The Trike arrives - first impressions.

The arrival of the bike was very exciting! Here you can see our youngest with the Y-belt firmly keeping him place and there is also a lap-belt. They are sitting on a wooden seat / lockable box with a mattress. My first impression was along the lines of 'hard to pedal up hill but lots of fun on the down hills'! I had not really done any bike riding in our area and I guess driving everywhere makes one immune to how big the hills can be! At the time we purchased the bike (Dec 07) the boys were 4 and a half and 3 but they were (and are still) very big for their age. The trike weighs about 35kg, the boys totaled about 33kg and my weight added a bit also so my first goal was to get the gears lower and I will later devote a whole post to what I did to achieve that.

Other impressions were that it rode well with the boys in it. I just had to ensure I slowed down for corners until I got used to its handling. The other thing I learned very quickly was not to try and come into our driveway on an angle! As you can see from the photo of me riding down the street the kerb is at a 45 degree angle to the road. Trying to enter the driveway on an angle (ie riding parallel to footpath and then attempting to place left wheel onto the kerb) means you get very close to tipping! So I always approach the driveway at 90 degrees (ie front on with both wheels at the same time). Also with the handling it is good in tight spots as it is very easy to hop off and lift the back wheel to turn the bike through those silly barriers that appear on bike paths around the place.

The box up front has loads of room and the 'Bugatti Hood' is very stylish and practical. The photos here just show the sides of the hood, a separate cover can go over the top of these frames for full rain cover, or it can go part of the way as a wind break. The cover can also be used with either one or both of the side windows removed. I also ordered the bike with rear luggage rack and panniers (just in case I needed even more storage room). The rear luggage rack is very solid but I found I did not need the panniers so sold them a while later. The brakes worked very well but the front discs made a fair bit of noise even when not being used. This continued after the 'wear in' period also however Peter from PSBikes and Simon from CycleSurgery did a great job working through and rectifying the problem (after sales support from Peter is very good despite him being interstate). The tyres are Schwalbe Big Apples with kevlar so they must be bullet proof!

All up we were very happy with our purchase!