Tricycling—No Matter What: Part I

Well, my tricycle arrived, an Addmotor M-330. Getting it here was a saga that took an extra month beyond what had been expected, caused me a great deal of stress, and cost me an extra $325. It sat in its big box under my window for another two weeks while my friend Bill and his wife returned from their trip to Antarctica. Bill was willing to come and read the directions and figure it out, but he brought his friend, Tony, who had no patience for stopping to read directions and just went at it out of his own great knowledge. Tony’s method did require backing up a few steps sometimes, taking things apart, and putting them back together in a different order, but eventually, I had a tricycle.

It was late when they finished, and I had determined not to ride after dark, so they went home, and I started trying to wind down—the many obstacles all had been overcome, and I had my cyan-colored motorized tricycle. I’d be out seeing the entire island in no time.

Except—well, I’ve lived here for over two years; I’ve packed my schedule with things to do; there really was not any time to go out sightseeing, swimming, visiting friends, shopping, and all the other excursions I had daydreamed about. But the tricycle sat there, under the window, begging to be used.

I read all the instructions that came with it. Oh. Don’t ride in heavy rain. Don’t park it under the sun—what? Keep the battery dry. I had intended to store it on my front porch. There is room, and it is covered, although the sides are open, and there is even a place to plug in the battery. But clearly, I couldn’t put it out there until I had some sort of cover for it. So I ordered one, and another two weeks passed.

All right! It’s time. Let’s get this show on the road! My friend Linda, who cleans my house on Wednesdays, came, and I asked her to help me drive the trike onto the porch. It had been carried in its box, and the trike was some four or five inches narrower than the box, so obviously, it would be easy to drive it right out. Except—it was a lot longer with its front wheel on—longer than the distance between the door and the concrete railing on the porch. It looked as though I had built a boat in a basement. Linda was undaunted, “Lift that front wheel,” she ordered. Then “Oh, here, let me lift it.” We rolled it out on its two back wheels and, with an elegant eight-point turn, managed to get it where it belonged on the porch. Whew. That was exhausting, and the first time I fully realized what it meant to have a trike that weighed 110 pounds.

Linda said, “I want to see dirt on those tires when I come back next week!”

Thursday, I studied the manual, how to turn on the battery, how to turn on the LCD display, how to turn on the power assist, how to use the turn signals, how to set the parking brake, and on and on. Then I found a video about how to ride a very similar model from the same company. It showed a lovely, older couple zipping along on a smooth, level urban trail between trees. They explained that the very overweight woman had had a stroke and had problems with her lungs, so this was the perfect solution for her. I watched the long video to the end, and there the woman admitted that she did sometimes have trouble turning corners and going over banked or bumpy roads. She knew that she was supposed to lean away from the turn or the bank, and she asserted that she was learning to do it, but she found it frightening.

I removed the cover, removed the bike lock cable, put on my helmet, pressed the battery button for three seconds, pressed the power button for three seconds, released the parking brake, and took a deep breath. I backed the trike out of my porch and down the handicap ramp and into the street. Immediately, seven cars came by, and I waited for each of them. I got the trike aimed down the one-way street and got on. Five more cars came by. I turned the throttle ever so gently and lurched forward into a pothole. Oh dear, this one-lane street was made entirely of holes and patches. I turned the throttle even more gently, and it felt as if the trike were going to fall right over. The street is banked. I leaned the other way, but none of my physics lessons about the stability of weights on three legs made any sense to my heart. I slammed on the brakes. Perhaps “slammed on” is a bit dramatic. I must have been moving all of five feet per minute. I was scared. More cars came. In between them I walked the trike across the narrow street to the curb and thought thin as they passed. Ten minutes later, I had reached the end of the short block and turned right into a cul-de-sac. I was sure there would be less traffic. I got on and rode another six feet. I discovered that the terror about falling off entirely wiped steering away from my skill set. In three more tries, I had progressed about fifteen feet down the road, had nearly run into a car on the right, had crossed the road and nearly run up the curb on the left, and had crossed back to the center and simply stopped in disbelieving terror. 

I had an audience, a healthy, athletic-looking man about 25 years old. “Señor, could you get on this and see if you can shift the gears down to first? I accidentally put it in seventh gear while I was pushing buttons.”

He obliged. He ran the rest of the way across the road and stopped just in time not to hit a car parked there, then swerved back to the left and stopped fast. Back to the right, then the left, two more times and he got off. “I got it to third gear,” he said. He turned and almost ran away.

I soldiered on to the end of the cul-de-sac. The whole thing is about a hundred feet long with a surface of patches upon patches. I had planned to turn around there, but it was too narrow, so I turned left onto the paved path to the beach to get more space. Another healthy young man drove up in a truck, and I appealed to him to get the trike turned around for me. His short ride was as out of control as the other man’s had been, and he explained he had to be somewhere else immediately, got back in his truck, and left. At least I felt better about me. 

I persisted for two and a half hours, but the streets I had chosen to be less trafficked were not, every surface needed to be scraped off and relaid, I spent as much time on foot trying to move the trike out of the way of cars, as I did riding. Crossing the main street so I could get back home, I stuck a foot out for balance, and the rear tire removed my shoe for me. So I stopped in the center of a four way intersection to put it back on. The drivers waited.

Thankfully a neighbor showed up at the right moment to help me push 110 pounds of trike up the ramp to my porch. I locked it, plugged in the battery, covered it, and came inside. I’d felt absolute terror the whole time; I’m not exaggerating. There was no let up until it was parked on the porch. I was sweated up from head to toe. This was unlike my happy dreams of rolling around the island, learning every bit of it.

However, I’m a Taurus. Persistence is my middle name. Sunday, there is very little traffic. I scouted a route of smooth, mostly level roads, around and around the plaza. 

I thought hard about what was going on. The problem was that I know how to ride a bicycle. All my muscles had been trained for bicycle riding. Lean into the curve. If moving very slowly and the bike starts to tip, turn the wheel into the tip, and the bike will come upright again. Keep the bicycle and myself vertical unless deliberately leaning into a turn. If the roadbed was slanted, the bike would roll on the side of its tire. That’s why bike tires are rounded and not flat on the bottom.

With the trike, everything was different. I had to lean away from the turn, not into it. If the roadbed was slanted, the trike would become slanted too. No amount of turning the front wheel into the tip would cause it to right itself. And no matter how far I leaned in the opposite direction, the trike would not become level. It was stable on three wheels, and no amount of camber or bank was going to make it fall over. All I had to do was to trust that and keep myself upright so that I wouldn’t lean too far and fall right off. I had to steer in the direction I wanted to go, even when that felt completely wrong.

Having thought it out, I rode to the plaza. I had to consciously contradict every trained muscle movement and every instinct. And now I’m better—not ready for prime time yet, but better. Around and around and around, I went. I managed to shift down to first, and I did quite a lot of peddling. After a while, I started being able to take a corner at dead slow without panic, without my steering going crazy, without leaning so far I was about to fall off. When I felt worn out, I came home and dragooned a passing tourist into helping me push the bike to the porch.

Next Sunday, I’ll get better still. I’ve already moved all the way up from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence. Stay tuned…