Well, that was a long day.
The first important discovery was about halfway down the M6, when I realised that my knee/lower leg problem was making me desperate for cruise-control. It got progressively worse as the day went on. I've just made an appointment with the physioterrorist to see about that.
We survived repeated attempts by the Garmin to lure us to Cambridge, and arrived at D-Tek after an otherwise uneventful journey, to find Tigerbiten and Kevin engaged in some sort of shifty-looking pingfuckit deal. After a brief chat about what's what, a package of vital control adaptation components was produced. Barakta's favourite was the fish-slice, but I reckon there's a lucrative market in hydraulic whisk brakes just waiting to be exploited...
After a quick demonstration of the Trice's magic 45degree fold, we put barakta on a Sprint, and Kevin walked her down the road explaining how to ride it. After a brief pause to dig out the radios so that she might stand a chance of hearing more than wind noise, I jumped on an Adventure and Tigerbiten accompanied us on a short ride down the road and up a farm track (NSTN rating: 2.5). Barakta took to it immediately, and other than the one-sided braking issue had no significant problem operating the controls (we'd put the bars at different angles to compensate for asymmetric reach) - The SRAM twist-grip shifter controlling the rear derailleur was absolutely fine in the normal orientation, so that makes things nice and simple.
After a spot of boom adjustment, we turned around and came back down the track at a significantly higher speed. I took the opportunity to give the suspension on the trike I was riding a thorough test on some of the more exciting bits of surface. It was surprisingly good, I thought. While riding a trike inherently means you hit a lot more of the bumps, it also makes them a bit less severe, and the suspension certainly takes the edge off the nastier bits. I'm a bit traditional about off-roading, considering it one of the things that you don't really want to take lying down, but if you're committed to three wheels the Adventure isn't a bad option.
As we neared the end of the track, I noticed a nice flat area of slightly muddy concrete, and suggested we take the opportunity to do some serious cornering. I was really impressed with how stable the Adventure was, in spite of the slightly higher centre of gravity. Barakta didn't seem to have any problems with throwing the Sprint into corners, though obviously the one-sided braking was having an effect, especially on the loose stuff. On the way back up the road, I gave it a bit of welly, and arrived sufficiently ahead of the others to be ready take a photo of barakta's awesome grin:
I think that says it all, really.
A bit of dirty trike-swapping proved that she definitely prefers the Sprint model. I don't see us wanting to negotiate anything (willingly) with an NSTN rating of more than about 4; she doesn't have a problem with being low down, either in terms of getting in and out of the seat or visibility, and it's just more barakta-shaped.
I think she wants one...
We then spent a while thinking about the specifics of controls. She had a go with Tigerbiten's setup and we concluded that the dual-brake lever was perfect, and she had no shortage of grip to operate the brakes.
Catrike and Windcheetah controls were tried for comparison, and dismissed as "far too stiff" and "inappropriately barmy" respectively.
The SRAM twist-grip was highly approved of (I think it was a significant improvement over the low-end Shimano one on my folding BSO that she'd used previously), and a bar-end shifter to operate the front mech will work well enough, with an extension kitchen implement of choice to aid precision tweaking.
Which leaves reach adjustment. The handlebars on the ICE trikes are two independent approximately L-shaped bars, clamped into a tube with quick-releases for ease of folding. This means that it's trivial to set one side at a different angle to the other, which is a good fast-and-dirty way of achieving a sufficently short reach:
This is very important to get right, as barakta's left wrist is fused with titanium pins, so has no flexibility at all. Limited finger motion means that the shoulder does most of the work in moving the hand around, which is unfortunate as her shoulder joint is poorly formed and will dislocate through a lot of its range of motion. Something simple like tying her shoelaces is a ~6 dislocation task, and cumulative dislocations are painful and bad for the joint. Anyway, going back to the Sprint, we were able to get the bar position such that her shoulder stayed in joint throughout the entire travel of the steering. This is far better than I'd hoped for, and means she should be able to ride all day without shoulder fatigue.
Anyway, given that, it becomes simply a matter of providing a handlebar in the appropriate position at an angle compatible with her wrist's fused position. Kevin reckons that the bar from one of the older ICE models, which has a dog-leg bend in it, should give this using standard parts, and if that's not sufficient, he has pet metal-benders who can molish a custom piece of tube for the purpose. A short bar-end mounted at the bottom of the grip with some foam on it will provide a hand-wrest and convenient mirror mounting point.
We then spent a while thinking about trains and doorways and the like, with some serious contemplation of the importance of folding, whether a model narrow enough to fit through our front door was an option (yes, but not to the point of being worthwhile) and lots of experimental lifting. As with many things in life, barakta looks like she's struggling when she lifts the trice, but given an appropriate strategy regarding grip points she's actually in fairly good control of the weight. I don't see her having too much difficulty tilting it sideways to go through our front door (or onto trains etc) with a little practice. Sustrans gates etc will of course be an arse, but that's what RADAR keys and helpful cyclists are for.
The rest becomes a matter of normal n+1 decisions. Seats, components, accessories, suspension and folding options, tyres, that sort of thing. We're going to do a bit of serious thinking and get back to Kevin about that. I think we're both leaning towards a slightly better-specced machine than we originally anticipated, on the basis that this is very much going to be an n=1 for barakta, and I anticipate her ability to ride it seriously - both for touring and as a mobility aid - is going to be far greater than we'd hoped.
We also spent a fair amount of time hiding from the rain discussing all manner of loosely-related topics, including, but not limited to: The extreme helpfulness of YACF; disability mods and how to avoid them; small companies with tame engineers who'll answer all your weird geeky questions; VAT, banking and barakta's part in the demise of Lehman Brothers; Those Bastards At The DWP; knees; hilariously inappropriately-specced [b|tr]ikes and various works of That Nutter Burrows.
I may also have failed to balance a Molerat with both feet on the ground...
After some 4.5 hours, we set off home on what was to become the journey from hell. My leg started hurting almost immediately, which wasn't helped by the motorway network being sponsored by Sustrans cycle path department for the evening. The M6 was completely closed, so we found ourselves on the less-than-stunningly-flowing M1 heading north without a sensible map. A secondary mission objective was to visit Decathlon, which is on the other side of Birmingham in a place best accessed by car, in order that we could invest in some cheap cycling-appropriate clothing for barakta. That clearly wasn't happening, but it occurred to me that there was also a Decathlon in Nottingham, and that we could pay a visit to a friend whose computer I've been promising to wrangle for a couple of weeks now.
Which is how we ended up Not Going To Ikea:
Charlotte will be pleased to hear that we saw one lesbian couple (in the hiking equipment aisle, naturally), and managed to buy shoes without either of us killing anything.
I also picked up a set of nasty-looking mudguards for under a fiver, which I should be able to fit to the tandem, and spotted these gloves, which inexplicably made me think of Feline:
Leaving Nottingham at far-too-late-o'clock, we thought we'd escape further doom, but no - some bastard decided to close a section of the M42. This was particularly annoying, as I'd left the Garmin in my bag in the boot, on the basis that I knew the route. Much voodoo navigation was needed, and we were doing okay until we arrived at central Birmingham, where a closed section of the A38 threw us into a tangle of confusing and unfamiliar one-way roads in the vicinity of Digbeth. Using The Force, we eventually reached escape velocity and flew off at a random tangent, finally intersecting with the Pershore Road. We finally got home at about 1am.
I had to get up to return the car-shaped-object to the hire company, but barakta is, at time of writing, sensibly still asleep.
