About me: My name is Solène Rapenne, pronouns she/her. I like learning and
sharing knowledge. Hobbies: '(BSD OpenBSD Qubes OS Lisp cmdline gaming security QubesOS internet-stuff). I
love percent and lambda characters. OpenBSD developer solene@. No AI is involved in this blog.
Contact me: solene at dataswamp dot org or
@solene@bsd.network (mastodon).
You can sponsor my work financially if you want to help me writing this blog and contributing to Free Software as my daily job.
This is my “bike” (which is a trike), it’s a recumbent bike with 3
wheels. This kind of trike have 2 front weels and one rear wheels.
Some exists with 2 rear wheels and one front wheels, they are faster
but less manoeuvrable.
My trike is an
Azub
Tricon 20" with those features: foldable, rear
suspension, big rear rack. The whole trike weights around 26 kg
when fending are put.
The foldable part: I can transport my huge trike in my small car,
it will certainly fill all the space but it fits in and it’s
invaluable. Proof in the picture:
The rear suspension: when I bought it, I had the opportunity to try
a lot of models from various brands and various features. The rear
suspension is really a must your back comfort compared to no
suspension at all. In my small experiments, I didn’t find that full
suspension (so seat and front wheels) added much comfort.
When I ordered it, the trike is built from my specifications so it
takes time to deliver. I chose Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires with
should be mostly indestructible and puncture proof, but weights
900g each and doesn’t have a perfect rolling resistance. I also
chose drums brakes, they work very well and requires near to no
maintenance.
I added crank shorteners. I am a small person (1m67) and recumbent
bikes are usually more suited for tall people. Due to that, the
default usual 175mm cranks are too long for many people and this
may give knee pain because the momentum of the legs is very hige.
Getting shorter cranks is very hard, new holes can be created in
it but requires machines and skills. A simple hardware like in
the following picture can easily solve the issue by putting it
in places of the pedals, it will then offer a gradient of holes
along the cranks so you can put the pedals at the distance you
want.
When it comes to maintenance, cleaning the veryyyy long chain is a
bit of a pain.
Here is a picture of it with 2 Ortlieb bags, a dipole antenna and
the flag (for safety), while I was listening to short waves.