Made it to State College and back

As I've been expanding E-Trike rides into larger loops, today I finally achieved the goal of reaching College Township. 

It was a warm Spring Day and I made the ride via Boalsburg through mostly impressive safe bike paths along the roadside. 

Attended a Fellowship meeting while charging the bike battery, and then entered Schlow Library for more recharging and some Jack London and President JFK reading . Then traveled through Friedman Parklet to linger with the sunbathers for a bit before scoring some free bread and bagels from the Saint Andrews dinner. 

On the last leg however, the Trike began behaving funny a couple of times. Then, although the battery still indicated two bars of power the Trike konked out three miles before home. Several times I rebooted the electronic power train, but it kept indicating an error message. This looked similar to what happened before when it broke down. 

The Trike electrical components may have simply overheated as the temperature was hovering at 85 degrees. Plus, I was carrying a heavy load up several medium sized back road hills. 

Slightly further explorations

 Hello Weblog Readers, 

Today I made it to the Mount Nittany Trail head, which was exactly my goal. I'm surprised that only recently I realized this trail is even here. This reminded me of not knowing about the well traveled Bald Mountain Trail in Sun Valley until I lived there for a few years. 

It was a twenty mile round trip on the E-Trike. The battery held up until the last few miles, and then I switched it out for a fresh one to prevent it going out on the last leg. 

I'm hoping to expand the riding horizons over to Boalsburg sometime in the next few days. And then all the way to State College a few days after that, weather permitting. 

My E-Trike

I've noticed that the Culver Mobility E-Trike I obtained last year can be quite a nice and interesting conversation piece. When it's operational that is. 

Amish folks in our community certainly eyeball it as I cruise through their nearby countryside. Relevant questions folks sometimes ask are: "How far can I travel on the battery? How much do I need to pedal? How fast can it go? and How much weight can it reasonably carry?"  

After the assembly person completed his work, one item he overlooked was strapping a front cable in tightly enough, which after a few weeks started frazzling against the front tire. This shortly knocked out the power-train. At first I attempted to repair this myself but soon realized that if I tried operating on it much more that I might void the warranty. So I called in an expert mobile repairman to assist. 

Jim from Blacklist Bikes came out a few times diligently finagling around; however, we both realized that since the more complexity there is, the more chances for failure there are and it would work better if he took the e-trike to his warm shop and worked on it there along with consultation from his work partner. 

Meanwhile, Culver Mobility, the Canadian manufacturer apparently went out of business, which caused us difficulty in finding the proper repair parts. 

Since then the Trike has been running mostly fine, though the brakes require frequent adjustment.

I recommend for other folks looking to purchase one that they read the user reviews and look at Trade magazines such as Consumer Reports and then go out to test ride one at a local bike shop as well as consulting with the technicians there. 

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