Time moved on from those initial forays into long arduous challenges and the support through lack of time, motivation and other commitments drifted away. None of the friendships suffered as a consequence. In truth the support that I had been given was as much a measure of those friendships in the first place, and given that the idea had been mine at the outset, it is no surprise that I'm the one still musing over the possibilities that we had then explored.
In the interim my son George arrived and we busied ourselves with the hustle and bustle that is small children and everything that goes with them. I'm glad to say that he shows signs of having inherited his fathers boundless energy. It'll not be long son before we shall be up those hills together.
The challenge of completing something extended remained and in early 2009 I started again to look at the LEJOG cycle. This time I knew that I would be on my own and I think that part of me welcomed that.
In the spring I started to review the different ways to complete the 870 mile trip. Supported and fast, in a group and moderately quick, on my own unsupported, on a roadbike, on a trike or on a hybrid/converted mountain bike. These were just the bike options, for there have of course been umpteen LEJOGs completed by any number of other means of propulsion.
Fascinated by the trike option I followed the sale of a number of these on ebay and discovered that they attracted a certain breed of enthusiast, selling for no small amount of money, even secondhand. Eventually though I was lucky enough to secure the purchase of an Anthrotech, a German three wheeler. These machines are strong and upright by comparison to some of the more low slung alternatives and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to grips with the cornering at speed and the change in view.
Contrary to many people's view of these machines, with the aid of a flag and obvious lighting they are easily visible. Indeed this machine had the added advantage of being so much wider than an ordinary bicycle, that motorists thought twice about squeezing past on a narrow road or in traffic. There simply wasn't room. Their biggest drawback actually came from oncoming traffic, that on narrow country roads had nowhere to go to avoid you if you came upon someone on a sudden bend.
I persevered with the training on this bike however and completed the Norwich 100 on it, in June 2009. As a preview to long ditance cycling it was all I needed to know. Battling into a headwind along the north coast of Norfolk in sheets of rain, it took me 11 hours to complete the 100 miles and considerably less time to decide that this was not the bike for me!
Thursday 28 January 2010
Thursday 7 January 2010
Rowbikes and Streetrowers
Mmm, not much of a blogger if it's going to be 3 weeks between entries, hey! Well I'd often wondered where one found the time to write like this. So where were we. Looking at some kind of Lands End to John O'Groats (LEJOG) challenge to start off our rowing challenge.
The obvious solution it seemed to me, was to try and find out whether or not it would be possible to row LEJOG.! I could see that plenty of other strange ways had been found to complete the journey and in any case, if you want profile these days, you really have to do something extraordinary. LEJOG itself is probably considered a mere rite of passage these days by keen cyclists, but to row the 870 miles...now that really would be something.
Actually it didn't even start as a row, but as an idea to cycle some kind of a machine that would carry two people. The idea being that we could cycle 2 hours on 2 hours off, just as you would in a 2 man trans-Atlantic row. One would cycle, the other would sleep, or eat or wave at the traffic, whatever. (As I retrace my thought processes, this still seems like and interesting idea!)
I looked at all sorts of bikes. There are some incredible designs out there. The eight freight designed by Mike Burrows, was one that I contemplated. An example of this machine sits outside Borwell Cycles in Norwich and I enquired after its availability for such a challenge. In truth it was never big enough and the brakes would not have coped with the ardour of trying to stop two 14 stone blokes down all those Cornish hills. (No shame on the bike you understand, just the physics of the thing.) I shall have to come back and edit this page because I don't have some of the others to hand. I can see the opportunity for a book on freight bikes.
Anyway, as time moved on and we discussed these plans further, we came up with the idea of trying to find a machine that could actually be rowed, and thereby mirroring our Atlantic ambitions. Here again we found a number of contenders. Take a look at http://www.rowbike.com/ for one example and http://www.streetrower.com/ for another. The latter of these we took a close interest in, meeting up with it's designer and builder Simon Tarrant.
Having secured permission to buy one of these machines through the ride to work scheme, I travelled with Paul, Tom and Jack to meet up with Simon at Dorney Lake, the 2012 Olympic site. Simon was everything that one would expect of an inventor; bright, enormously enthusiastic for both his creation and the possibilities it presented and was as a consequence keen to help us in any way that he could.
The Streetrower that we saw that day was the first completed prototype. The machine that we completed our final test drive on, was the sleek finished article that you see on his website. The design of the powertrain is extremely clever, very efficient and capable in suitably trained rowing hands, of impressive speeds. In part this was the part that scared us off though. The steering was electrical and I couldn't get my head around the possibility of a steering failure doing 30 mph on the A30!
The obvious solution it seemed to me, was to try and find out whether or not it would be possible to row LEJOG.! I could see that plenty of other strange ways had been found to complete the journey and in any case, if you want profile these days, you really have to do something extraordinary. LEJOG itself is probably considered a mere rite of passage these days by keen cyclists, but to row the 870 miles...now that really would be something.
Actually it didn't even start as a row, but as an idea to cycle some kind of a machine that would carry two people. The idea being that we could cycle 2 hours on 2 hours off, just as you would in a 2 man trans-Atlantic row. One would cycle, the other would sleep, or eat or wave at the traffic, whatever. (As I retrace my thought processes, this still seems like and interesting idea!)
I looked at all sorts of bikes. There are some incredible designs out there. The eight freight designed by Mike Burrows, was one that I contemplated. An example of this machine sits outside Borwell Cycles in Norwich and I enquired after its availability for such a challenge. In truth it was never big enough and the brakes would not have coped with the ardour of trying to stop two 14 stone blokes down all those Cornish hills. (No shame on the bike you understand, just the physics of the thing.) I shall have to come back and edit this page because I don't have some of the others to hand. I can see the opportunity for a book on freight bikes.
Anyway, as time moved on and we discussed these plans further, we came up with the idea of trying to find a machine that could actually be rowed, and thereby mirroring our Atlantic ambitions. Here again we found a number of contenders. Take a look at http://www.rowbike.com/ for one example and http://www.streetrower.com/ for another. The latter of these we took a close interest in, meeting up with it's designer and builder Simon Tarrant.
Having secured permission to buy one of these machines through the ride to work scheme, I travelled with Paul, Tom and Jack to meet up with Simon at Dorney Lake, the 2012 Olympic site. Simon was everything that one would expect of an inventor; bright, enormously enthusiastic for both his creation and the possibilities it presented and was as a consequence keen to help us in any way that he could.
The Streetrower that we saw that day was the first completed prototype. The machine that we completed our final test drive on, was the sleek finished article that you see on his website. The design of the powertrain is extremely clever, very efficient and capable in suitably trained rowing hands, of impressive speeds. In part this was the part that scared us off though. The steering was electrical and I couldn't get my head around the possibility of a steering failure doing 30 mph on the A30!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
