New trikeport

The shed / trikeport I had built years ago for the cargo trike had to be moved, as my ground-floor landlord was going to build a deck off the back of the triplex. The 'port was relocated to the back of the parking area against the rear fence, and was easily moved, as I had deliberately made it light and transportable in case it ever had to moved for building maintenance or whatever. But, the landlord had also requested that I rebuild the thing to look a little less, well, trailer park. Can't say as I blame him, but the old one looked as it did because it was fashioned, as many of my projects are, from found materials, and also in a bit of a hurry when I'd moved in.

As compensation for the hassle of rebuilding it, my landlord would pay for the finishing materials (covering boards and roof) so that it would match his deck and the adjacent dumpster enclosure. During demolition I was very glad I had constructed the old trikeport with screws instead of nails, as this meant for an easy take-apart and allowed me to re-use most of the wood and even most of the screws! Along with some wood from my stash plus a few boards from the old deck the landlord was demolishing I had nothing to purchase aside from a new pair of door hinges and a box of screws.

I forgot to take photos of the demolition, and even of the first aspects of (re-)construction. Below shows it all framed in, with some temporary thin plywood sheets on top to keep any rain off. The long bottom 2x6 was originally the top board for the old 'port, and the new top one is from the landlord's old deck. Stacked at left are the new siding boards. Also note that this new 'port has a floor, unlike the old one. This is to get it up off the ground for winter access, something I could not do with the old one because its door pretty much scraped the driveway as it opened.

You'll notice that this trikeport is a fair bit larger than the old one (which had to be kept low to stay under a window and still have a slope for water drainage). The old one was also made just wide enough for the trike itself. I don't have a full photo of it, but this should give a general idea. (Say Hi to Jett the cat while you're at it.)

This new one is higher mainly to let rain water drain over the rear fence, as having it drain to the left would just mean water seeping under the trikeport following the slope of the land. While the trike goes into hibernation once salts hits the roads in winter, this 'port was made wider to allow me to stuff the red trailer alongside (with the trike budged over a bit), which will save me having to drag the trailer in and out of the basement during winter use.

Leaning against the structure is one of the double doors being built. The big green tarp that acted as a roof cover and side cover for the old 'port was kept as a temporary roof and front cover during construction. (It has gotten a little worn out in spots after five years but I plan to cut it down into a useful smaller one.)

Adding the siding boards went quite quickly, and the whole thing went from ghetto to nice in short order, even though it was not yet complete. The metal pole in the ground is to mark for the left-side parking neighbour how much room I need to get the trike out, as the adjacent dumpster enclosure (just out of sight to the right) means a hard swing to pull the trike past it. This pole will soon be removed once the various bits of construction fun are over and he can move his car further away.

The roof consists of thin plywood over 2x4 framing. Instead of using the usual asphalt shingles the landlord and I agreed on roll roofing, which is essentially peel-and-stick sheets of asphalt designed for these sort of low-slope applications. I decided a drip guard over the door opening would be a good idea, and fashioned one from a piece of L-shaped metal trim I had lying around and stapled in place. A piece of wood moulding was set against it, and later the gap was caulked.

Along the wide top of the fence I laid down a strip of used coroplast (corrugated plastic) to keep any standing water from collecting, though the run-off should dump it right over. The roll roofing will just tuck over it.

Here's the roll of roofing stuff. It was very heavy...

I lucked out with the roof dimensions, as I had built the thing not knowing how wide this roll stuff was. The roll was 3'3" wide, and the roof was 6'3' wide (also happens to be my height!), so this meant only two lengths would have to be cut and I'd still have the correct amount of overlap between the sheets. Doing so was a bit tricky, as once the plastic was pulled from underneath the sheet stuck rather quick to the plywood. Once I figured out the technique it went fairly smoothly. Also, I had to be rather careful not to tumble off the low side, as the neighbour's yard on the fence side is two feet lower than our property, and falling would also mean crashing into his net of carefully planted squashes! That probably would not have hurt all that much, but would have been very embarrassing...

Once the roofing was on I added a length of the siding boards to cover the top edge of the higher side.

  

A pair of eye-bolts were inserted into the doors, and fitted through is a surplus bicycle U-lock for security. Also note wheel ramps made from pieces of the same boards used for the doors (door boards were 5-footers, same as side boards, but cut down to 4 feet).

Given that I don't build things like this very often I must say that it looks pretty good! And a shout-out of thanks to friends Rob and Paul for the loan of their respective power tools (circular saw and chop-saw).

The cargo trike is now in its eighth year of operation. One thing I had to decide upon over the winter was the battery pack for its electric assist, as the most recent one had started to die late last year and I barely squeaked through November with it (though through proper charging and management I did get two years out of that pack, which was darn good).

I'd been using sealed lead acid batteries (SLA) since the assist was installed, but that is not the best technology for the high power drain of such a set-up. Over the years I was advised to look into a lithium pack, but they were darned pricey (SLA was $200, lithium $800 at the time). But the prices have come down, and my friend BlackBurnPete told me of Ping Battery in China. This Ping fellow was getting excellent reviews of his products on e-assist forums, as he apparently has done his homework to make sure the batteries and their technology are reliable.

So this is what I ordered: http://www.pingbattery.com/servlet/the-12/48V-15AH-V2.5-LiFePO4/Detail

My previous pack was 12AH (amp hours) but being an SLA pack something called the Peukert Effect comes into play so the it only delivered perhaps 8AH. The above lithium pack is 15AH and does not suffer the same effect, so I'd be getting almost twice the range! 

One can feel a sense of trepidation sending money to an overseas seller and hoping everything will be OK. And this transaction was problem free. He notified me as soon as the payment was received and that he would let me know when it was being shipped and provide a tracking number. It arrived as advertised, and as the leads are supplied bare I asked my friend Charles R., who had done electrical work on the trike in the past, to add Anderson connectors.

Since this pack is smaller I simply cut down the battery box (easy to do when made out of coroplast and duct tape) and added some foam padding underneath, since instead of four solid SLA batteries I now had an assembled bunch of smaller lithium ones, and vibration might cause connections to fail. Perhaps this thing is rugged enough as it is, but it is little effort to add this protection. One addition is the piece of recycled plexiglass added to the top so I can see the LEDs for the battery management system.

This uses the same Anderson connectors as before going to the controller, but the charger uses 3-pin XLR (yes, same as a microphone, which could be confusing for a drummer like me).

The battery management system, the proper design of which is the key to having a healthy battery pack, It makes sure all the cells are properly balanced when charging.

The biggest advantage to this new pack is that one does not have to constantly recharge a lithium pack. SLAs can get damaged due to sulfation if left in any state of discharge, so if the trike is going to be parked for more than an hour or so the pack has to come out and get recharged. So for almost any gig I did I had to take the charger with me, unplug the pack, and take it all into the gig and make sure it was hooked up. And then reverse at the end. It was not the end of the world, but just one more thing to deal with when getting to the job. But just like your laptop, a lithium battery can be drained will not suffer any damage. So unless I have a rather lengthy ride (more than 20km return) I can wait to recharge when I get back home.

Now that part is fabulous. And the more I use this new set-up the more I like this aspect. But in the previous incarnation the pack just sat in a bracket in the cargo box of the trike, since it was almost always being removed. Now it can stay with the trike, but just lying out in the open is not a good idea. Time for a sort-of hiding place...

Cut through the floor, bolt in a cradle made from aluminum strapping recycled from my first trailer (that got damaged in an accident), then line that with coroplast and add the ubiquitous duct tape.

Drop the pack in (notice even more foam, since the trike has no suspension beyond its fat tires), hook it up and off we go!

So far everything has worked out very well. Charles updated the wiring, and later cleaned out a troublesome Anderson connector that had temporarily rendered the assist inoperable. I've very much enjoyed NOT having to always take the battery pack with me into gigs (try taking a duct tape-covered black box with wires sticking out of it into a Federal Government building), and while I've not yet had to test the full range of this new pack I've been happy not to worry about how far it can go for the trips done so far. So it looks like a big thumbs-up for this new set-up!

cargo trike update (again)

Structurally this trike has held up quite well into its sixth year of use. Building it out of square-tube mild steel was not the lightest way to go, but it certainly has been strong.

The one area that has always been suspect is the bar that connects to the frame and holds the "steering" arms that I hold onto while the front end pivots below me. When we built it the plan was to bolt it to the frame like a handlebar using a BMX-style 4-bolt stem. But the threads in the the bottom part of the stem plate got damaged by the heat, so we said heck with it and welded the plate to the frame and the bar to the plate.
(Yes, the bar has a bend in from when some accidentally dropped the frame right after the weld.)

As you can imagine, this bar sees a lot of flex, and while I did insert a wooden dowel into it as well as put braces where the upright bars meet it, we figured the main joint at the frame might start to fail some day. And it did - last last year I saw a crack developing, and finally this Spring I took it over to Johnson Welding for repair (my friend and co-builder Juergen having gotten too busy with his new business for welding projects).

The guy at Johnson asked me to remove all the paint:
and take out the dowel, then he would try and tap in a thicker steel insert tube, then weld the crack. I decided to also add a pair of braces from the bar back to the frame for some triangulation, which is what should've been done when the trike was built. I fashioned them from the chainstays of a dead 10-speed bike from the scrap pile at the re-Cycles shop:
The welder got those in place, fixed the crack, and was able to add the sleeve. The work is a little rough and the braces are not perfectly centred, but hey it only cost me $40.


I then applied primer and gold paint and it looks fab. And the repair should hold for the rest of the trike's life.

back on the trike

I got Kyoto out of its winter hibernation this past Thursday.

On Wednesday there was still a bit of ice piled in front of the door to its trikeport, and once that was cleared I still could not get the door open! Prying the top edge back I could look inside and see ice on the gravel floor of the 'port, and the front wheel had ice up to the rim. Joy...

But on Thursday I was able to pry the door open a bit more and reach in and lift the front wheel out of the ice out easily enough, and it was no worse for wear. Then I eventually got the door free and the trike out (the rear wheels did not have ice around them). I adjusted the brakes and cleaned the chain and put the small battery in to check the lights and signals, and all was well.

Friday was a beautiful day and I put the battery pack for the electric assist in and went for about a 10km roundtrip doing errands. It was nice to be back on the beast (currently my only recumbent) and I'm looking forward to using it once again for moving gear after almost four months of using the winter bike and trailer(s).

The next day I had to do a shift at the re-Cycles shop from 1-5, then from there straight over to the NAC for a soundcheck and gig at the Fourth Stage. The trike makes this kind of thing easy to do.

And so begins Year Six of my cargo trike adventures. :)

cargo trike update

I had few posts about the cargo trike in 2008, but that's mainly because it runs fine and there's little to report! It did exactly what it was supposed to do with little fuss, and was used more than any previous year. Few long trips like in 2007, but that's fine; the short trips more than caught up the mileage (kilometerage?).

I think the only failure was having three spokes break in the front wheel. Which is pretty good, considering that I built it myself three years ago, and it hits whatever road debris I don't steer around with the weight of me sitting on it. And without suspension. The real adventure was having to cut, thread, and install three custom-length replacement spokes. They are not a common size due to the large hub in a small wheel, and when I built the wheel I customized enough spokes for the job, and no spares. But this replacement job was made easy by the re-Cycles shop now having the necessary threading tool (thanks to whoever donated it to us!).

Improvements for 2008:

- built a coroplast rain cover for the cargo box (why did I wait four years to do this, and put up with a tarp?).

- replaced the battery pack (I abused the old one by not recharging it often enough).

- replaced the excellent but worn down Schwalbe Big Apple 50mm wide tires with new 60mm ones (the 50s went on my trailer).

The last ongoing issue was the electric assist acting up in rainy weather, partly because the wiring connectors would pull apart and let moisture in. Juergen (my co-builder and e-assist guru) suggested replacing the stock ones with Anderson connectors, and last Spring, with the help of our friend Charles, the swap was done.

(Yes, the trike's paint badly needed touching up, and that was done shortly thereafter.)

This change, as well as relocating and covering the motor controller to protect it from wheel and road spray seems to have solved the problem, though I did not ride in the rain as much as in 2007.

So it looks like the concept has matured and stabilized. I was able to ride the trike into the first week of December, and now it hibernates, awaiting the non-slushy-salty roads of Spring.

Propeller Dance Fundraiser follow-up

I had a fabulous time last week at this event! The dance class that I work with performed at the Tuesday night show, and everything went well. Propeller Dance president Dave Scrimshaw has a pile of photos at his Flickr page. Ours is the group dressed in black and using pieces of fabric as props (above photo).

When I was at the official media launch of Propeller Dance the previous week, a profound thing was said. Both Renata and Shara (co-founders) said they are often told "it's wonderful what you do for these people", and Renata said (paraphrasing) "they also do something wonderful for us - they show us how to move in ways that our professional dance training never gave. So we all learn from each other."

And it's very true. People with disabilities, whether developmental or physical, have to work and play around certain "limitations". But those limitations just make a person find their own, very personal way of expressing themselves. Yes, you can indeed dance in a wheelchair! And these classes are for people of all abilities, so we indeed all help each other to transcend physical, mental, and emotional barriers.

For me, I've spent most of my life sitting behind a drumset and playing fairly straightforward music. Yes, I can of course improvise (and love to!) and am often looking for ways of putting my stamp on the music, but both with the Grasshoppa dance group and Propeller I often have to make music and sounds on the spot, and not always just melodic ideas or themes. And it took me a little while to feel comfortable with the idea that some of the more "interesting" ideas were musically valid. But the more I do this the more I know I'm doing the right thing.

But back to the event...

I not only get to provide music for this inspiring group, but as often happens when the various classes get together (both at shows like this and also our Community Days) the different accompanying musicians help each other out when musically suitable.

At all of these events the Sunday performing group is the main feature, and they were ably accompanied by Dominique St. Pierre (synth, effects, African flute, darabuka, and electronic effects) and Mike Essoudry (drum set, clarinet, and kalimba). I joined them where appropriate (as they also did with me), which makes things interesting because we do not rehearse this ahead of time. Dom and Mike have of course worked out the structure of their music, and so having me add my little bits won't throw them off. I have just have to keep my ears wide open and stay out of their way and watch for any cues.

Here's our collective set-up, with my gear on the left:

For my group, this is only the second time we've performed together, and I had to create sound for about 25 straight minutes with no delays or dead air between sections. And each of the seven sections had its own theme, so I needed to create different moods or textures throughout.

In order to do this I decided to add some more hardware to my usual set-up. So in addition to my trusty Kawai K4 synth, alto recorder, djembe, and percussion toys I included my 1990-vintage Roland SPD8 drum pad, a very new Boss RC-2 looping pedal, and ran it all through an equally new Behringer K1800FX keyboard amp (the little amp I use for classes is not powerful enough for most live gigs).

While the amp is great (having four channels, 7-band EQ, and built-in effects), it's that cool little looping pedal that made things interesting. I programmed the loops ahead of time with the synth and drum pad, and ran the pedal into its own channel, with the synth bypassing it into another channel so I could separate the effects. So I could fade the loops in and out and let one run while calling up another synth sound, or hold a synth chord or play the drum pad or djembe one-handed while quickly changing pedal programs.

Here are two views of my set-up:

The only tricky part was that I got both the amp and pedal about two weeks before the gig and so did not exactly have a ton of time (incl. only two rehearsals) to get familiar with them! And I'm an acoustic drummer before I'm anything else musically, and using electronics and pregramming, while not foreign, is not something I've much of in a live context. But as noted earlier, part of the thing with this experience is taking myself out of my comfort zone of sitting behind the drums and grooving. And I'm loving it!

So much so that I'm also incorporating the amp, drum pad, and pedal into my Thursday night gig at the Met with the Orbiters. Tom is playing his baliset, which has full MIDI capabilities for all sorts of sounds, and Steve is running his trombone and voice through an effects pedal at times, so I thought I might as well join the fun. More on that in another post...

And as usual, during the dance event the cargo trike waited patiently, sporting its new cargo box cover, made in my usual fashion from scavenged sheets of coroplast, held together with duct tape, and tied down with bungee cords. It so far has worked extremely well, keeping all the gear (both acoustic and electronic) as dry as possible.

Propeller Dance

I've been working with Propeller Dance for a few years now, providing musical accompaniment for the classes taught by Renata Soutter, who I met through the Grasshoppa Dance Exchange.

Propeller started out as DanceAbility, which is dance classes for people of all abilities, whether handicapped or in a wheelchair, as well as able-bodied people. It operated under the auspices of The School of Dance, and last year Renata and co-founders Shara Weaver and Alan Shain decided to go on their own and hence Propeller Dance was born (someone else owns the rights to the name DanceAbility, so they could not call it that as a legal entity).

The original class was (and still is) on Sundays, and it's the main performing group. Twice a years we have Community Day performances and once a year a fundraiser at the NAC's Fourth Stage. Our Monday class did well at our last Comm. Day, and is turning into a performing group in its own right, and so this year we will be at the fundraiser as well.

It's taking place over two nights this week, Tuesday June 3rd and Wednesday June 4th, though our group is only performing on Tuesday. I will be playing keyboard, djembe, percussion, and recorder, all during the course of our 20 minute segment. I've got a new Behringer amp for my keyboard, and a Boss RC-2 looping pedal that I'm still getting used to (just got it last week, and it's a neat little tool for making more involved music when one is the only musician). More on this gear in a future post, as I'm also using them on my regular Thursday gig with the Orbiters.

Please check the brand new Propeller website for more info on this week's shows.

Oh, and the Monday classes are out in Vanier, but in my years of doing this I've only used a car three times, with all the other trips done by bike (in the winter, towing a trailer) or via the cargo trike.

I've been blogged...

... by Kirstin Endemann of the Ottawa Citizen. She contacted me regarding the re-Cycles Co-op for an article she was writing, and we found we had a music connection as well.

ice

Here at my new place the trikeport I built is underneath where the roof runoff occurs. A neighbour had warned me that a lot of ice can hang there, so while the port's roof is only 1/4" plywood (with a tarp over top) the framing is 2x4s across with 2x6 supports. For the winter I laid a sheet of 3/4" plywood over top to help spread the weight of any ice and snow that might build up until I could clear it.

And as winter showed up this year not with a whimper but with a bang the accumulation has been strong. Clearing the snow has been easy, but the flat roof of the rental house is not well insulated, so there's a lot of dripping water off the back on all but the coldest days, and I was caught off-guard at how much ice was layering up underneath. Late last week I discovered that the entire top of the trikeport was covered to a depth of at least three solid inches. And on top of that a fat stalagmite was building up from the main drip.

Here's the blob up close:

Its source:

This accumulation explains the pick-axe I found in the basement when I moved in! I happily took that beast in hand and started hacking away at the solid ice. This photo shows the thickness of the layer:

Making progress, but then had to stop for the day:

The following afternoon, with some overnight snow and yet more dripping:

30 minutes of hacking later and the blob is gone!

All done:

Of course, the next day a thin film of ice was covering everything...

Update to the battery pack upgrade

Back in May I upgraded the trike's electric assist battery pack to 48 volts from 36V.
This has made a nice difference in the effectiveness of the assist motor, but the one drawback has been how the pack sits in the trike. Juergen and I had quickly installed the pack in the nearest handy container, an old metal toolbox. This meant that the box had to be put in the cargo box of the trike, opened up, and the cable plugged in. It also meant that the pack had to come with me whenever I left the trike unattended for any length of time, since a loose toolbox just kind of says "steal me".

Here's the bare pack:

So I needed a better arrangement, and that was for a sealed box that could stay with the trike. The easiest and most out of the way place to put it would have been along the front end of the cargo box, but since the pack is kind of heavy I wanted it by the right rear wheel, to balance out the weight of the assist motor built into the left rear wheel (the trike when empty can lift a rear wheel on sharp turns, so now both rear wheels have some weight and this no longer happens). So while aesthetically this isn't the best spot it certainly works from a practical point.

My choice of material for the box was corrugated plastic, aka coroplast. If one has to use petroleum for anything then coroplast and duct tape gets my vote! ;) And both worked well for this application:

After cutting and assembling two holes were drilled through the bottom of the box as well as the cargo box floor and bolted in place:

Then, after the pack was fitted inside, I drilled two more holes, one for the power cable, and one for the recharge cable. They came out underneath like this (the small black box is the controller):

Juergen gave me a handy key-operated on/off switch that I wired into the end of the box. This disconnects the pack from the controller while in recharge mode, and to also prevent any minor power drain while parked:

Now that I was no longer taking the battery pack inside to charge it, I had to add an extension to the charger's cable out to the trikeport (the charger can still be removed from where it sits and brought with me if I'm on a longer trip and have to recharge before coming home). So one length of cable comes out into the trikeport and ends in a plug, and that gets plugged into the jack of another cable that I clamped under the seat and ran back under the cargo box to connect with the pack:

Note in the bottom of the photo the bottle for the recently installed Air Zound horn. It's a nice loud beastie that rattles me a bit any time I use it, but it's far more useful in traffic than the squeeze horn it replaced. Here's its business end:

And as is often the case with my projects, Jett supervises:He also thinks the empty trikeport is a good spot to hang out.

even more moving photos!

When relocating it's not a common thing to have to take the "garage" with you. In my case, I had built a covered shed for the trike at the old place, and it of course had to come with me. It was fairly simply put together, so easy to take apart. When rebuilding I'll need to beef it up a fair bit, because at the new place I'm told the spot for it can receive a healthy build-up of ice in the winter from water dripping off the flat roof. But this rebuild will have the added benefit of diminishing my woodpile, which for the most part still resides at my old place with the owner's consent.

So here's how you move a wide load with the trike - just put the stuff across the box and hope it all weighs enough to keep it in place. With slow cycling it did. ;)

(note red safety flag)

The roof panels, acquired from a friend that was demolishing an outbuilding. They fit almost perfectly into the box, and I mean like with a 1/2" all around to spare! The only thing that prevented them from lying flat was the battery box for the electric assist (which is soon to be relocated under the trike in a semi-permanent installation). Most of the move was actually done without using the assist at all (battery pack not even in place), but I was getting tired at this point and needed the extra help.

My regular 2-wheel bikes were easy to fit, but not so the big beasts. In the above and below photos you can see the Rainbow Chopper, the CCM tandem. and the Infinity recumbent.


Gratuitous cat photo. In the new place, and Jett is mauling his catnip Teddybear, recovered from under a shelving unit while packing.