#ladycyclist

Well, buckle up because this is going to be a long one. Since becoming disabled, I have wanted to ride my mountain bike and my motorbike more than I physically can, but ill health and constant pain have pretty much stamped their icky little paws all over that dream. Then a little while ago, Carol and I got talking and I said that the only way that I could realistically continue to go cycling was if I was to get my self a recumbent bike.

If you don't know what a recumbent bike is, imagine a bike as if it were drawn by someone who had only ever seen deckchairs and they built a bike on one. The general principle is that the pedals are out in front of the rider, who is seated in a sun lounger, rather than the usual razor blade bike saddle. The wheels are slung under the sun lounger and as you would expect for a wheeled sun lounger, they are a danger in traffic and the riders head is level with most exhaust pipes, thus road riding is less than pleasant.

I found a company who build such a recumbent bike. Now imagine if a person had never seen a bike before, but knew how front wheel drive cars worked? Cruz Bike of America have designed a bike with a super comfy seat, the steered wheel though is also your drive wheel, with a clever triangular front end that puts a steering bearing between your knees and goes down to the bottom bracket. This is utterly genius, it is just a shame that they don't import to the UK, so getting hold of one is really difficult. The biggest problem with them, after sourcing one to ride, is getting started on the road. Beginner recumbent riders with two wheeled bikes do tend to crash a lot and with my ailing body, despite my experience riding these machines already, crashing is not a viable option for me any more because I do not recover well.

Never one to give up, Carol started scouring the internet and she came across a small business in Exeter, called Freetrike, which is owned by a chap called Tom. Tom is well versed in dealing with disabled cyclists and his salesman patter is great, unless you are a thirty year veteran of the bike industry. Luckily, when the technical questions start, he gets even more enthusiastic. We arranged a trip to Exeter to test ride a couple of trikes, but not before having a fight with my Jedi Master father, using Lightsabres and as with every Jedi knight, he went for the hands!

Riding the trikes with bruised hands was a bit of fun, but the pain spasms I was having that day were anything but and as I stood talking with Tom, a spasm put me on the floor, which I think startled the poor chap. With the best will in the world, we were never going to be able to afford a new trike or even a nearly new one from Tom, especially one that came with DI2 electronic shifting. Shiny and new, the ICE trikes we were interested in, would have cost as much as a brand new small family car with a turbo and nice alloys. We asked about second hand options and were horrified to discover that even when second hand, ICE trikes still sell for ridiculous amounts of money, even more so if they come with electronic gears. If you have a big wad of cash burning a hole in your pocket and you crave the latest in electronic gears on your trike, go and see Tom. He's great fun and very helpful.

Feeling a little sad knowing that everything he had was out of our price range, we got back in the car and drove back home. However, the seeds had been sewn and the idea had been watered. The green shoots of a plan were seen among the pebbles and horse poop of modern life.

In a sad turn of events, Carol found out that her distant uncle, a very clever and resourceful silversmith had passed away and the result was that a small sum of cash was going to end up coming her way. The green shoots grew into a hardy stalk of a plan, albeit with a sad flower on the stem.

Browsing e-Bay and then Farcebook market place showed us a couple of nice examples, but nothing really shone out to us. Then one spring morning, while cruising Gum Tree, a new add popped up for a blue ICE trike and it was going very cheap (there was a reason for this, which we will come to later), but it was on the edge of London. Borrowing money from Carol's deeply understanding and supportive Mother, we set out excitedly and were very soon in the heart of Slough. The seller of the trike had picked it up from a Police auction, a place where they sell off recovered stolen goods that cannot be given back to the former owners. What we didn't know, is that along the way, someone (possibly a Police Officer washing off crime scene evidence) had jet washed the trike. The damage was not spotted as the water sloshed around inside the frame and bearings. It was only when we got the trike home and started checking it over and getting it ready to rebuild, that the damage showed itself. Both head bearings on both sides of the trike were dead with corrosion. Worse was still to come. The frame was filled with water and where the aluminium and steel frame sections join, a nasty oxide layer was forming. As I tipped the frame over, filthy, rusty water flowed out, staining the carpet and ruining a very nice pair of socks.

We replaced the headsets and pulled off the rusty eight speed drive system, which I replaced with a nine speed Deore XT set up, added a disk brake on the rear and connected both Sturmey Archer drum brakes to one lever, with a clever double cable pull brake lever, sourced from the on line shop of SJS (more on them later). It sounds so easy when I type it up like that, but this was hours of work. Finally, Rebel Rogue Three (as named by Carol), was ready to go. At the same time, Carol found for me a red 2014 ICE, going for a very good price (there was a reason for this, but we will come to that!) that I fell in love with. Things just started falling into place. The red trike was on the other side of the country, but the lovely gentleman who owned it, just happened to be visiting Bristol and could deliver it. Carol's dear Aunt loaned her the money to pay for the trike and when it arrived it was just as the owner had described, in a glorious candy red, albeit with an awful nine speed, Sram x5 gear system, that included some of the worst grip shifters I have ever experienced. The rear gears were all but useless and would not index. The owner told me that it had been like that since new and he had got used to just using the triple chainset to make gear adjustments. The cause of the fault was obvious and once I was able to start work, I rectified the problem of a badly bent gear hanger, which the awful Sram gear set had no chance of ever working on.

Historically, I have always been difficult when building my own mountain bikes. Shimano had the concept of total integration years ago, where every component on the bike was made by them and it was all in matching colours and designed to work together. Back in 1993, when the new black Deore LX was released, it was a cheaper clone of the shiny new XTR. The best finish of all though, was on the STX-RC components, which was a kind of smoked chrome, but the LX was still lovely. The shifters and brake levers shared a common mount, the cantilevers were matched sets and even the headset was stamped with the Shimano logo... I hated it. The last proper mountain bike I built, consisted of a Suntour XC Pro-MD chainset, Avid Arch Rival rear brake on an Avid adjustable pivot lever, with a Hope C2 front disk brake, running on a Hope Titanium hub. The gears were Deore XT, eight speed, running from a set of 1990's Deore Thumbshifters. None of this stuff should have worked together, yet somehow it all did and it did so beautifully.

Sram are trying to do the total intergration thing with their products, just as Shimano had tried back in the 90s. Well, having used Sram equipped bikes and having had the almost endless chore of fixing them, the Sram stuff was not staying on my trike. That was when Carol was informed that Probate was over and she was due to take a small inheritance (which we have now spent) within days. When the money arrived, our bills were paid, our debts cleared and our thanks was sent out to those who have supported us in our weird crazes. It was at this point that I informed Carol that I needed to discuss DI2 gears with an expert on such things. Luckily, near us, there was only one place that would fit the bill of being a great bike shop, that was well versed in weird stuff.

I have not been a fan of Bridgewater, in Somerset, since living there briefly in the early 1980s. A large plastics factory gave the town a legendary bad smell that lingered on your taste buds as you sped past on the motorway. But where I lived, the factory chimney was in view at the end of the street and it was dank! However, come forwards in time by forty years and the plastics factory has gone, yet Bridgewater for me remains a place of dark memories and much unhappiness. I was sent there more recently to attend meetings with a psychiatrist who helped me rebuild my life after becoming disabled. However, every time we visited we always failed to visit the globally famous Thorn Cycles (AKA SJS Cycles, or Saint John Street Cycles). Thorn have a history in esoteric cycle adventures. Their tandems are world beating machines and for years they made the custom frames in house. They truly were the things of legend and I loved them from a far, especially having raced tandems back in the 1990s, with my beloved and now departed friend Jonathan. So with my skirts swishing around my ankles, we jumped in the car and drove down to Bridgey!

SJS has changed a lot over the years. It had to stay relevant with the modern cycling ethos and it has diversified in order to stay a market leader, especially in the on line shopping experience, just read their reviews. Sadly, Thorn no longer build frames in house (hearing this broke my heart) and the shop front is a showroom for Brompton folding bikes. The chaps who man the front desk are clearly ferociously clever when it comes to modern folding bikes, but when I asked for weird, esoteric, HPV-ish trike stuff, they all grinned and said I needed to speak to Nik...

Nik turns out to be an athlete, around my age, with a history in bikes that is likely just as, or even more strange than my own. Over the months that we have been dealing with Nik now, we have discussed Streetfighter motorcycles, Human Powered Racers, the history of Suntour groupsets, the joy of building wheels, the demise of the hand built frame and the art of bicycle design. He is a remarkably patient man, with a fast wit and a sharp mind, unless he has been talked at by a crazy woman, speaking at over 120 words per minute about the joys of Self Energising Brakes (but more on that later!).

He listened carefully to my strange and unusual wants and needs, nodded or disagreed where appropriate and then he asked the pertinent question. Why did I 'Need' DI2 derailleurs? I showed him my gnarled and ancient fingers and he grinned and dropped a set of Dura Ace bar end thumb shifters on the desk, with an eleven speed Deore XT 11 – 42 cassette and a GRX clutched derailleur. He added three XT chains and gave me a sage shake of the head when I said I would only need two chains (he was of course right, I have learned not to doubt Nik now!). So with two identical gear sets, Carol and I set off for home, Carol's purse faintly smoking from the abuse we had just put it through. I built up the trikes and we waited for the e-assist conversion kits to arrive. In the mean time, I took the red ICE trike out for a couple of rides. It was a marvellous machine, once all of the vile Sram rubbish was gone. The Clarkes rear disk on mine was not brilliant, even with a complicated 180mm rotor. The Truvative triple chainset up front was nasty, so I swapped it for a Deore triple that was compatible with 10spd systems. However, our plan was always to swap the pedal system out, in exchange for an e-Bike conversion.

The Bafang e-Bike up grade kits looked shonky to me, as a dyed in the wool, old school mountain biker. I was of half a mind to not fit my kit (I quickly learned my lesson here), but Carol's kit was perfect straight out of the box. The battery attachment was a complicated affair on both frames, with Carol running a twin battery set up and me running a single. I made the mistake of thinking that I would be fine with a forty two teeth chain ring (I really wasn't, the knee pain made my legs wobble!), given that I had an e-Bike motor. I used a Problem Solvers one into Two cable splitter to run the front Sturmey Archer front drum brakes and Nik had suggested an XT brake lever. This did not work with my fingers and in an emergency braking situation, I do not think that I could have safely stopped. I later proved this when during a trip along the Keynsham to Bath tow path, a crazed woman on a shopping bike tried to ride through the space I was in. I nearly needed new fingers! I was clearly struggling with the braking and I so I did what any sane and rational woman would do. I e-Mailed Hope. To their credit, Hope were hugely busy and although they do not produce mirrored brakes for a ten year old trike, they suggested a way that I could build a system that would 'work'.

I looked on line for our nearest Hope dealer and took a trip over to Clevedon. Have you ever seen a little baby bunny, huddled on the side of the road, having just been scared half to death by the hellishly fast and huge wheels of articulated lorry rushing past? That is what the owner of the Clevedon bike shop looked like when I approached him with a list of requirements and questions. Utterly baffled by most of my questions and unable to supply a single piece of kit, the man promised that he would e-Mail me, when he got the stuff together (I am still waiting to hear from him, I am guessing that by now, he is not going to mail me, but I still have hope.). Feeling a little despondent, I headed home and checked the map of Hope dealers... Somehow I had failed to notice that SJS are listed.

That night, I scoured the internet looking for brakes, for a twin front wheel system, with mirrored callipers. No one in the EU was producing such things and then I found something. A small web page came up in a Google search and I was suddenly looking at a single master cylinder, driving two, twin pot, mirrored callipers, built specifically for a trike. The website was up to date, but it was also for a company that I had not heard from in at least a decade, APSE Artek. I scoured the internet again, but not one shop in the UK had this system in stock. If anything, e-Mails came back with more questions than answers. Finally, thinking that I had nothing else to lose, I filled in their contact form and pressed send. APSE are a Taiwanese company and they have been making cycle brakes since the 1980s. If you have worked in a bike shop, you will have seen their products as OEM parts on many different companies bikes. I asked them, “who do I need to speak to in the UK, who can sell me one of their trike brake systems?”

The following day, my in box contained an e-Mail from a woman called Alice. I can tell you now, not only is Alice one of the most kind and decent people on earth, she is also very patient and does not mind messaging with a somewhat strange, slightly vinegary, old, disabled women from rural Somerset!

Alice did not beat around the bush. No one in the UK stocked her trike brakes. But provided I could cover the cost of postage, she would send me a sample set to use on my trike. Straight away I stared at my screen and blinked. I have been around on the internet for long enough to know that there are an awful lot of strange and unusual folk out there in internet land, no one was going to send me a set of brakes, that cost hundreds of pounds, for the cost of the postage (this is certainly the view that my bank took, when a couple of weeks later I contacted them and asked them to send sixty US Dollars to Taiwan!).

Only, this time was the one time in a hundred, when the person on the other end of the internet connection is a thoroughly decent human being. When I told people what was happening, they all gave me that same sceptical, jaded by the internet, face. The face that wants to ask how much cash I have transferred to a Nigerian Prince, with the promise of getting several million back?

I have not met Alice in person and I don't know if it is considered polite to hug strangers in Taiwan, but if I ever meet Alice, I will offer her a hug of friendship, because she is truly remarkable.

The next day, it was back to SJS to discuss progress. We jumped back in the car and flew down the motorway and parked outside, our poor old car wheezing like an asthmatic, with one lung, running up K2, in a pair of budgie smugglers. As soon as we walked in, the front desk guys called down Nik, who took one look at my Hope shopping list and immediately asked “why?” I showed Nik my dodgy hands and explained the difficulties I was having. Nik lamented that Problem Solvers had just gone bust and then said that he could order the parts, but the brake was problematic and he was not sure that it would work on the left hand, front wheel. I explained that I had made contact with APSE Artek and what had happened and Nik once again, nodded sagely. He knew of APSE Artek and had spent time working on a lot of OEM bikes back in the days before working on esoteric stuff in SJS. I don't think that he was sceptical about my brakes, but I know that if it had not worked out, Nik would have moved heaven and earth to find the parts I needed to run disk brakes. Instead, he measured up my trike, now named Darth Dotty and then we had a deep and complex chat about making a 100mm x 12mm hub fit onto the axle for a 70mm x 12mm hub. “If only you had a lathe”, he lamented. I headed home with enough Hope hubs to build a wheel set, a set of Halo rims and enough spokes to build four wheels (but we will come back to that, later!). One might say that Nik could see the future, even if I could not.

Have you ever had a lightbulb moment where the lightbulb is clearly visible above your head? In this case, the lightbulb above my head was a fifteen watt, oven lamp bulb, that was fifty years old and had gone brown with age. I don't have a lathe, but I know a certain genius engineer who has a whole shed in his garden, devoted to incredible metal shaping machines. I had a chat with Phillip regarding the axle problem and I was tying myself in knots, trying to solve the issue of how to make everything fit, with custom axles and the like. Finally, late at night, I was drawing up the design to send to Phillip, who would make the axle from special super strength steel, when it struck me that I was over thinking the whole thing. I didn't need a custom axle. I just needed to spin down two aluminium spacers...

The next morning, I took the ailing car over to see Martyn, of Page Engineering, in Weston Super Mare and handed over the two offending hub spacers. In less time than it takes to shave a super model, Martyn had reduced the size of the spacers and refused to take payment for what took him less than five minutes to fix. He did add that for such jobs, Danish pastries would cover the costs and I was to supply one when I was next passing.

The next stop was Weston Fasteners, where I purchased two long M12 high strength bolts and a pile of washers. Less than two hours later, Darth Dotty was ready to roll, on her shiny new wheels. All I needed was the brake callipers and I could throw away for good, the awful system I was trying to make work with the drum brakes.

When the brakes were nearly ready, I asked Alice if the lever would work with my Bafang pedal assist system, most importantly, the brake detector. She passed me over to her colleague, Paul. Paul is an unbelievably brilliant engineer, who just happens to have a friend at Bafang. He sent me a wiring diagram of the brake lever sensor and explained in intricate detail how it all worked. This was the the sort of detail that showed just how seriously the team at APSE Artek were taking this bizarre request from a mad woman in England and how much work they were putting into the project. I am genuinely, even now, completely overwhelmed by the actions of Alice and Paul of APSE Artek.

The day of shipping arrived and I arranged to transfer the funds to them, to cover the costs of the postage. My bank, having heard of every scam going, were extremely dubious and they repeatedly asked me to rethink sending the money. I knew in my heart that in any other situation, they were entirely right. But this was the one in a million.

I watched the tracking of the parcel as it made it's way around this beautiful planet, noting that it landed in Stanstead airport and was then shipped to Türkiye, before it was unpacked and shipped back to Stanstead, before being shoved in a truck to Bristol and finally, chucked in a little van and delivered to us by our wonderful Fedex service.

I was out when the box arrived and Carol placed it on my desk to wait patiently for my return, but life is complicated and having spent the day dealing with other things, it was several hours later when I finally sat down to open my package from APSE Artek. It was a heavy box and very carefully packaged. To be honest, had it opened and a spring loaded clown popped out with a message telling me that I was a fool, I would have been less surprised than by what I saw. Two complete sets of brakes, one each for mine and Carol's trikes. I had mentioned in passing that we both had trikes, but I had not said that we wanted brakes for both. Alice had looked at the photos I had sent and had decided to send two sets. It included everything we needed, well almost. There was a tiny misalignment by 1mm on the converters from post mount to IS mount. With a little bit of filing on the ICE kingpin, they would have fitted, but the king pin is already thin and made of aluminium, so I decided to fit ones from the Clarkes brakes, which I had removed from my MTB.

The APSE Artek brake callipers are beautifully made, in highly polished aluminium that is then anodised red. The lever is a complicated unit that can be run on either the left or the right, with a built in electronic brake sensor. The action on the lever is so soft that it feels almost like there is no resistance to the lever action. For a person with disabled hands, this system is utterly perfect. Pulling this lever, even without my fingers being strapped up, feels like I was not even exerting myself to the same level of force it takes to lift a posh bone-china tea cup. The bite of the brakes is gentle and yet it feels like I could stop a runaway steam engine. However, if I pull the brakes like the uncouth youth I used to be, I will be propelled from my chair, to use my face as a brake pad on the road! I know this because on my first ride with these brakes, a child stepped out into the road in front of me and although the trike stopped easily, I nearly didn't. Luckily said child escaped being flattened by a screaming, hysterical Jayney and I learned not to pull the brakes like a hooligan. These are refined units, that require manners and etiquette when riding. Not that I have any manners and certainly no etiquette. After all, I have already turned my trike over, while riding like a maniac and trying to drift it around a corner. I am going to have to be careful with these brakes, it is far too easy to get the back wheel off of the road.

With my wheels built, my brakes tested and functioning, it was back to Nik one last time, to pick up the bits to build Carol a set of wheels. I will admit, I feel a bit sad knowing that I am not going to be a pain in the neck for Nik and the SJS team any more. On another point, it was his colleague Sarah, who informed me that as a disabled cyclist, trying to get back into cycling to improve my health, I can avoid the VAT on certain items. It is true that we dropped off a box of sweets and a couple of chocolate bars, but while going through this adventure with the brakes on the trikes, we have felt completely supported by Nik, Sarah and the whole SJS team. Seriously, if you need quality bike stuff and advice, give your cash to SJS, they are fab!

None of this could have happened though, without the generosity and fellowship of my new friends, Alice and Paul, of APSE Artek. I am not generally a person of much faith, particularly of the religious type. But it feels very much to me, like the universe really wants me to get out there and get fitter than I currently am, perhaps there is something in my future that requires me to be fighting fit again, or at least able to ride like a pillock some more?

To everyone who has been forced to listen as I rave about Hope products and how brilliant they are, I will now add that you need to think about APSE Artek too.

When the current news media we are exposed to, being filled with horror and genocide on a daily basis, as we witness flag waving xenophobes raging against refugees fleeing war zones and witnessing those same moronic xenophobes slapping paint where ever they can, it can be very easy to be disheartened with the state of the world. But then we find people like Alice and Paul, working for a company like APSE Artek. We meet people like Nik and Sarah and the whole team at SJS. I have friends like Phillip and even my wonderful daughter and her partner. With this much positive energy around me, it is hard to ignore that perhaps, if you look in the right places, there truly are some really lovely people out there and just perhaps, the whole meaning of life is just sharing empathy and kindness.

To our friends Alice and Paul, of APSE Artek, from the very bottom of my heart, thank you for your technical advice and your generosity. You have truly helped a peculiar, disabled and possibly mad, cyclist get back onto her wheels.

To Nik, Sarah and the SJS team, thank you for your hard work, your patience and your advice. We could not have done this without you.

To Phillip, thank you for your engineering advice and for not laughing at me as I thought myself into ever decreasing circles of despair.

To Martyn, of Page Engineering. Thank you for your help and advice and for doing the stuff to bikes that not even I can do.

To Alice, Cerri and Carol, thank you for being my beautiful family and for going cycling with me, even when I moan about the hills or when I hurt bits of myself on stuff, that no normal humans can hurt themselves on!

To my dear friend Jan, thank you for chatting to me while I built wheels only to have a melt down because the hub logo is one spoke hole out! Also, thanks for coming out for rides and laughing at me when I crash!

As for all of you out there in internet land. If you see a mad woman on a red trike, squealing with delight as she rides over stuff that no sane trike rider would ride over, give me a wave or even say hello. As soon as the rabid foam is wiped from my mouth, I might even be able to say hello back.

That is a lie, I am barely able to remember a time when I did what I was told. So when they warned me that sudden jolts to my neck could have serious repercussions. I took that advice very seriously.