After doing a short run last week to check out the new dérailleurs, we parked our quadracycle in the garage for the weekend. On Saturday it rained 17 mm, which is quite a lot. Sunday was a bit better and I did a bicycle trip with my old Norco Alpine 12 speed to Carleton Place airport and back (100 km round trip) to attend the fly-in there. Later in the day it started raining again and rained most of the evening as well.
Since this morning was dry and the forecast didn't look good for later in the day, Ruth wanted to get out for a quadracycle ride while we could. We did a trip of 13.9 km around the local neighbourhoods. This late in the year the gardens are fading fast as the flowers lose their blooms for the fall. We even stopped at South Keys Second Cup for a mid-morning coffee break, which was nice as the sun was still shining at that point in the day.
We had a lot of interest in the Rhoades Car from passers by today and answered quite a number of questions from interested people, all women today for some reason.
The longer trip today gave us a chance to really test out the Shimano dérailleurs a bit more extensively. Ruth and I both agree that they are a great improvement over the SunRace units that we had in the rear position before. Aside from the fact that the SunRace ones cracked easily, the Shimanos are smoother, shift easier and are far quieter. Essentially the only advantage the SunRace dérailleurs have to offer is cheaper price, but they aren't worth the savings in my opinion. We are now very happy to have four Shimanos on our quadracycle.
As we head into fall soon, we haven't quadracycled as many kilometers as we had hoped to. The wet weather has been a real problem. Climatologists say that this summer is just an indication of climate change, mostly brought on by humans burning fossil fuels. We are doing our part by not owning and running a car. It would be nice if the weather were a bit less wet so we can show everyone else the benefits of quadracycling instead of driving everywhere.
Price of gas locally today $1.190
Total quadracycling for 2008 so far - 445.6 km
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