Off-topic: Riding my pedicab home from BurningMan

The main thing that the sofa provides you when resting is freedom from
people waking you up to ask whether you need an ambulance.

I do believe that if I had a pedicab, I'd fit it with some sort of
drawbar or tow rope so that I could pull it up hills.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net

Joy Beeson wrote:

:The main thing that the sofa provides you when resting is freedom from
eople waking you up to ask whether you need an ambulance.

:I do believe that if I had a pedicab, I'd fit it with some sort of
:drawbar or tow rope so that I could pull it up hills.

I'd suggest "gears", so you can ride it up hills. Three wheels, you
can go as slow as necessary with no risk of falling over, so you can
use silly low gears.

--
sig 9

On Tuesday, March 25, 2014 8:56:42 PM UTC-7, Joy Beeson wrote:
The main thing that the sofa provides you when resting is freedom from
people waking you up to ask whether you need an ambulance.

I absolutely -love- bike touring... and have found in recent years that... the most significant aspect of a tour... changes over time. In did a few tours in my late 20s, a few in my 30's, and now have done a few in my 40s, and in my 40s there is a problem which did not exist in previous decades. And that is the lack of a comfortable place to sit when not riding.

I can't handle day after day of sitting only on picnic benches and wooden chairs in restaurants anymore! I can't - and couldn't at any age - be comfortable in a sleeping bag for long, trying to read or just hang out, with head propped up on elbow - and there is simply nowhere to sit when on tour that is more comfortable than a park bench or lawn. Well, once in a while you can find an upholstered chair in a coffee shop or library. But that is not where you are, you are in a state park or other campground. Or on the sidewalk outside of the restaurant where you just ate - and your body was screaming to get out of that wooden char after 40 minutes - and wants to relax and digest the meal - and at that point the wooden or aluminium bench at the municipal park is even worse.

What a wonderful thing it is when you're young and your back is happy all the time. At 48, the upholstered bench seat is total heaven. And when on it, the bicycle seat becomes an ottoman.

I'd suggest "gears", so you can ride it up hills.

I think it needs an 4'x8' solar panel for a roof... and an electric motor. Then I could sit on the bench seat all day long, with feet up and bungee cords holding the handlebars centered, and tour the country at 1 mph. Oh and a hammock suspended under the roof.

dkl

On Tue, 25 Mar 2014 23:56:42 -0400, Joy Beeson
wrote:


The main thing that the sofa provides you when resting is freedom from
people waking you up to ask whether you need an ambulance.

I do believe that if I had a pedicab, I'd fit it with some sort of
drawbar or tow rope so that I could pull it up hills.

People who ride pedicabs as a profession don't do it in hilly terrain
:-)

--
Cheers,

John B.

if the earth were flat ...

Try stretching exercises. I have a collapsible chaise from Campmor. Works but I'm too long so the upper body doesn't fit in. E.D.

Try the chair

http://goo.gl/g4bSIh

http://goo.gl/fjfX0o

On 3/26/2014 2:58 AM, Doug Landau wrote:

I absolutely -love- bike touring... and have found in recent years that... the most significant aspect of a tour... changes over time. In did a few tours in my late 20s, a few in my 30's, and now have done a few in my 40s, and in my 40s there is a problem which did not exist in previous decades. And that is the lack of a comfortable place to sit when not riding.

I can't handle day after day of sitting only on picnic benches and wooden chairs in restaurants anymore! I can't - and couldn't at any age - be comfortable in a sleeping bag for long, trying to read or just hang out, with head propped up on elbow - and there is simply nowhere to sit when on tour that is more comfortable than a park bench or lawn. Well, once in a while you can find an upholstered chair in a coffee shop or library. But that is not where you are, you are in a state park or other campground. Or on the sidewalk outside of the restaurant where you just ate - and your body was screaming to get out of that wooden char after 40 minutes - and wants to relax and digest the meal - and at that point the wooden or aluminium bench at the municipal park is even worse.

What a wonderful thing it is when you're young and your back is happy all the time. At 48, the upholstered bench seat is total heaven. And when on it, the bicycle seat becomes an ottoman.

I'd suggest "gears", so you can ride it up hills.

I think it needs an 4'x8' solar panel for a roof... and an electric motor. Then I could sit on the bench seat all day long, with feet up and bungee cords holding the handlebars centered, and tour the country at 1 mph. Oh and a hammock suspended under the roof.

dkl


Bicycle touring doesn't have to mean camping! Camping can be fun, but
most of our touring these days involves staying at B&Bs or hotels &
motels. And it's been decades since I did any significant cooking on
tour; we stop at restaurants. (Sometimes I carry one freeze-dried meal
just in case civilization ends while I'm on tour.)

It's actually a pretty neat system. You give them money, they give you
food & a place to stay.

Even better was a five-day tour a few years ago, where we stayed with
relatives and friends each evening, except for one B&B day. I called it
our "mooch around Ohio tour" even though we took each host out to dinner.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On Wednesday, March 26, 2014 11:56:20 AM UTC-4, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 3/26/2014 2:58 AM, Doug Landau wrote:



I absolutely -love- bike touring... and have found in recent years that.... the most significant aspect of a tour... changes over time. In did a few tours in my late 20s, a few in my 30's, and now have done a few in my 40s, and in my 40s there is a problem which did not exist in previous decades.. And that is the lack of a comfortable place to sit when not riding.



I can't handle day after day of sitting only on picnic benches and wooden chairs in restaurants anymore! I can't - and couldn't at any age - be comfortable in a sleeping bag for long, trying to read or just hang out, with head propped up on elbow - and there is simply nowhere to sit when on tour that is more comfortable than a park bench or lawn. Well, once in a while you can find an upholstered chair in a coffee shop or library. But that is not where you are, you are in a state park or other campground. Or on the sidewalk outside of the restaurant where you just ate - and your body was screaming to get out of that wooden char after 40 minutes - and wants to relax and digest the meal - and at that point the wooden or aluminium bench at the municipal park is even worse.



What a wonderful thing it is when you're young and your back is happy all the time. At 48, the upholstered bench seat is total heaven. And when on it, the bicycle seat becomes an ottoman.



I'd suggest "gears", so you can ride it up hills.



I think it needs an 4'x8' solar panel for a roof... and an electric motor. Then I could sit on the bench seat all day long, with feet up and bungee cords holding the handlebars centered, and tour the country at 1 mph. Oh and a hammock suspended under the roof.



dkl





Bicycle touring doesn't have to mean camping! Camping can be fun, but

most of our touring these days involves staying at B&Bs or hotels &

motels. And it's been decades since I did any significant cooking on

tour; we stop at restaurants. (Sometimes I carry one freeze-dried meal

just in case civilization ends while I'm on tour.)



It's actually a pretty neat system. You give them money, they give you

food & a place to stay.



Even better was a five-day tour a few years ago, where we stayed with

relatives and friends each evening, except for one B&B day. I called it

our "mooch around Ohio tour" even though we took each host out to dinner.



--

- Frank Krygowski

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)))))


there yago Frank, this summer sched a tour out to Mosquito Bend for a weenie roast....

http://goo.gl/x7Luww

Lou Holtman wrote:
Op maandag 24 maart 2014 07:16:38 UTC+1 schreef Doug Landau:
I know this belongs in .rides, but whatever. This is a vid I took while
riding my pedicab home from BurningMan a few yrs ago. Or rather, while
trying. I only made it 70 miles in 5 days.

One thing I found is that a rikshaw, when loaded up with a car battery
plus 200 lbs. of ice and water, will roll out fine on the level... and
will -not- go uphill.



With the battery, laptop, iPod dock, and plenty of room for favorite
clothes and blankets ... and a bench seat to hang out on with overhead
shade... touring in this thing completely blows away all other touring
experiences, in terms of comfort. Anytime you like you can plop right
down on a sofa in the shade!! And without even getting off the bike.



On the downside, tho, it's too wide to be safe on most desert roads,
which have about a 1" shoulder; you cannot push it if it has any load at
all; the pinned cranks are miserable; it is a single-speed and the
oversize BB shell will not accept a threaded BB; and heaven help you if
your foot slips off the pedal and goes under the rig.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO5Che-ETGc



It was a fun trip if unsuccessful. 40K people leaving BM cheered me on;
Hare-Krishnas prayed for me, and I had a great two days resting up and
swimming in pyramid lake after. I got a few gifts of food, water, and
jewelery, at turnouts, and think there would have been a whole lot more
had there been anywhere for cars to pull over on the stretches between.



Travelling tho did not go quite as smoothly as I expected, at least,
after the first day. There is a ten mile very gentle -almost
imperceptible - grade out of Empire that took me two days to climb. In
the process, on day 1 I ate all the meat and jerky I had brought. So
the next four days I ate warm water and cheerios for breakfast, warm
water and cheerios for lunch, warm water and cheerios for tea, and for
dinner, warm water and cheerios.



I got up at dawn and traveled until 10 or 11 am when it got hot. At
which point I curled up in the shade of the thing and slept until I
awoke once an hour all sweaty, roasting in the sun, and moved into the
shade, and repeated this until late it started cooling off... by which
time there was only an hour or two left in which there was enough light
to continue on the 1" wide shoulder. The red blinky on the back was useless.



Towards the end of the 5th day, 10 miles from the next town, Nixon, I
lost all interest in everything whatsoever. Except roast beef and
chicken sandwhiches, visions of which were floating in front of me. So
I knew what the problem was. I actually had energy left, more than enuf
to keep pedaling, just no interest. But I didn't want to give up and
hadn't accepted that I would have to. I told myself "No prob, you don't
have to give up, just hitchhike into town, buy all the meat they have,
hitch a ride back, and resume. No shame in that, and piece of cake."



At that time I was sitting on a milk crate in the mid-afternoon, in a
very large turnout, 20-30 feet from the roadway, too far for motorists
to see my thumb in time to slow down let alone stop. However, I was
comfortable on the milk crate, and so apathetic that I didn't care to
stand up, move 20 feet, and sit back down. It took me three half-hour
periods of vegetating to do so, and a lot of insisting that by this
logic, I will be a pile of bleached bones. I finally motivated myself
to move the 20 feet, and a few minutes later, was in a pickup truck and
in town 10 minutes after that.



I ate all the meat they had in the store, not counting canned chili and
spam, and sat down out front and thought. In the 10 miles between where
I was picked up and town had been a short steep hill - steeper than
anything I had had to negotiate so far - and absolutely impossible to
climb in the rig. As stated the rig cannot be pushed, with any load at
all, give the way you have to contort your body from the side, and from
the back, you can't steer. No way to get it up that hill.



So 20-30 minutes later when the same pickup rolled by again, I waved and
ran over, and asked if he'd take me back to the rig and then haul it
into town, and $30 and a half hour later I was back at the store with
the cab. The gent's name was Birch, and the conversation was excellent.



I bought the canned chili, tortillas, onions and chips, reloaded the
cooler with ice, water, fruity drinks, and a bottle of gin, then bought
a 3-day permit to exist on the pyramid lake indian reservation, and
pedaled the 4 miles to the lake. I swam, feasted, and sipped gin on ice.



The next day Birch came by. There is a little pier at the campsite, and
he was doing his rounds, in the employ of the fish and game dept.,
checking for invasive quagga mussels in the traps at the end of the
pier. Birch grew up there and I got to enjoy his conversation again, as
he told me about the local mountains, his parents, and so on.



That night a rider on a harley came cruising up to my campsite, hopped
off with a smile, introduced himself as Rick, and offered to help me
drink the gin. Another great conversation took place as Rick told me
about the locals, their superstitions, the mountains; and with reverence
about the Shoshone, the arch-rivals of the Pyramid lake (Northern)
Paiutes, who inhabit the valley to the East.



The next day I pedaled back to Nixon and sat and thought about what to
do next. Just then a beautiful young redhead came walking towards me
smiling and said "My gawd, I feel like I know you!!" Fannie was working
for the company that puts on BurningMan, and during the three weeks it
takes to tear down and clean up, she was driving back and forth to Reno
hauling stuff. So had passed me many times. She also said she had
mentioned me to her boss, who replied "I know - I'm monitoring that
guy's progress!". When I learned that she was driving home to S.F. that
night, I asked for a ride, and she agreed. So I bought another 3-day
pass for the rickshaw, locked it to a pole behind the store, and 5 hours
later was at her place in SF.



The next morning, I took a train to San Jose, a bus to my office, rode
my kestrel 5 miles home, got in my truck, and went back and picked up the pedicab.



Obviously, I had a great time, and was more than a little touched by the
warmth of many en route. The riding was fun and the scenery beautiful,
and as stated the experience of touring in the comfort of the rig
fascinated me and filled my head with plans. But it was the people I
met along the way that made this tour the wonderful warm glowing memory that it is now.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDTCWRksUG4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loJxXJFiphI



Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed it.





-dkl

I definitely enjoyed reading it, but what were you thinking/expecting
when you decided to start this expedition. Were you drunk?

Lou

Beats the hell out of most stuff that gets posted here. There's good OT and
there's also bad on topic.