Rain, rain, rain ....

It has been raining a lot lately, which means I did not ride the XP much. I don't mind getting wet myself, but exposing the chain and drivetrain to water and mud, no thanks, not me. This means that I have been riding my velomobile only lately and the XP was parked inside the garage. A couple of weeks ago I ordered a front pannier rack from CORDO ,but they did not send me the adapter set for forks without eyelets. These arrived this week so I installed the front rack, as you can see in the picture. Still have to find a solution for the upper rack claw, because the rack does not open wide enough due to the beefy fork. It stays in place, but I don't want it to rattle while riding. Also haven't tried to ride the XP with a fully loaded set of panniers yet, that's somehting I'll have to try soon.


I also finally picked my Zenetik Pro bike from my friend's place. The bike was ready more than a week ago, but because of the neverending rain ... - right. I did not have the chance to ride it yet, but the rain'll have to stop someday, and then .... I can't imagine that the Zenetik Pro will ride as comfortable as the XP, but it should be faster though. Can't wait to find out !

Waiting ...

I'm still riding my XP with a broken spoke in the rear wheel. So far, the rest of the wheels seems fine as I'm waiting until my bicycle shop has received the stronger and thicker spokes. Apearantly, SAPIM is only producing spokes in a specific size and/or length by the thousands, but cannot tell which size will be available when, so it's a matter of waiting. Could be a matter of a couple of days, but also a matter of weeks (probably the latter). As long as I can keep riding, I do not worry about it much.
I submitted some pictures of my XP to the gallery of
recumbentblog and received a nice e-mail from Alan about them (seems not everybody's taking the time and/or the effort to read the submission guidelines). He has one of the finest and most beautiful blogs around (that I'm aware of anyway). I'm stil trying to get my picture right on top of this blog, but I still need to work on my html skills (and it shows, I know).
Not much riding lately, mainly because of the weather. Winter is coming and with temperatures dropping, I'm more comfortable riding my velomobile, which offers much better protection against the elements. Not that I mind the cold, it's the rain I dislike the most. Not for myself, I don't care to get wet at all, but to get my bike wet and dirty .... Yuk ! I really hate to clean up bikes after riding them in the rain, so I try to avoid this as much as possible. Luckily for me, my velomobile is the perfect bike for rainy days !

2940 miles so far on my XP and still loving it