invented as well as the disk drive among other breakththroughs that have pawed the way for the new electronic world that we know today.

As for my ride, after I did this hill, it separates Foothill Expwy from Arastradero Road, I then pedaled over Deer Creek road.  A mere 6/10 of  a mile probably 3/4 of it was set at a 6 per cent grade. A small amount of work on the Eagle, it was nowhere near as hard as it had been on my regular HiWheel. And this bodes well because I will have to toughen up for   35 non stop miles of this kind of climbing on my way over the Sierras on Immigrant Pass.

I may have  only logged 12 miles today but most of it was hill work and I had it done in a little over an hour.  In terms of progress my arms are getting stronger while I am also learning the balance point that requires less use of them.

I came home to a stop I need also to practice. Instead of a pedal dismount where I use the pedals to come off the side of the bike, I lifted the bars and came off the back! I can only think this must look spectacular as the big front wheel raises high into the air.

WoW - Hopefully I can get some late afternoon hours in if I make enough progress on the Ines Brunn trick bike show fund raiser we are doing for this ride. I will let you know!!

THX 4 all of U!!  

* Palo Alto Research Center

*  

Bicycle Giants Jeff Kistler & Matt Christy Help me Stop!!

At right  is a picture of a HiWheel bicycle going down the steps of the US Capitol. The rider whose name was long ago lost to history, did this as part of  a stunt to prove how much safer this design was to the HiWheel configuration, big wheel in front, small in back,  that dominated the self propelled world back at the turn of the last century. 

As I've said before in here, this style vanished from the marketplace the same year  it was introduced as a safer HiWheel Really a high performance Penny Farthing, if improvements to the chain hadn't come along as well as the pneumatic tire. this is the bike we'd all be riding today.

As for today's ride, even though at 2:15  AM  I told my Facebook friends  I was still up  working my TransAm ride because rain   seemed likely today and thus no riding, I   rode anyway. At 7AM the skies were clear enough for me to try to out my rebuilt brake!

You see, I was at Matt Christy's home shop until 9PM and didn't get home  until 10 as he lives in San Mateo, twenty  miles away. To get there. I took one of my rare rides in a car. And yet there again, I've been in Jeff Kistler's truck two times in three weeks now. Ugh... It was Jeff who took me to Sacramento to get the bike and  it was  Jeff again who took me to get   the brake fixed.  I just found out today that Dave Hershberger here locally had been sick all weekend long  and that was why I had not heard back from him. Jeff, pictured below, put me on to Matt to get the weld I needed.

And what an honor and a privilege it was to have access to Matt's world. A few years older than   myself, he and his awesome wife, Sue (pictured above),  both graduated from my alma mater, Cal State Hayward. Matt had done a lot with  his life since college. He owned businesses and property in many different places and was semi retiring into the world of older steel bikes, the  ones you can still work on.

As we (mostly Matt) measured,  cut and filed, Matt and I also talked about old bicycle times   and the sad drug induced state of present day bicycle racing affairs. And it didn't take me long to realize that I was in the presence of  two two wheel giants.  While everyone accepts Jeff as one of the top bike mechanics in the area (and so by extension, one of the best in the nation if not the world) and it was obvious that Matt knew he was in hallowed company, Matt himself was a top local racer who had  won some pretty challenging races. He had also competed all over the world with and even won against  some of the best. And he did so at at a time  when bike racers lived on table scraps and not corporate sponsorships or surreptitious blood manipulations.

Not only did Matt engineer a little sleeve to join the two broken brake pieces but after we got it silver soldered back together, he then machined a bushing and new bolt and washer for where the lever affixes to the handlebar. One more reason why I had to get it out on 4 and 1/2 hours sleep. The whole assembly does not rattle any more and it operates like a Swiss watch like the rest of the bike.

We also talked about the pedal/foot connection. Matt pointed out that Adidas shoes tend to run narrower and that I should look into that. I told him that he was right as that is the kind of shoe I was now wearing. Still not affixed to the bike as tightly as I'd like, we discussed this further. Jeff pointed out that I can not just use modern pedals because their axle shafts are not long enough. Before I ask Jim Spillane if he can make me some new ones, I am going to see if I can make these Power Grips work  that I have from recumbent guru, Kelvin Clark, of Angle Tech Cycles,. I will be sure to keep you posted!

Matt also marveled at how short my crank arms are. By his measurement, he came up with 150 mm! And indeed this  is whoaaa when you consider that average crank length is in the 170's. While he thought more length would help me on the hills, I told him it would cause me to spin far too much on the flats.  

I rode maybe 15 miles today as my late start gave me  a lot of traffic that kept requiring me to stop. However having a brake now meant  I could sprint for the tail end of green lights  and stop if I came up short. Wow I had been missing that.

I also tried some no hands riding. I need to master that so I can stay on the bike while I do things that require both hands. For example. it warmed up enough that I took my jacket off today and tied it around my waist. And yet in order to do so, I had to stop. Bummer......

I also  hit a pretty gnarly pot hole that was covered by rain water. And I got to see how the bike handled that. No problem. It did surprise me though. 

Before I go off curbs however, I am going to see what my HiWheel elders are saying......

So much to learn - so little time to learn it.....

Boston here we come.....

See the 2009 Mayors' Ride schedule

Rainbow Riding

Unprepared for the surprise of dry looking skies when I awakened, I ended up hitting the road at 7am instead of 6. I also got out into a  much warmer day than what I've become accustomed to.

I also got rolling into a rainbow that was in the sky ahead of me for  the first half of my 12 mile loop. I even managed to get a picture of  it at the bike tunnel that crosses under the rail tracks along Alma  St at Homer.

I only rode 12 miles because I still do not have a brake, the roads were wet, it started to drizzle and there were cars, a lot of them, to deal with. Nor had I prepared to be out to begin with as I went to sleep in rain with more predicted.

I also biked with different shoes on. While my feet didn't seem to squish around as much on the pedals, I still do not feel as connected  to the bike as I'd like. According to my Wheelmen networks, there is a guy in Czechoslovakia who makes pedals that might help me here. And as I was preparing this I went to his web site.

Seems Martin Cvrcek makes a steel pedal, mine are a comfy hard rubber, that is wider. Even if I don't go that route, I now know why I am having this problem. As Martin C states, men of 120 years ago had  narrower feet. Kowabunga!!

In sum, I got some miles in. I prepared and sent this from my iPhone. And the drill for my soon ahead ride continues!!

I feel blessed that you have taken the time to look at this.

      THX 4 all of U!!  

     

Popping wheelies in the rain

Five in the wet

Woke up to a steady drizzle that stopped and started. I got out into it when it seemed to have quit. It fooled me.

Five flat neighborhood miles later, however, were enough for me. I mean I was already pushing my luck by being out there without a brake so I packed it in having learned a couple of things.

While the rain does make for clean tires, it also makes for treacherous footing both getting on and off of the bike. All of which is made doubly more tricky when you cannot use the brake to do a pedal dismount. Around which my stopping  device was also not there for me to use to bring the front end back down when it hit a large  bump.

And it was this that happened tto me when I made a left turn where two roads dipped where they intersected. The front end came up, I leaned forward and all was well. Experiencing this, I got a little cocky thinking that if the front end came up I could just shift my weight forward and I would be fine. I lifted the bars at ten miles an hour. The front end came up fast. Too fast for me to compensate. in the same instant, I was off the bike with   the front end high in the air. I had popped the ulimate wheelie. And neither I nor the bike had been compromised!

Hmmm, it was this that reminded me of the emergency dismount I have on video in the HiWheel section of BikeRoute.com. In that one I showed how to stop on a dime on a regular HiWheel. The stop I did today felt a lot more spectacular. Wow!!

It's still raining as I type this up on my iPhone. A simple email message, this goes right to 2009hibustour.blogspot.com. This is practice for those times when I will not have a net connection or access to my lap top...

Thx for all of u!!

Sent from Martin Krieg's iPhone 

BikeRoute.com

Early AM in Palo Alto - The Bicycle Achievers of America

I was on the road this morning at 6:30 AM. The 46 degrees was readily rideable because that is what I wake up to in this unheated garage, a part of the deprivation training I talk about in my on line book "How to Bike America". And the tremendous amount of energy I expend pedaling this bike keeps me warm all the way to the fingertips. This is important as I wear gloves that keep the fingers exposed so that I can work the touch screen on my iPhone for the voice recorder, time of day and the camera (when it gets lighter out).

I rode the flat streets, since I still don't have a brake, to Redwood City and back. Along the way, Dan Sellgson, of EveryTrail.com passed me on his way to a group ride in Woodside. He couldn't talk as he was running late, but as I watched him speed off, I thought about all the other winners there are here that use the bike to keep fit - on lots of levels. I thought about the man who is now running Apple. Tim Cook is a serious road cyclist who also uses the early part of the day to pedal his miles. Palo Alto is filled with other business leaders who ply its early AM roads on two wheels.

Asher Waldfoegel founded and helps to steer the operations of four different leading edge companies. He also has a serious two wheel habit. Our former Mayor, Yoriko Kishimoto, trains on a bike and her husband, Lee Collins, one of the top engineers at Apple, has commuted to there on a daily basis on a bike for years. A fair number of Google's top engineers also use their rides to work to stay keen. One of them, Steve Kanefsky, is highly esteemed for a lot of the breakthroughs he has been able to bring to Google for the mobile phone marketplace.

Coming back to my ride, I pedaled the part of a Alma I usually avoid because the surface is so bumpy. I wanted to see what it felt like on the Eagle. And guess what, I hardly felt it!! By sitting back on the seat and taking all my pressure off the bars, the front wheel lightly tapped along as the big 50" wheel hardly felt a thing. WOW!! I can't wait for more compromised macadam.

Early Saturdays are particularly quiet and the end of my ride was rewarded with even more success. A neighbor who is moving was having a garage sale. Because I helped her move a few things and she has to drastically downsize, she sold me a tool box half full of tools for 5 dollars!! I am still feeing the joy of what really was her gift to me as maybe it was her way of also honoring the ride I had just completed, Yahooo!!!!!

As I write this, I wonder what early tomorrow will bring as I hear the rain steadily pouring outside..

THX for taking in interest in this effort - THX 4 all of U!!

NO BRAKES on an Eagle!!

Got on the road a wee bit later today, at 6:30 AM, as I rode with my best friend, and NBG Board Member, Faye Saunders to her work at Apple Computer, a distance of almost 12 miles away. I've ridden with her to her job before so she was able to judge the performance difference between the two HiWheel bikes I ride. And the Eagle is a LOT faster. She observed that she no longer could dawdle along, some times ride the brakes or at other times coast. She admitted that she had to work a little bit. WoW!!

I keep forgetting to mention that when I awaken, I don't splash cold water on my face or eat anything. I do this because there will be times when water is hard to come by and I cannot let myself expect such luxury before I head off. As for food, I don't eat as a way to give myself a reward for getting as many miles in my legs as I can before the traffic and sun slow me down this soon upcoming summer.

Today I made my first cell phone call off the Eagle when Faye and I got separated from each other for a short while . I am also getting more and more comfortable drinking from the water bottle I carry at my side in my butt pak. And the photo you see that opens this post is of me coasting down a small hill with my legs crossed. In front of the tire and over the steer tube. Faye took it with the professional grade camera she is learning to use.

All I could see was progress. Until I got to Apple. As I pulled up and used the brake to help me with a pedal dismount, the top of the brake lever snapped apart. The top one inch of it shot across the cement and into the ground cover. 15 minutes later, I found it. I also realized that I had to ride home with NO BRAKES!

Because my other HiWheels do not have brakes, I knew I could stop and/or slow down easy enough by back pedaling. However on the Eagle, there is no step to jump on with a smaller real wheel I could then apply foot pressure to if an emergency stop was warranted. I really did have NO BRAKES - whoaaaaa......

But I made it home without any trouble.

THX for tuning in!!

btw: Dave Hershberger of Unwheeldy fame, sez he will weld the broken lever back together for me. Between him and Woodenbikes, Tom Kabat, the two of them have kept me on the the HiWheel road for almost six years now here in Palo Alto

More Early AM Eagle HiWheel Firsts!

What an amazing joy it is to be actually on the bicycle road at 6AM. Everything is all so quiet and still. The few people that are out are too focused on getting to work or if they are outside, getting their work out in. Or in other words, no one bothers me, or for that matter seems too care if I am out there or tries to get my attention!

It also changes some of the way I pump the pedals. When I hit the street today , for example, I couldn’t just use some of the feeder roads that head for the hills, even though they were lightly traveled at this hour. Not wanting to bother with mounting lights, I made the decision to use quieter neighborhood streets as a warm up until there was sun.

This morning’s 20 mile loop was faster and I could feel my upper body getting more used to the work at hand. I also took my first iPhone picture. I have included it with this message. I also went up a 10% grade that slowed me to a crawl. I so wanted to use the strong muscles in my back to pull through it but I couldn’t. On the Eagle, it is all legs. Wow.

What I see from this is that since I can can climb out of the saddle on this machine, I have really got to start practicing my technique. Moving from all my many years and miles on a recumbent and then eight years on a regular HiWheel, I have got to go back in time to when I used to be a pretty strong climber. On an upright. It was then that I used to jockey the seat back and forth as I always was up the mountains of the East Bay faster than anyone I rode with.

I have also got to learn no hands and then how to lift my front wheel over curbs and other objects in the road instead of powering over them. And like an upright, I have also got to get used to the seat enough so that my genitals are not bothered.

I am also going to have to talk to my HiWheel brethren about the foot pedal connection. Unlike an upright or even a recumbent, this bike does not have clipless pedals or for that mater toe clips or any way of anchoring oneself to the pedals. I am realizing that part of the reason I did not want to come all the way out of the saddle on my 10 percenter was because my feet were sliding all over the soft rubber pedals. Hmmm…

I am learning a lot and will have a lot more to show and tell when I can get this EveryTrail program going again…..

THX 4 all of U!!

First 6am training ride

As the blacbirds chirp here at the Los Altos Whole Foods. I am resting after 20 early AM miles. Makes my upcoming ride seem so imminent, so real. I climbed into my sleeping bag (in the garage) with my bike shorts on along with the rest of my riding wear. 5:30 am awake. See the ride. Do some light planning. And I was off! By the time i got going it was 42 degrees tho I work so hard on this bike I hardly felt it.



Couldnt see the pedal very well to start so it took me a while to get going. It felt nice to be one of the fee people on the road. It was a joy to see a sunrise instead of a computer screen. Or the bikes hanging in my garage.

I had more that I typed but WordPress seems to have lost it. This is my first post here since Blogger does not make an iPhone app. Hmmmm….

THX for your interest - THX 4 all of U!!

Hopefully now if everything goes according to plan, I can really start driving my soon upcoming ride across America. This is so because I finished the last rewrite of the last chapter of “How America Can Bike and Grow Rich, The National Bicycle Greenway Manifesto”. Soon, instead of writing, my very early morning hours will be occupied with ride training on this amazing Eagle HiWheel bike I have the privilege of riding. Of which I am coming to learn that unlike the regular HiWheel where the front wheel is the big wheel, there were very few of these made.

This is so because in 1891 when some number between 100 and 200 of the of them were produced, they went out of business with all the other HiWheel bikes the next year. This was due to the pneumatic tire and improvements in the chain that gave two equal sized wheels a performance advantage they had not before enjoyed. Word has it that if you can get one of those bikes, they are usually worth well over $10,000 dollars! The **exact** reproduction that father and son Jim and Jim Jr Spillane made a hundred years later looks and performs like the crowned jewel that it truly is.

Because of all the storms we have had out here in CA of late, I have not been able to really get it out and roll the miles. I am getting better at mounting and can usually get on after a couple of failed attempts. Today I achieved a couple of firsts on the bike. I did a 6 mile ride between storms and carried about 10 pounds of groceries on my back. Why this is noteworthy is because this bike is extremely sensitive. The more weight you carry, the more you have to make up for it to keep the front wheel on the ground by leaning forward or changing where you sit on the seat. The extra weight also requires small adjustments in the way the bike is mounted.

The other first was stopping at a fence and staying on the bike. I did this at a busy intersection close to my home where I rarely get the light and am often times there when a train is on its way through. Even just stopping an Eagle this way is tricky. And then getting going again equally as tedious.....

Keeping my hands from going to sleep is another small gotcha I am learning how to move through. While two days before non stop rain arrived, I did my first hill on the Eagle. Wow, what a surprise. Almost too easy. Or at the very least, compared to my standard Ordinary. It climbs hills like a regular bike!! Still getting used to how far I can lean **over ** the bars (which is probably unlimited) and look forward to being proficient enough with my bike handling skills to release the seat clip so that I can use it for leverage.

And then there is legs over the steer tube. What an amazing sensation!! In such a way, when gravity is forcing the pedals to spin out of control, faster than what your legs can manage, you just cross them over the steering shaft in front of the wheel. And oh my God, the Spillanes did such an incredible job on this machine, it feels like your are floating above the road below.

A high performance HiWheel, I look forward to learning no hands, how to lift the front wheel over curbs and how to float the front wheel as I ride the giant unicycle that it almost really is!!

THX 4 letting me share this excitement with you!!

THX 4 all of U!!

First 25 on an Eagle & Bike Blvd Podcast Tour!

Rode to Redwood City today. WoW - whatta machine!! I'd say it's 30% faster than the traditional HWheel as I made great time even though I took lots of breaks to rest my tired arms as well as to practice mounting. Despite the fact that it was in the low 50's, I was working so hard I did not notice the temperature. And all I had on was a pair of bike shorts and a light jacket.

In all, I logged a little under 25 miles. Along the way, my left hand kept falling asleep. I think that I can remedy this by adding cloth tape to the bars. Also did my first hill. An underpass! It got the best of me on my first pass. However, on the way back I nailed it. It was the ease that surprised me.

I also carried liquid in my butpak for the first time (for the last few days, all I had in my waist pak was keys, credit cars and a crescent wrench). I bought a one quart bottle of water at the Whole Foods in Redwood City along with a few snacks. Not only did the extra three or four pounds change where I sat on the seat, it also threw me off when I mounted. I failed 5 times before I got it right

Like riding a giant unicycle, there are times when my front wheel is barely making contact with the ground. So much to learn. So excitng!!

btw: Across Palo Alto,  as what you will see me doing on a lot of my future rides, I rode the Bryant St Bike Boulevard. Here is a Podcast tour I did of it in 2007  when a kidney I ruptured while playing football kept me from doing more active rides.....

An Eagle Joins the Busycle

My tour across the nation on a HiWheel will be done on a 50" Spillane Eagle. I have chosen this bike and the learning curve it represents because I don't want to walk up and down hills. Having already ridden across US twice, I know there are a ton of them out there. In fact, flat riding turf is far from the norm on a bike ride across America.

There are only some number between 100 and 200 of these bikes still in existence from the three year Eagle Manufacturing Co run that ended in 1891. The bike I will be riding is an exact replica made in 1991 by the legendary father and son team of Jim and Jim Jr. Spillane.

With a ton on my plate, besides learning how to consistently mount and then ride the Eagle, I must become good enough to run the camera and gps device that EveryTrail.com will be helping me track my ride with....