All well and good, Mr Von Broad, but isn't it best to worry about weight and so on now, rather than 50 km from the finish of PBP?
Otherwise you might find yourself having to get rid of all extraneous luggage, hide it behind a hedge, finish the ride with 5 minutes to spare, and go back the following day to retrieve it.
Mr Salvatore, you are of course right to remind me of this, but, more importantly, you are also very wrong.
There wasn't anything wrong with the weight of my bike, and it was the the bike that Hans was referring too, it was the kitchen sink I was carrying that was the issue. After I dumped all the gear, I was flying in turbo mode.
Amusing, when I went to retrieve all the luggage I'd dumped in the hedge, I couldn't believe the state of the recumbent - the axis of the BB was about 10degrees off horizontal. The whole thing had twisted over the course of the ride. It got pensioned off after that. Got to love the flexibility of mild steel - natural cushioning!
Ironically, if I ride this year, I'll be on an even heavier recumbent - it's the best bike I've built [2008] and has a nice robust feel to it
I had ambitions to make a soot version, but if I spent less time drinking beer and talking about it, It would be finished and ready by now. I've started, but progress is slow. Anyway, can't beat a bit of weight.
Now......back on topic
And in all seriousness, I'm even thinking of trying out a bottle dynamo this weekend on the KV200, mainly because I don't have decent battery lights [I can't really justify the expense right now], and I don't have time to build a new 20" hub for the recumbent. Crazy as that
might does sound, if it's acceptable with a new Cyo, then I might even go with that. Apart from performance, what's not like? Weighs nothing, no drag during the day - it's a no-brainer. I will then be [the only one] advocating a return to the use of bottle dynamos.