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Roadster Speed
And Roll
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Claudio, Seems to me you're right, but given the expected benefits of the Roadster, replacing a couple rear wheels every four to six months would be entirely acceptable to me. That said, remember that the rubber is more flexible than the polystyrene wheels, which though very hard, do grind the surface pretty harshly. The rubber will give more and not be ground hard, methinks. Also, the Roadster gives us, well, the road! I see us doing a lot more long runs and less "hard carving sessions in a lot." When I'm in a lot, I'm all about carving deeper and harder. On a "straightaway" I almost always am using mostly my kicking to keep going with hardly any carving steep angles being used. If the Roadster is used more for touring, it would not surprise me if the wheels last as long as the polystyrenes do. As for the lawn, I did give the proviso that it was a hillside lawn. I only see me going straight down the hill....no carving to speak of on the grass. Nor do I see carving on a flat lawn, but I DO see cutting across a portion of lawn as I go around a corner on a sidewalk, and the Roadster's tire's much bigger footprint will keep it from knifing into the ground as the polystyrenes do just about instantly. I see no significant momentum being lost from crossing small amounts of gravel, hard pack, lawn, cobble, etc. Can anyone who was on the Roadster at the meeting validate to the above speculations? Did any of you cross a piece of ground that would have stopped the 8 immediately? The one concern I have is that I have not heard from any of you that the Roadster is faster. I don't think it can become a true touring vehicle unless the average speed is about 5 MPH higher than the Trikke 8. I know that I want a Roadster no matter what its top speed, but extra speed, it would seem to me, is necessary to handle the bigger momentum killers a typical city sidewalk offers. With the Roadster's extra weight, longer wheel base, and, of course, the extra four inches in height over which gravity can act upon its falling, I'm expecting that riding over a uplifted crack will not only have the rubber absorbing the shock to the hands quite a bit but also having a lot more momentum at any given moment that will serve to crash the back tires into the uplifted crack and carry the Roadster up and over it without a psychologically depressing loss of speed. My expectations are never right.....not 100% anyway, but I am expecting a lot from the Roadster with some degree of confidence. After all, it is a Trikke and we're trikkers, and what we will discover about the Roadster will be subtleties mostly. My wish is that I will be able to trikke a steady 10 MPH in the city....about what I think the speed of my biking is on average. I see myself routinely going off curbs to cross a street and not having to negotiate a wheelchair ramp, cutting across lawn corners, being more stoppable doing downhill slaloms, leaving the sidewalk for a quick jaunt down the street before traffic shoos you back on the walk, and generally just cruising and being able to enjoy a bit of scenery without having to look at every single pebble and twig -- which is to say I want to plain "bomb around" without losing momentum so easily. I want people who see me trikking to say, "Look at that #%@!# guy go!" Very rarely does such an opportunity come up that a Trikke 8 could easily
handle "being in traffic," but I imagine the Roadster's speed
to be fast enough to go a half a block before the red light changes and
the traffic starts catching up to you, AND I expect that the Roadster
will handle the street surfaces much better than the 8 too, and so speed
is higher coming off the curb, less attenuated by the jump, and more easily
maintained on the road....so maybe a red light can stop traffic and I
can race ahead and get some significant "road time" which is
very rare for me now. Edg
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