Preparations progressing but still a long way to go....

Yesterday I have booked my ticket to travel to Thiruvananthapura on 17th August. I will have to pedal to Kanyakumari from there, about 90 kms. Nagarkoil which is just 15 km Kanyakumari has a direct train from Mangalore but the timings are not convenient. I will be in Thiruvananthapura 18th early morning. My trip from Kanyakumari will commence on 20th August morning.

Last week I managed to make considerable preparations but still have a long way to go. Main things got done are two battery bags and two camera mounts. I had to go to Puttur and Vitla many times to get these things done.

The camera mount in the front also will carry a back view mirror and my cycle analyst meter will also go there. The earlier position of this meter was diminishing the view of the handlebar mounted back view mirror. So I am removing the cycle analyst meter from there. The front mount may also carry a headlight and colored LEDs.
The batteries are positioned behind the seat in the newly stitched bags. It is vital I can reach them very easily in all circumstances as I have no other battery cutoff installed and throttle or any malfunction mean the trike will start moving on its own.

When we mount camera and we switch it on, it is bound to collect lot of unnecessary footage. Viewing them is a torture and nothing seems to be happening in long distances. So I will be compelled to lug all that trash if I don’t edit immediately to remove them. I tried using Pinnacle software but that needed video conversion which takes lot of time & effort. Not having a support team means I have to do it myself & so wanted to do it as simple as possible. So now experimenting with Windows moviemaker for editing and subtitling purposes.

Ananth offered his BSNL data card for my notebook computer under impression that it has Nationwide roaming but on Monday when I went to local BSNL office I was told different story altogether. NIC card that I had only statewide roaming & nationwide roaming EVDO cards cost 2500 plus activation charges 512 plus two months rental @ 750 per month will come to about 4.5 K but I am not sure it is worth it as EVDO network is available only in big cities & I prefer to stay away from them as far as possible. So have to look for alternatives.

Having sourced trike from UK & motorized wheel from China, my vehicle is unique is many ways. So is this trip & I am talking a lonely walk off the beaten track.

Successful pedaling up Shiradi

It was still raining heavily when I decided on a trip to Sakleshpur involving climbing Shiradi ghat road. Boys were keen to join me and Dinakar wanted to shoot some photographs. Boys will miss only half day school was on reason for scheduling it on Saturday 30th July. We couldn’t do it on that day as it was raining heavily and postponed it to next Wednesday. Moreover there is just two weeks remaining for my big trip & this was urgent. So decided to take my Omni as support vehicle during this trip.

The climbing data is crucial for realistic long range trip planning. This is also important as there is no lodging facility in about 70 km between Uppinangady & Sakleshpur and I had to think about options before me in such circumstances.

Since we had only half day available on Wednesday afternoon I decided to start from Nelyady as I wanted to reach real ghat section with plenty of daylight on hand. So loaded trike on Omni, collected boys from Schools around noon and headed to Nelyady. We first had lunch there & assembled the trike in Ayyappa temple premises. Finally I could start pedaling at 2 PM. The sky was dark with thick clouds & so I put on the raincoat from the starting point itself.

Within two km there was heavy rain and pedal assistance was reduced to almost zero. Since it was still early evening with many hours of daylight ahead, I decided to continue with or without pedal assistance. Sometimes it was very hard pedaling and slowly I could see improvement in assistance support.

A gentleman followed me on his scooter for some distance and he turned out to be friend of Dinakar. He advised us to have a red flag as the trike having low profile is not very much visible especially during rains. So Dinakar borrowed a red cloth from his relatives on the way & made a flag. The visibility improved considerably then. I had forgotten many things on that day mainly because of power failure early morning & that included the flag.

Finally we reached Shiradi at 4PM. I requested my support team to go little ahead and order tea as I did not want to get off the trike or sit in the trike till tea is prepared in the middle of small town. The first question invariably gathered people ask is how much this cost ? which I avoid to answer for security reasons. We continued immediately after having tea. Again we had some brief showers that hampered the power assist but I somehow determined to continue. Moreover this was only trip planned with support vehicle & I wanted to make full use of it.

Roads are in horrible condition in most part of ghat roads and climbing was very difficult. There was plenty of potholes & sometimes I had to pedal in the wrong side. It was not very dangerous as everybody was compelled to drive slowly & I had sufficient notice of approaching vehicle. Lot of other road users and bystanders were waving at me and showing thumbs up signs.

Apart from considerable climbing there was some downhill rides too. Luckily the roads were in better conditions in such places. With brakes only in two front wheels, sudden braking was simply out of question. Road was wet & I kept the speed limited to about 35 Kmph. I had a scary downhill ride in a winding road little after Maranahalli in fading light.

I had overtaken three gas tankers & once in fading light my support team was very scared. Luckily in those occasions power assist system supported well my furious pedaling.

We finally stopped near a roadside hotel @ 730 PM and had Dosa plus tea. The trike was folded and loaded to Omni. The total distance covered on trike was 50 km that also involved climbing about 2500 feet. The trip back to Nelyady took two hours whereas my triking uphill had taken five and half hours. I had used up 15 Ah out of 20 Ah of my battery capacity.

I could not make GPS tracks as its batteries were low power & though we changed them, it was sometimes in support vehicle and was not switched on. The distraction because of assist failure, frequent rain was too much. So I did use it to measure the distance on the way back but tracks was unusable as it overlapped with earlier tracks. Youtube links of the trips are http://is.gd/e54i8 and http://is.gd/e54z2

It was nice that there was space for me & Sunil could curl up in the back of the Omni and little later Anil took my place. I could not spend much time without moving in tight situation. Finally we reached home @ 1158PM after dropping Dinakar @ Puttur.

I am very happy about successful completion and my calculations about climbing turned out to be perfect. So I can make more realistic time estimations in different terrain now.

More riding on 31st July

Today was expected to be a rainy day and I had to cancel a longer trike trip. Yesterday I had got a camera mount fabricated in Puttur with mount head from Dinakar’s collection and fabrication under his guidance. So now I have a nice mount that can be fixed to the back side of my trike seat. I had also purchased a rain coat and wanted to check the possibility of trike riding while raining with raincoat on.

Sky cleared up a bit around 11 in the morning & I went to post office to collect mail & postal stationery. Then I decided to continue making full use of sunny day. I had fixed the camera mount and camera but unfortunately it took only a small video shot. I was mistaken that it had recorded the whole trip. The mount seem to be okay but I dont have much experience with mounting camera.

I took some rural roads & it was good ride. I forgot to take GPS and so the data was not recorded. I came home around 1 PM and it started raining immediately afterwards.

Evening it was drizzling. Using the opportunity I wore the new raincoat and started riding. After about 14 km there was heavy rain and I took a U turn. Riding in the rain was fun and comfortable. After rain receding the power unit started giving problems.

Maybe moisture enter somewhere in the circuit and created the problem. I could get some assist but that was not sufficient to climb in hilly areas and I had to put in more effort. Somehow I came closer to home & gradually there was more power available. So I have to make numerous connections waterproof before next time riding in rain.

Total distance was about 47 km and consumed about !0 Ah of power.

27th July ride report 37 km

I could not pedal the trike for many days as there was heavy rainfall and for a few days there was no charger to charge my batteries. So today when I saw the opportunity naturally I was happy.

Ride duration was about 2 hours with moving average 18.2 kmph. Total distance was 36.9 km which consumed about 7.2 Ah and 286 Wh.

Half km of the approach road to my house is very muddy. So I cannot take the trike out during rainy days as it becomes very dirty and consumes more power. Climbing uphill becomes difficult as muddy road do not give good traction and is tiresome. So I prefer drier road surface and do not take trike out as soon as Sun comes out of clouds.

Meanwhile I had made few changes & adjustments. So had to sharp keep eye on those things and had to take tools along. I realized my mistake when the cleats unexpectedly released my left shoe in a bumpy road. It was not tight enough and that happened few times after that but luckily there was no leg injuries, just little bit sprain.

Two weeks of rainfall have considerably damaged the road surface in many parts of Highways. The ride today was more bumpy and naturally took more time to pass certain area.

The assist controller was tied with the rope earlier. Yesterday Anilkumar came and helped me with proper mounting of the controller. It was bit tricky as the rectangular shaped controller had to be mounted on the round tube of the trike frame.

Both my cycle meter and drift camera are supposed to be waterproof but the sunny weather resulted on condensation of water vapour. So it was difficult to read the meter while moving and videos I recorded was not sharp. So it was bad start with Drift camera about trip recording.

There was a chance meeting with Nibeesh who was traveling in the same road and spent some time talking with him.

Afternoon it rained and I only took trike to post office about 2 km away to post a letter and did not record that data.

PS: When I look out of the window no on 28th July , I see heavy rain and total cloud cover. Maybe we will have rain next two days. I was damn lucky yesterday to cover some distance.

Charger problem and courier services

Ashok and myself finally realized that the sophisticated Li Ion battery charger cannot be repaired here. So I decided to send it to Shanghai. Before sending I had to decide which among the couriers is the best bet. Having had bad experience with two of the reputed ones, I could not make quick decision.

My trike from UK came by UPS & it was stuck in Hyderabad for more than twenty days for no apparent reason. I missed lot of sunny days practice because of this late delivery but later on they refunded GBP 230 ( About INR 16000 ) shipping cost . Moreover I had already paid more than INR 4000 as customs duty on that amount too. The frustration trying to communicate with UPS customer service simply cannot be put into words.

The senior staff of UPS were not really helpful & some were outright harsh. Their Customer service telephone number also did not work properly. Responding to my mail one of them even wrote to me asking my phone number when my letter itself contained my phone numbers & Email ID. It was like asking – Rama, What is your name ??

The motorized wheel carried from China by TNT. The custom clearance was handled by them at no extra cost but I had to pay a heavy price for communication difference. The IEC code is not mandatory for personal imports but Delhi Customs were arbitrarily imposing INR 8000 penalty which was not properly communicated to me. I had IEC code which I procured during ATV import earlier but was not sent this time to clearing agency.

The original documents of this consignment from China was delivered to me by TNT one month later and I had to write to them many times for that. Documents took ten days to reach here from Bangalore which is 350 km away. We have to submit a copy of Bill of Entry to exchange control department thru the bank we made money remittance and naturally I was concerned.

The in charge lady in Mangalore simply ordered over telephone come here and collect if you want that document and I retorted it is your duty. I rushed a mail to Bangalore office which chastened her. She called little later and offered to send it next day.

So two bitter experiences made to look for alternatives. So settled for government owned SPEEDPOST. The services of government owned telephone and courier may be bit bad but you know that somebody can be held accountable.

The guy in the post office in Mangalore baulked looking at Li Ion charger and I explained it is just a charger and non hazardous. Then they put the words – at senders risk and accepted the package. Incidentally I had used a Li Ion laptop battery package.

Meanwhile WaiWon sent two chargers on 13th July from Shanghai by TNT and the news itself gave me lot of relief. Many thanks to Cyclist friend Shreekumar who helped me in organizing this.

http://www.tnt.com/express/en_in/site/home.html Tracking number 976048816. It was repeat of earlier experience. Complaining to Bangalore hastened the delivery after the package spent three days in Mangalore which is just 45 km from my home. Finally the package reached me on 23rd July evening.

The tracking of the charger I sent to WaiWon by speedpost on 15 July was also a adventure unlike private courier companies where single website tracks the package end to end. Here I lost the package position in first site & after some searching leads to second only to lose again once the package reaches Beijing. The third site that tracks internal movement in China finally confirms the package delivery on 20th July. This site also shows our package's latest location on Google Maps.

http://services.ptcmysore.gov.in/Speednettracking/Track3.aspx?articlenumber=EK703719736IN

http://ipsweb.ptcmysore.gov.in/ipswebtracking/IPSWeb_item_events.asp?itemid=EK703719736IN&Submit=Submit

http://www.ems-tracking.net/single-ems-tracking.php?number=EK703719736IN

Simultaneous tracking the two way traffic was fun like watching a closely fought football match especially with very cold & wet conditions outside in which I couldn’t go out and pedal. Finally Speedpost won by five days. TNT took almost double that time. Finally it was not rabbit but tortoise winning the race. Private courier companies have really attractive advertisements on TV but service and accountability is often poor. Hats off to SPEEDPOST or EMS.

Backstage story

People ask me why I am going on a long pedaling expedition ?

My answer is simple. I am cycling for the sake of cycling that also symbolizes self reliance or independence and this is sort endurance trip and not pleasure tour. Considering my fragile health, I am confident of holding together for a month on road. The basic reasons behind the trip are already outlined in the earlier post.

Here I am basically exploring a transportation alternative that is based around sustainable human and solar power.

So I have two things to focus on:

First is spread the advantages of cycling, especially recumbent. Recumbents are much more efficient and faster than normal cycles.

Second, Advantages of solar power assisted mobility. I wanted to travel in a solar power assisted trike based on design by cyclist friend Mark Havran of USA
but it also meant lot of hard work and couple of month's delay. Here I am not physically carrying the solar panels but do have solar panels at home that minimizes the power use from electricity board.

My interest here to show the viability of a vehicle that gets 400 kmpl equivalent from a plug to make up for the use of vehicle that gets 15 kmpl from petrol or 50 kmpl (Reva Car) from plug. I want to focus on advantages of pedaling and work done by young students in other countries on solar vehicles .

Each year, engineering students from universities across America and Italy design, analyze and build a human and solar powered vehicle. These competitions allow students to apply the engineering practices they learn in school to build efficient, reliable and sustainable modes of transportation

Many high school students design and build the solar powered vehicles in USA and Australia and have cross country competition with them. I can draw attention to the fact though actually I cannot use such vehicles in this trip.

One American university has a course called Cycle the Rockies: Energy and Climate Change in Montana and experience of one of past participants can be found in http://cycletherockies.wordpress.com/

Compared with this what our students ( Junkyard maniacs ?) are doing ? Unfortunately cream of our engineering talent builds practically useless dune buggies and race them every year at Pithampur near Indore so that sponsoring companies like Mahindra can have their pick of talent. The society is no way benefited and we don’t have appropriate place to use such machines too.

Considering development of wireless communication and mobile phone, progress of computer, network of charging points and electric propulsion is certainly possible. The scenario I envisage is recharge points every 15 km all over the country like they have mobile recharge points every 5 km. Every hour charging gets me 35 km range as I have two batteries.

Here is a case study. We park for ample hours between work in town and we have to bring charging points to those places. Considering small roadside shopkeeper gets power @ INR 3 per unit and sells @ 15 per unit. One hour charge means 300 Wh and I pay Rs 4.50 and my cost of travel is 13 paise per km. While waiting I buy something else too and that is bonus business for him.

My trip should act as a catalyst for growth of low cost mobility incorporating electric propulsion using solar power and efficient cycles. It doesn’t looks logical to me a car weighing 1000 kg carrying one passenger weighing 60 kg or a small truck carrying 100 kg load. It is clear that transport bikes can be an effective way to stop throwing toxic emissions into the atmosphere and contribute to the better quality of life in the city.

Let us strive for coexistence of pedal and petrol. Now pedal is being elbowed out. The trend is to be reversed and the pedal should be given due place in the society. Further expansion should be on pedals. I hope to convince thousand of people to hop into cycle & pedal.

Deadline rescheduled

I have reset the deadline having postponed it by six days. The development past week have not only slowed down the preparations but also have encountered new problems. The monsoon has become weak and there could be continuous downpour early August.

Feasibility of the trip is now confirmed. My vehicle, trike and the assist motor do match well and having covered 350 km plus I am more confident of my stamina now. It is not in doubt any more. Some issues are still to be sorted out.

I went to Bangalore to get among other accessories, Chain link. That was not available in Decathlon store as I hoped and they directed me to R R Cycle @ Madivala and cost of that 9 speed chain link was INR 450. I do not expect chain problem but is just being ready for emergency.

I also got a Driftvison X 170 Action camera in Bangalore and it was last piece with the dealer. The seller admitted lot of people have examined the camera. Hope it was not mishandled. So far the picture quality is just okay. Here and here are samples taken on new camera.

The Li Ion battery charger is giving problem and I have got in touch with manufacturer in Shanghai. Having faced plenty harassment by Indian Customs, I want to make sure it cannot be repaired here before sending it to China. Our Customs may even suspect warranty replacement as new material.

I have two batteries but only one charger. This is like two old people sharing one set of false teeth. One battery has to wait till other is charged and midnight battery swap will become mandatory during the trip. So I am also working on getting additional charger which will increase my daily range substantially. Then it will also improve success chances as one charger failure will not mean trip cancellation.

I did not want waste a sunny day. So pedaled today for about three hours without battery assist. It was a good exercise. Recumbent cycling means different leg muscles are utilized and it is good to have lot of practice.

The guy who agreed to stitch bags for me fell sick and is admitted to hospital. So I will be getting my bags only after a week or two. So I feel another six days postponement was logical.