RecumBum

Tried taking my Django onto a mountain bike trail at a local park. The trail didn’t seem too tough: a singletrack trail through the woods, relatively flat and open, a few tight turns, some largish rocks.

I took it slow and did alright at first. Had to put feet down a few times, and the handling was very tipsy at the low speed. But still, I was making progress, and it was kinda fun.

I got a couple hundred yards into the trail, then I went down. It didn’t seem to be much of a crash – I was going slow, and it was really more a matter of falling over than actually crashing. “No problem”, I thought. I picked myself up, got back on the bike, and tried to pedal.

Tried. Didn’t work. The pedals wouldn’t turn. Got off the bike. Checked the pedals, checked the chain, checked the rear wheel. There’s the problem. The rear derailleur was stuck in the spokes. Not good.

Turned the bike upside down and started to fiddle with it. It was jammed in there pretty good. I eventually worked it free and hand-torqued the derailleur into a semblance of straightness. Now at least the wheel would turn, but shifting seemed to be messed up.

I righted the bike and walked it out of the woods the way I’d come, and took it back to the parking lot. After a bit more messing around, bending and adjusting, I got it back into some semblance of proper operation.

That is, it worked fine in the middle gears of the middle chainring. The top and bottom of the range was out, and I didn’t trust it on the big or small chainrings. But at least it was rideable.

I nursed it the sixteen miles home, then took it to the bike shop the next day, where they straightened the bent derailleur hanger and got everything working smoothly again.

So, what did I learn?

I learned that even with fat tires, my SWB recumbent doesn’t make much of a mountain bike. The handling is just not stable enough at slow speeds. It works fine as long as I can keep the speed up, but once I slow down due to tight turns or obstacles, I just can’t keep it upright very long.

If I really want to ride this kind of trail, I’ll need a real mountain bike Oh well, it was worth a try.