Black cockpit at last !

A couple of weeks ago I discoverd that the seat cover of the Rans XP had a small hole in it. I presume it is caused by wear, since I did not fall with my bike or had any kind of accident. 

  
 When going through the SHOP-pages of the Rans' website, I came across the black 3-Way Chopper Handlebar. This was not available when I ordered my XP way back in 2005, but I've always wanted to replace the bare aluminum handlebars with black ones. The black handlebar also has the cross bar, which my original handlebar has not. Since I had to had to order the seat cover, this time I also ordered the black chopper handlebar.

The package arrived last Friday, but I only had time to replace the handlebar today. It took me about half an hour to remove the old and install the new handlebar, but wow : what a difference ! Although only the extendable parts are visible coming from underneat the chopper bar fairing, the whole cblack ockpit looks way nicer this way ! Now if only that fork came in a different color .... 

The ROHLOFF SPEED HUB had its first overhaul a couple of weeks ago and it runs even smoother since, or at least to me it feels as if it runs smoother. I'm still not completely used to the shifting, but so far, the ROHLOFF has turned out to be the best investment of the Stratus XP yet.

XP goes Rohloff

Today I picked up my Stratus XP from the local bike shop with a new rear hub : a Rohloff Speedhub.The Sram Dual Drive II I had was a little bit overkill, since all I ever used so far were 5 or 6 gears. The rear fender also had to be cut for the sideway movements of the chain. I'd rather see a comple fender on my bikes and I always wanted to ride a ROHLOFF SPEEDHUB. I couldn't decide on which bike though, but the Stratus XP seemed to be the logical choice. 

The Rohloff's shifters' direction is opposite compared with those of SHIMANO, which is a bit confusing. For going up in gears, you need to twist your hand forward and the other way around for downshifting. I also ride motorcycles and hence the SHIMANO shifting seems more logical. It'll probably take some time, but I'm pretty sure that I'll get used to it.

The new hub will have its first overhaul at around 1,000 miles, at which point the oil should be replaced. After that it only needs oil replacements every 3,125 miles. It's not a cheap hub, but it's supposed to last a lifetime. I would say : let's find out ;-) !

A New Tail Light + GPS mount

There was nothing wrong with the tail light I had on the XP, but last year PHILIPS (a Dutch company mainly known for the production of light bulbs) developed a bicycle LED set. The tail light of this set is called the SAFERIDE LUMIRING and is available in both battery and dynamo version. It is actually a big red reflector with a ring of 6 LED's around it. The moment I saw a picture of it, I knew I had to have one.

I ordered one last Monday at my local bike shop and could pick it up on Wednesday. Installation was very simple : I just had to disconnect the wires and replace the old tail light with the new one. It also has 2 bolts in the back but unlike my previous tail light which had fixed bolts, the LUMIRING has adjustable ones, so it'll fit almost any rack. A review of this light can be found here

 

I also bought a GPS device this week. I've been searching for one the last months, but could not decide which device to accuire. Spent numerous hours on the internet reading reviews and forums. I finally narowed it to the GARMIN MONTANA 600. Since it"ll be used both on our motorcycles as on the bikes, it was important that the GPS had a long battery life. Most outdoor GPS from GARMIN run on penlight batteries and have a +10 hour run time, but the small size of their screens and the poor visibility in sunlight made me choose the MONTANA 600. The biggest and therefore the most expensive of the GARMIN outdoor line, but hey, it should guide me for the next couple of years ! Together with the MONTANA 600 I bought a couple of mounting devices from RAM MOUNTS. They have mounts for all kind of vehicles, including bicycles and motorcycles.This one fits the chopper bar of the XP perfectly, so I'm not supposed to get lost on it ever again ;-)

Long time ....

since I posted something on this blog. Most part of this year the XP was parked in my garage collecting dust 'cause I didn't feel like taking it for a ride. Or maybe I was just too busy riding my other bikes ;-)
Don't know why, buy I only started riding it again a couple of weeks ago. I took the XP to my local bike shop for some minor tweaks in the first week of July and picked it up a couple of weeks later. And started riding it again and realised again what a wonderful bike it is. It's still my favourite bike after a nights' shift from work when the weather is fine like yesterday, when I did a 2,5 hour ride. Just cruising along the canal and on the wonderful bicycle paths in the Netherlands and enjoying the scenery, nice !

Sunny Sunday ride ....

After a couple of grey days, the weather forecast predicted a really sunny Sunday for today. Last night, it rained until after midnight, but when I got out of bed around noon, the sun was shining and it felt like summer again !
Although I had planned to ride my Beemer in the afternoon, the weather was actually so nice that I decided to take the XP for a ride instead. Put on my short, T-shirt and bike sandals and off I went. There was a mild wind, but who cared ....

Rode up to Tilburg and Loon op Zand, where I crossed the Nationaal Park de Loonse and Drunense Duinen. It was pretty crowded on the bike paths in the park, lots of people got out on their bikes on a sunny Sunday like this.
When I left the Park, I rode untill I reached Elshout, where I enjoyed the scenery while riding on the dike.

All this for bicycles only !

When I reached knooppunt 87, I turned around and headed back home. I arrived just in time for supper with a little over 60 miles on bike computer. A nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon, if you ask me ;-)

The 2010 Limburg 100km ride

Yesterday, for the 4th year in a row, Edje C. from the flemish recumbent forum organised a 100km recumbent ride starting and ending in Helchteren, in the provence of Limburg. This provence is the most beautiful of all for riding your bike, not only because they invented the famous fietsknooppuntennetwerk, but also because it's a beautiful part of Belgium with plenty of well constructed bicycles paths. I participated in earlier editions so I was planning to the same for this year. Only problem this year was that I had to work a night shift from Saturday on Sunday ....

But I was going anyhow, so .... I managed to get a couple of hours of sleep before my shift started on Saturday. On Sunday morning I left home early (around 6.30 a.m.) with my XP. Again, it was a last moment decision to take the XP, since the weather forecast had predicted some heavy rain with thunderstorms throughout the country. But since they were supposed to be locally, I decided to take a chance with the XP.

I had a different route this year to get to Helchteren, since Jonathan A. and Wouter D. were meeting me a little over halfway on their rowing bikes to accompany me to the starting point. Around 8.40 a.m. they joined me at the canal intersection in Kwaadmechelen. Wouter D. had a GPS device attached to his rowing bike and lead us the way to Helchteren. But only after 10 minutes of riding together, the dyneema propulsion cable of his rowing bike broke in half. We spent more than 1 hour to repair and replace his propulsion so that we could continue our way to Helchteren. Of course we were too late to start with the group, but fortunately, Wouter D. had the complete tour of the ride in his GPS so we caught up pretty soon.

This year's group was a bit bigger than last year : a total of 22 riders showed up. After stopping for lunch in the marina of Lommel, we did another drink stop in marina of Leopoldsburg and of course (and especially for me) an ice-cream stop in Koersel. After that I was back to Helchteren.

Although the skies turned dark a couple of times, only once a thunderstorm passed us closeby in the afternoon. Only a few drops of rain fell, but not enough to put on my rain jacket. It was warm and pretty humid all day, so I was glad that I took the XP instead of my velomobile.

Had a little over 220km on my bike computer when I got home, needles to say I slept like a baby last night !

Fixing the seat issue ....

Although the XP's seat is very comfortable, on longer rides I always start to touch one of the seats' back rails with my back bones. Very uncomfortable to say the least. Tightening the mesh was limited due to the construction of it, which in my case ment that when even tightened at maximum, my back still touched the rail.

On the Ransbike discussion forum I've read about the Sling Mesh Seat, which is a comparable seat but has a different mesh with long straps to tighten. It is not mentioned on the ShopRans pages (but there's a picture of it on here), but is available anyway for $400. Since I'm not sure if the seat fits my 2005 Stratus and the additional shipping costs + taxes would make it very expensive, I don't consider this to be an option.

I posted my problem on the forum and one of its members suggested to install some rubber pipe isolation on the seat rails and then put the seat mesh back on over the isolation. Sounded great, so yesterday I went to a home improvement superstore and bought a piece of plastic isolation hose. Cut it open in length, installed it on the seat rails and put the seat mesh back on. It now has more room to strengthen the straps, which should allow me to tighten the mesh some more and prevent my back bones from touching the seats' rail. Pretty easy solution, why didn't I think of it myself ?

As usual, only time will tell if my seat problem is solved or not, but I'm pretty sure that it is.

Plastic isolation hose on both seat rails does the trick ....