Michael's Scorpion Arrives

Just over a week ago I collected my shiny new tricycle: an HPVelotechnik Scorpion FX.  I'm sure you're just as excited about it as I was.  Here are a couple of holiday snaps and the story of my adventure.

For the full story in hyperspectral 3D read on...

Me, the trike, Mittens and your face on the road outside the shop, shortly before we left.

The trike at Turnham Green.  5 years ago this was my local park.  Nostalgia isn't what it used to be...

 The Quest for Comfort

Over the last year or 3 I've been wanting a recumbent bike.  It started with the fact that my back hurts from the hunching posture an upright encourages and also the saddle is not the most comfortable of seats.  I first saw a recumbent in a Jackie Chan film.  I forget which one it was.  Could be Who Am I.  It only featured for 1 scene.  I thought it looked rather awkward to ride.  I'm not sure how I came to discover the name of this strange contraption.  Probably the internet.

As I researched recumbents I found them more and more appealing.  The wide range of designs (one upright looks pretty much like any other to me with only minimal differences), the promise of comfort, the aerodynamic advantages etc.  I read many reviews and articles. I liked the idea but I didn't like the price. The cheapest bike from Halfords is fine for commuting and the odd day trip after all and I didn't even bother to cycle to work very often.  Admittedly that changed when I moved to Reading this May.  I've done around 500 commuting miles so far.  Even so, a 3.5 mile commute is feasible on most things with wheels.  I used to rollerblade that distance in London.

When the prospect of riding LeJog came up and Jemma said we were allowed to join in, I felt it and the preparatory training were the justification I needed to up the budget a smidge.  I certainly wasn't going to spend 2 weeks in pain.  I could have a new toy afterall.

I can't rememember all of the web pages I read, but the most appealing tended to be about recumbent trikes.  Gradually my search for a recumbent bike became a search for a recumbent trike.  I place a lot of the blame for that on the HPVelotechnik Scorpion.  In my search for the best trike for me I often ended up back looking at the scorpion. There are a few things that appealed to me about recumbent trikes over bikes: No falling over while learning to ride in a new and strange position, no falling over while learning to ride with clipless clippy pedals and shoes, I could stay clipped in at traffic lights and the irrational "I want one of those" factor.  The scorpion in particular appealled to me because I read a review that said it was the best trike out there and I liked the spec and extras available. Now I'm not about to claim it is the best trike out there, for one thing it would depend on what you will use it for, but the reasons were convincing to me and it ticked the most boxes for me. I especially liked the idea of the 81 gear option which gives a 10x factor between the lowest and highest gears. On my mountain bike it is 3.5 and I quite often ran out of gears on it.

The Plan

I received a call from Stuart at Bikefix in London telling me that my Scorpion had arrived.  The day before we were expecting it to leave the factory! I said I would come into the shop on the Saturday to get fitted etc then ride it home to Reading.  My plan was to ride along the national cycle network route 4, which goes from somewhere in central London to somewhere in Wales, handily via Reading and some green areas on the map.  It seemed like the perfect leisurely introduction to my new toy.

Google said a walking route was about 40 miles but NCN 4 takes a more scenic route than google did.  I guessed around 50 miles: longer than any ride I’ve been on before but I planned to take it slow and make a day of it.  Even at a leisurely 10mph I would have plenty of time if I turned up at the shop in the morning.  The weather forecast said Saturday would have a cold start with sunny spells: good cycling weather in my book.  I had a route and a plan, what could possibly go wrong?

What Went Wrong

Cut to Saturday.  Originally Siân was going to ride with me but as it  happened she had another engagement  (coincidentally in London, so we could at least keep each other company the train), I was all alone for the pedalling. Poor me *sniffle*.  No problem, I would take my mp3 player to entertain me.  If only my headphones weren't hiding.  Plan C was to whistle/hum.

We got up bright and early for our train.  I packed my pannier bags with everything I could possibly need, including a 2 kg lump of ice in my camelback.  It was supposed to be nice cold ribena.  I had filled and frozen it in advance then put it in the fridge to defrost.  As it turns out, the fridge is quite adept at keeping things frozen.  I just had to hope that it would become ribena before I got thirsty.

In the walk to the station my new SPD sandals had a good go at chewing up my feet.  My conclusion is: ok for cycling, not so good for walking.  Tightening the straps right up and adding a plaster to the worst afflicted area seemed to stop it getting any worse.

In Paddington I popped into boots to buy some lunch: a falaffel sandwich, some sort of tomatoy chickeny pasta pot with a free fork included and some crisps.  Very healthy.  As I was packing the food into my bags, I noticed a lack of maps.  I was sure I packed them.  Siân saw me do it.  I’m also pretty sure that I removed them in order to put my helmet into the bag and neglected to replace them. Doh!

Oh well, I thought, the bike shop probably sold maps and I’ll just work out a route from them. No problem.  Except they don't sell maps.

At the shop I met Stuart, who presented me with my shiney new tricycle. I gave it a test ride and magically the boom length was set fine already, though the seat and front derailleur needed adjusting.  Then we went about all the little jobs that were left, adjusting the fairing, putting the cleats onto my sandals, fitting the horn and other such things.  You may notice that this isn't something that went wrong but this is where the event occurred chronologically so here it is. Collecting the trike was quite an enjoyable experience. Naturally I had arrived a tad excited.

There was also the painful money bit.  For some reason the machine wanted us to phone up for an authorisation code (which was a mission in itself.  My bank wanted a password which I had no idea I had set.  In the end we muddled through).  When Stuart entered the code it said the transaction was void so we had to do the chip and pin thing again, which was promptly declined.  Another phonecall explaining that we have an authorisation code but the machine voided the transaction eventually allowed the transaction to go though and suddenly I was the proud owner of a shiny new tricycle.

As we were setting things up, I also explained my plan to ride NCN4 and how I cleverly printed out a map of the route then left it at home.  Stuart offered to print out a map for me, though I felt 22 pages A3 was a bit much to ask.  Instead we settled on printing out a map to waterstones where I could buy an OS map.

Stuart googled a review of NCN4 (something I didn’t think to do myself) which said it was a bit rough at times and not really suitable for long journeys.  He suggested I take the roads instead.  Apparently some of the main roads are ok.  All I had to do was chose the right ones.  There went my plan.

I left Bikefix with my new toy, a new plan, a google map, a gapping hole in my bank account and a big grin.

A quick trip to Waterstones for maps (I wanted 1 but there wasn’t one which covered London to Reading in enough detail so I had to get 2) and then I headed off to Regents park to plan a route and eat my lunch.  This is where I discovered my pasta pot with free fork was entirely fork free.

So now we know what could go wrong.  Thankfully it all went swimmingly after that.

The Victory Ride

The weather, as promised, was sunny and remained so for most of the trip.  There was a brief spell of spitting but it was hardly noticeable except for the specks on the fairing.

I found choosing a route a bit daunting.  There were so many possibilities and I only knew a couple of the roads out of London, the ones leading to the M3 and M4.  In the end I decided to head for Winsor along the A315 and A308. The route was reasonably direct, didn't look that useful for cars going to the motorways and I knew Winsor was on the way home. Winsor was at the edge of the map so I would worry about the onward journey when I got there.  I'd deserve a break by then anyway.

The most surprising thing about the journey was how pleasant the ride in London was. The roads weren't too busy and the taxi drivers didn't try to kill me. When I did encounter queuing traffic people let me change to the lanes I needed and even let me join the road when the cycle path ended near the front of the queue.  I was surprised; it is very different from my driving experience in London.  In fact, this is my experience for the entire journey home.  I dare say that if I'd followed more major roads things would have been more exciting but considering my route included Oxford St I think the excitement would mainly come from faster roads rather than busier ones.

The route was quite an enjoyable ride all round.  There was a variety of views and it was reasonably easy to follow.  It was quite an easy ride, in the sense that it wasn't very hilly and the surfaces were all good.

10 miles into the journey, my legs were telling me that it wasn't as easy as I had expected.  Siân and I have been on a few 20-30 mile rides (she on her hybrid and me on my mountain bike) which I found pretty easy so to be feeling tired after 10 miles was a bit of a surprise.  I knew that recumbents worked the muscles differently and had planned a slow pace to allow for that but I had obviously underestimated how different it would be.  For those who were interested, I was feeling it mainly in my hip flexors but also my calves and the thighs near to the knee, front and back.  I was mildly concerned that I might not make it home but I pressed on regardless.  Worst comes to worst, Siân could come and rescue me with a car when she got home.  What a perfect end to the day that would be!

When I got to Winsor, I headed towards the castle to look for somewhere to eat and look at the map.  I saw a sign for Bracknell, which I knew was nearer to home and filed it away for the map reading, then I saw a sign for Twyford which said 11 miles.  11 miles?!? Twford is only 3 miles or so from home. I was still on the first map.  Surely I was only half way home!

I took the turning and stopped in a car park to look at the map.  This is where I learned that the maps overlapped more than I expected (about 5 miles or so) and that Reading spanned nearly a third of the width of the map.  This meant that what I thought was so far a 20 mile ride was actually more like 30 miles.  Indeed Cardiotrainer (an app on my phone for tracking exercise.  I may review it at a later date) confirmed that I had travelled around 30 miles.  I was enjoying the ride but I was glad to find myself 10 miles closer to home than I thought.

The route home from here was nice and easy: follow the B something or other to Twyford then head through Sonning.  I'd ridden through Twyford a few times while taking the scenic route home so I knew thew way from the station.

I stopped to eat the pasta in a nearby park.  I tore up my sandwich packet to make my own spoon which worked better than I expected then continued on my way.

As I pressed on, I saw the sun getting lower and lower.  I hoped I wouldn't end up riding in the dark.  I had no lights and I'd seen earlier that the combination of dark pannier bags, black seat, black wheel and black pannier rack made me stealthier than I had hoped.  I'd chosen an orange frame but hadn't appreciated that it wouldn't be visible from the back.

The sky was orange when I got home and by the time I'd taken the trike inside it was dark outside.  Just in the nick of time! I had my trike and I'd ridden it the 43 miles home.  It took just over 4 hours and I averaged 10.5 mph: pretty close to my initial guess.  After a sketchy start I'd acheived my goal and I was happy.  The bonus was that I wasn't nearly as tired as I expected to be based on my feelings after the first 10 miles.

When Siân got home we planned to go out riding the next day. It didn't happen in the end due to laundry issues but the important thing is that I felt ready and able. That certainly helped with my confidence of being able to ride an end to end next summer.  I have nearly a year to double my daily range.  Easy peasy!  If only I could double my speed while I'm at it...