At last! a GT3

Well I headed into town this morning, a little worse for wear after all the wine I drank last night. I was hoping that all was well. I had been talking with Marko on Thursday and all seemed well. I went in and got the trike. All was well. After a bit of repacking of bits into my backpack and a quick spin on the foot path to make sure all was well, I headed off. I rode along the foot path up Clarence street, partly because it is one way, the other way, and partly because I wanted to get a feel for the bike before venturing out onto the road. It all seemed ok. I changed gears, stopped and other things. The pedestrian ramps in the city are almost exactly the same width as the trike, so I needed to be careful to hit them in the middle when going onto and off the road.

The trike has two mirrors. Which needed a bit of adjusting, but work really well. I just need to remember to look into them. I found that on the back streets, I was able to ride along, look in the mirros to see that there was nothing behind me, and hence, take it easy.

Going around Sydney Town Hall, I rode up the bus lane across to Castlereagh Street. Here again there was a bus lane to follow. I found that, as expected, I was very fast down hill. I also found that the steering becomes more sensitive as I get faster, and in a few spots I was on the verge of loosing control as I was trying to juggle learning the gear changes with learning the steering on a bumpy road. But I did master it and had a bit of a break in Eddy Ave. I also worked out how to engage the hand brake when I stopped this time.  The front gear is fiddly as it is variable so you need to pick the right spot or it overshoots. I found that I got used to the position of the leaver for each of the three gears and once I did that, it became much easier. I still overshoot the middle cog to the smallest sometimes when I am changing down. One thing I am sure I will learn to remember is that there is a third wheel and it is in a different place to the front two. A couple of times I carefully missed holes with the front two wheels, but not the third.

Riding through the park, around central station and onto Redfern, I was getting a better feel for the trike. As I passed the fabled block, the Aborigines were clearly quite impressed with the trike. One old woman wanted to sit on the rack and get a ride.

I stopped on the way at the Eveleigh Markets. Here I immediately bumped into James and Cam. Within 20 minutes we had also bumped into Jarrod and Liz and Rob and Amy. There is a designers market that is on every 6 months. So we went in there. I bought some decals. I did some food shopping in the main market and grabbed a bite to eat, before heading off home.

On the way home I again pushed things a little but not a lot. I sped over the speed humps, (well did not slow down), and in once section thought I was ging fast enough to be nearly lifting the inside wheel. I will have to work out how it feels just before the wheel lifts so I know where the edge is. The graffiti artists were redoing some of their official wall paintings, and gave a greeting as I went past. I got home without incident.