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Wednesday 25 June 2014

A nice bike ride

I did the series "Burnt-up bike ride", on bike.3. I found a few problems.

1) I couldn't use the top gear, because the back rack fouled the chain. I've fixed that.
2) The speedometer didn't work, I'll explain why below, I've fixed that.
3) The layout of the handlebars wasn't quite right, so I've reorganised things.
4) Because there's no Hall sensors, the bike only knows where the wheel is when it's moving. That means that I can't give it power from a standing start, I have to be moving a bit before I can apply throttle. Because in geocaching I'm stopping and starting a lot, that's a real problem

The biggest problem was that I fell off. It wasn't the bike's fault, nor was it my fault, really. I was biking (slowly) along a very overgrown track, and the front wheel dropped into a big, big hole. The bike, of course, stopped abruptly, but I didn't. I continued on, over the handlebars and wound up with the bike on top of me. It all happened so fast, I'm not really sure how come I ended up under the bike, having started on top.

The saddlebag was also thrown (the batteries are in there, so that could nave been a big problem). But I put the batteries in a hard plastic case so a bump shouldn't damage them, and when the saddlebag parted company with the bike, the power plug came neatly undone, so all I had to do was put the bag back on, and reconnect the power cable. Also,, the speedo cable broke.

The good news is that I wasn't hurt. I got up, picked up the bike, and continued along that track, but now walking the bike. I'd feel such a fool if the same thing happened again!

So, overall, the bike worked well enough. But I'm missing the ability to use the throttle on start-up.

After that series, I rode around the area picking up more caches, then in to Whittlesey to clean up the town.

47 caches done, one DNF.

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