And then some ....

Last weekend, I renewed the seat mesh back. I had a new mesh lying around for almost 2 years, but especially during the latest 100km ride, I noticed my back touched one of the braces of the seat frame during pedalling. And since the mesh had been tightened all up the way, it was time to replace it.

Putting the new mesh on was not easy. I had to use a big screw driver to get the 2 holes over the braces at the back of the seat frame to get it in place. And when I finally managed to get the mesh around the seats frame, I noticed that the mesh has not been put together symmetrical : the enforced side walls of the mesh are not the same width on each side, but I don't think that that'll be a problem . Anyway, the moment I took my next ride, I noticed the difference immediately, my back no longer touches the seats frame anymore.

This afternoon, after my early shift at work, I took the XP for another ride. I was riding on the bike path between Hoge Mierde en Poppel, when a SUV slowed down besides me and the driver asked me to stop. I'm used to cars slowing down to have a better look at the XP when I ride by, but this was the first time that a car actually stopped and wanted to know more about it. He asked me lots of questions about the XP and as usual, I referred to the RANS' website for more information. Maybe I should consider taking some pieces of paper with me with the RANS website on it for future rides ....

Nice wide bike lanes in the Netherlands ....

The 100km ride in Limburg

It's getting a tradition that one week after August 15 (which is a national holiday in my country) one of the members of our forum organises a 100km ride. Start and stop is always in Helchteren in the provence of Limburg. Last year I participated with my velomobile, but since yesterday promised to be an excellent summer day, I decided to take my XP this time. Since Helchteren is around 65km from where I live -and to avoid that everyone had to wait for me like last year, I left home early in the morning, around 06.30 am. I arrived in Helchteren around 09.30 am, where others were arriving and were greeted with fresh coffee and pastries. Around 10.00 am we started with a group of 16 riders on different kind of recumbents.

We had lunch in Schaffen around 01.00 pm, where most of us enjoyed spaghetti. After this break, we continued the tour. It was pretty hot, but luckily there was a breeze to cool you down while riding. After almost 70 km, 2 riders weren't able to ride with the group and headed straight to Helchteren to get home. Since we made 2 stops for icecream (okay, that's my fault, but hey, I cannot help that I'm addicted to icecream!), we arrived back in Helchteren around 07.15 pm. After saying goodbye to everyone I drove back home, where I arrived around 10.00pm with 240km on my bike computer. Not bad at all (did he say in all modesty :-)

Group picture at the second ice cream stop

Finding out the hard way ....

Yesterday, I took my XP to go to work. Nothing wrong with my velomobile, but since the temperatures are still rising (yes, we do have a good summer this year!) I preferred riding the XP. When I was riding home on the tow path near the canal, I noticed a man walking besides his road bike. I stopped and asked him what was wrong. Turned out he had a flat tire but nothing with him to fix it. Since I carry almost everything except an extra tire to fix flats, I offered him to help. With the tire levers I gave him, he got the inner tube out in no time, but neither one of us could find any puncture in it. We then checked the outer tire, but nothing there either. Put the inner tube back in and I handed out my compact SKS CYBER ZOOM pump. The pumps head has 2 positions, one for schrader valves and one for presta, the position of the lever at the pumps head decides which one you need. Although we pumped like madmen, we only managed to get a little bit of air into the inner tube, but nowhere near to be able to ride it. We tried both positions of the pump with the same result. Strange .... Could it be the valve itself ? When looking for what was going wrong, I noticed that during inflation, you could hear a faint hissing of air. I mentioned this to the other guy and he could hear it too. Seems that while pumping, air was getting back into the pump. Hmmm, so was there something wrong with the pump or with the valve ?

Although I've always carried the pump with the XP, I actually never had to use it before. We then stopped another rider passing by asking for a pump. Turned out he also had a SKS compact pump, but a newer version than mine (2 different openings in its head). But nevertheless, the result was the same. I felt sorry for the road bike guy, since he had to walk a couple of miles to get to the next bike shop, so I rode home, picked up my TOPEAK floor pump and returned to the tow path. But alas : the same thing happened, so it had to be the valve. I wished the guy good luck on his walk and returned home.

Back home I took the compact SKS pump and tried it on a couple of spare inner tubes lying around the garage. But no matter what kind of valves the inner tube had, the result was the same : I could not inflate them propperly. Whenever I started pumping, I heard a hissing sound of air getting back into the pump. The SKS pump is now where it belongs : in the trash. Have to get me a decent one that works !

Trash !